FreeCAD - is it just me, or bug city?

[max_torque]

Ok, i've been playing with freeCad.  It seems, considering it's free, to be pretty well featured, but there seem to be soooo many bugs it's pretty much un-useable. Have others found this, or is it something i'm doing wrong?

For example, i do a sketch, fully constrain that sketch, and then sometime later, after some further operations, it's reports an error with that sketch and it now has excess or insufficient constraints suddenly.  This is especially true if you try to make an even slightly parametric model, ie your constraints are based on other geometry!

Sometimes, if i save and restart, all is well again for a bit, but sometimes, say something pocketed out using the sketch geometry is now different.  It also seems just about impossible to go back into the lower items in the tree and change anything with messing everything up that's been done after that point.  What's the point in parametric design if you can't change anything??

 

[ebclr]

Do you know that you can have fusion360 for free is some circumstances, if you fit the criteria is a nice idea to take a look

https://www.autodesk.com/company/legal-notices-trademarks/terms-of-service-autodesk360-web-services/autodesk-web-services-entitlements

[free_electron]

fusion360. almost better than solidworks ! and zero cost.

For 2d work : Dassault Draftsight. Kicks autocad out the door, across the street, into the field where it lands in a pile of cow-poo (where it [autocad] belongs).

[NivagSwerdna]

Ok, i've been playing with freeCad.

I used QCad for 2D and Fusion 360 for 3D. Simples.

[max_torque]

Sorry, for the late reply!  (i've been away)


Well i'm giving up with FreeCAD.  It's fine for really simple stuff, but unless one can reliably go back and change dimensions in a sketch and have that then cascade down through the model correctly i can't see how it' s any use for real designing (where it's inevitable as the design progresses that initial dimensions will need to be changed)

I tried to do a simple tubular frame today, and when i changed a tiny detail on sketch, part of the frame dissipated completely and another bit suddenly appeared on a completely different plane to where it had been....

Fusion360 however looks excellent judging by the various tutorials i've been watching on UUUUUUUtube! 

[janoc]

Just beware of random breakages with Fusion360. Yesterday I had to fix some stuff because the last update broke some APIs at work. With the forced updates Autodesk treats Fusion360 users as unpaid alpha/beta testers for things that may appear in Inventor or their other CAD products. It is not something I would rely on for anything serious.

It is also cloud-only - no internet, no play, unless you have the foresight to cache your files locally. Oh and it is slow as molasses with anything just a little larger. We are using it at work to open CAD files from clients and it can easily bring even a fairly decent machine to its knees with a small model ... Heck, even the completely in-browser Onshape is not that slow and doesn't need hundreds of megs of updates every few days.

Re FreeCAD - I feel your pain. I have found the more recent versions a bit more usable, but I have still managed to make it go nuts with some changes in the sketches. It is usually possible to find a way to draw the object I want that avoids the problem, though. Of course, one shouldn't have to do that.

The current stable version also lacks any support for assemblies (joints and such), which make it difficult to use. Assemblies are in the development version, but that is not for the faint of the heart ...

If anyone knows a good hobbyist-level CAD that doesn't cost arm and leg and can run in Linux too, I am all ears ...

[Mechatrommer]

fusion360. almost better than solidworks ! and zero cost.
For 2d work : Dassault Draftsight. Kicks autocad out the door, across the street, into the field where it lands in a pile of cow-poo (where it [autocad] belongs).

you dont compare 2d only drafter with something that is 3d capable (albeit nonparametric) like autocad, heck any descent programmer can build his own 2d drafter easy in the home, not so easy when it comes to 3d modelling and operations... being a autocad user for many years, i've been having a hard time to learn new notions of modern parametric 3d modelling like solidworks, inventors and i guess the same as fusion360... any 3d objects pretty much can be modelled in autocad except anything involving fancy extrudes, revolves and lofts... btw, i can see your love to the free tools, since in one angle you are supporting autodesk (fusion360), and from another angle are not (autocad)

anyway, back to OP's comment about being useless, i dont know about freecad 3d operations maybe its full of bugs, but its been very usefull for me to convert autocad iges model to altium step model (with coloring capability), i dont know what is better for the purpose... ymmv...

[JPortici]

fusion360. almost better than solidworks ! and zero cost.

For 2d work : Dassault Draftsight. Kicks autocad out the door, across the street, into the field where it lands in a pile of cow-poo (where it [autocad] belongs).

I like and use QCad/Librecad Reminds me of the simpler days when they taught us R14 in high school... and there was none of the bullshit introduced since autocad 2008 or so

[sleemanj]

I've used FreeCad for the odd job where scripting was necessary, but  other than that it's just horrid compared to OnShape or Fusion360, not very stable, not very intuitive, not very easy.

OnShape is my preference, partly because as a Linux user I don't have to go start a Windows instance to use it, but also I just prefer it's way of doing things over f360.   

Fusion360's  not-always-quite-a-feature model (some things are not proper features in the timeline and can't be edited or rolled back to properly), and it's clumsy  (and slow) not-cloud-but-not-local-either file management makes it a pain on occasion.

Of course, OnShape's pricing model does mean all my designs are public, that's not something I care about, often enough I want them to be anyway.

[b_force]

You can also still use an older version of Sketchup (version .

It's to unfortunate though.
A lot of free/open source programs have heaps of potential, but it's just simply not usable for anything serious.
When will they learn, first make the interface rock and rock solid, than work on your fancy stuff??
(this is especially true fro KiCad as well)

I was considering FreeCad for some simple 3D drawings, but now I am hesitating.
(I used to work with CoCreate a lot)

[janoc]

You can also still use an older version of Sketchup (version .

It's to unfortunate though.
A lot of free/open source programs have heaps of potential, but it's just simply not usable for anything serious.
When will they learn, first make the interface rock and rock solid, than work on your fancy stuff??
(this is especially true fro KiCad as well)

I was considering FreeCad for some simple 3D drawings, but now I am hesitating.
(I used to work with CoCreate a lot)

The problem with free/open source programs is the manpower. When people do unpaid work on these projects on their own dime, they obviously want to work on things that interest them. UIs are both unsexy to work on and an opinion minefield where you can never satisfy everyone.

Cut them some slack. I much more bugged by a horrendous user interface in Fusion360 or something like Visual Studio where there is a large team and a ton of money behind it than something like FreeCAD which is essentially developed by 2 people in their free time only or Kicad which is over 20 years old project and was developed by a single person until 2008 or so.

It is not apples to apples comparison. OTOH, there are plenty of very polished free/open source projects - but they have also a lot more resources behind them - e.g. Firefox, LibreOffice, Blender etc.

[free_electron]

and from another angle are not (autocad)

I have never liked autocad. it is a horror contraption that talks with a lisp (pun intended) that produces data in a crappy fileformat ( DXF/DWG the file format form hell incompatible with itself ) it was crap on a 5 1/4 inch floppy on a 8086 and it is still crap. They kept building on crap.

Fusion360 works really well. I use Solidworks and Catia daily and like Fusion better than both.

[b_force]

The problem with free/open source programs is the manpower. When people do unpaid work on these projects on their own dime, they obviously want to work on things that interest them. UIs are both unsexy to work on and an opinion minefield where you can never satisfy everyone.

Cut them some slack.

In my opinion it's about priorities. So get the basics done first and make sure it's (as good as) bug free.
To make sure that most people are satisfied, make an interface that can be customized. This is what you typically see in most professional programs. Were the user can practically change everything.

In fact I am working on some software myself with some people (for acoustics). All the way on the top in the priority list are; GUI first, gui first and gui first
Only after you nailed the gui, work on the fancy graphics.

Ones again, it's not blaming developers (cutting slack), but like I said, it's very frustrating to see things with potential failing on relative simple things.
See this more as a piece of advice.

[janoc]

and from another angle are not (autocad)

I have never liked autocad. it is a horror contraption that talks with a lisp (pun intended) that produces data in a crappy fileformat ( DXF/DWG the file format form hell incompatible with itself ) it was crap on a 5 1/4 inch floppy on a 8086 and it is still crap. They kept building on crap.

Welcome to the world of AutoDesk

The only software from them that somewhat works is the one that wasn't developed by them but they have acquired it from elsewhere (3ds MAX, Maya, Eagle, Fusion was also an external project, AFAIK). Then you just keep praying that they won't bastardize/"autodesk-ize" it too much - Max and Eagle are good examples of that happening

I have also written some add-ins for Fusion360 for CAD data preprocessing at work and I can tell you, the API and the bugs are pretty insane ...

And re Lisp - actually the Lisp scripting in AutoCAD was a groundbreaking idea at the time, same as writing extensions for the software. Yes, the Lisp is strange for people used to more "pedestrian" languages like C but at the time they have introduced AutoLisp in 1986, there weren't really scripting options like we have today. It was also the peak of the AI and Lisp popularity, so getting Lisp developers was relatively easy. And once the thing got entrenched, it became next to impossible to remove it and replace it with something else - it would break all the backwards compatibility for extensions and CAD documents.

E.g. 3ds Max which is much newer than AutoCAD uses something called MaxScript - an absolute abomination when compared to AutoLisp.

[b_force]

What autocad is for 2D, I have it with Solidworks.
Just can't get used to the interface.
The most annoying thing is it's almost the de facto standard in mechanics.
If you want to get anything done or supplied, people ask for Solidworks

[janoc]

In my opinion it's about priorities. So get the basics done first and make sure it's (as good as) bug free.
To make sure that most people are satisfied, make an interface that can be customized. This is what you typically see in most professional programs. Were the user can practically change everything.

That's the problem. Tools like KICAD or FreeCAD were not started/written with the intention to become professional tools or to satify the needs of more users than the author of the software. So once the projects got large enough and useful enough for being of interest to the larger community, there was a technical debt to pay.

That's not an excuse but people tend to ignore that large projects like this weren't developed overnight and that there are years of technical decisions and reasoning behind them which are the reasons why they work (or don't) in certain ways.

If you are designing something from scratch and you know that your objective is to sell it or to be used by a large community of people, you design things differently. However, when you are working on a 25 year old codebase that you have "inherited" from someone else (KICAD), it is a different story.

Of course, that also assumes that the developer is actually an experienced software developer - e.g. the KICAD main author was a French university professor in an unrelated field (electrical engineering & image processing), not a software engineer or UI designer. He made it work well enough for what he needed to do - capture schematics and design boards.

In fact I am working on some software myself with some people (for acoustics). All the way on the top in the priority list are; GUI first, gui first and gui first
Only after you nailed the gui, work on the fancy graphics.

I thought one would first work on getting the basic functionality right, not the UI. That doesn't mean the UI isn't important (and for some applications the UI is the application!), but beautiful UI is of little use when the code behind isn't doing its job ...

Ones again, it's not blaming developers (cutting slack), but like I said, it's very frustrating to see things with potential failing on relative simple things.
See this more as a piece of advice.

Yeah, that's true. It irks me too. On the other hand, it is not the worst issue one can have  The programs are usable for what they were designed to do, working and free.

[Mechatrommer]

whats frustrating is that when the developer ask for $1 for the software license, it will go to the bottom of recommendation list. 1st in the list will be free tools, no matter how crappy they are, and then come the people who never satisfy mourning and complaining. 2nd in the list is multi millions softwares, but then only elites can afford those... so the ecosystem is sooo "encouraging" for the very little developers who want to make their small way in the business, i guess knitting will give better revenue... as of fusion360, i dont see it as purely a free tool, sooner or later you are going to be hit by something, when you are in love and tied too much to the tool, such as when you are not a student anymore.

[janoc]

whats frustrating is that when the developer ask for $1 for the software license, it will go to the bottom of recommendation list.

$1 for a license is just dumb, the hassle with collecting the money (taxes & all) is likely going to cost more than what such developer will make. Either make the software fully commercial or leave it free (as in beer - and get something else to pay your bills). Such half-assed approach doesn't help anyone.

Also, do people actually buy CAD tools based on some recommendation lists made by download sites and such? That's perhaps true for small utilities and tools that are dime a dozen but not really much else.

However, the developers have only themselves to blame for this mess - with the mass jump on the "freemium" bandwagon especially on mobile, where unless you have a free tool and then try to milk and dime the user on other things (ads, microtransactions, etc) you don't exist, the users learned to expect "free" (as in beer). Why would you pay when you can get (supposedly) the same thing for free?

Also many of those supposedly free programs in those lists are not really free but basically time limited demo versions that you must buy after e.g. 30 days.

However free (as in freedom)/open source software (Kicad, FreeCAD, etc) is not really in the same category - they neither rely on such recommendation lists (+ those rarely cover anything but Windows/Mac software anyway) nor rely on such business model to survive.

as of fusion360, i dont see it as purely a free tool, sooner or later you are going to be hit by something, when you are in love and tied too much to the tool, such as when you are not a student anymore.

Fusion360 is not free. It is a subscription based software (and quite expensive at that). It is free only for hobbyist/small startup (making <$100k income) use with a free 1 year license (which you can renew).

E.g. our company (a 7 person startup) doesn't qualify for the free license anymore and we had to take a subscription on it ($300/year single seat, the Ultimate version with better simulation and CAM is $1500/year single seat). Granted, it is cheaper than buying SolidWorks or Inventor outright but hardly free. The only free part are the free bugs whenever it updates itself.

[Mechatrommer]

i meant $1 is analogy of 'cheap', it can be $15, $100 etc cheap,and also of course including free 30 days or 1 year or whatever demo version...recommendation list i meant is not something properly written somewhere by pro, but words that lingering around the net esp forum like this and some 'unqualified in the area' content provider... if a developer can get $1500 per anum per user, then there is no excuse/tolerance for bugs, thats where the mourner and complainer should go if anything... as for free tools, if the maker want to see their invention to go, they need to rectify, otherwise its a no go, but rectification is not an obligation since he get nothing from users (except complains and mourns), we cant blame him much if he go fishing while we in the middle of battle trying to save the world.

[b_force]

Of course, that also assumes that the developer is actually an experienced software developer - e.g. the KICAD main author was a French university professor in an unrelated field (electrical engineering & image processing), not a software engineer or UI designer. He made it work well enough for what he needed to do - capture schematics and design boards.

I don't think that has to be true.
You can have wonderful ideas, but not doing the actual work.
So you will be the team leader and the experts do the bits and pieces.

In fact, that's exactly what I am doing as well.
I am not a full time programmer (far from it), but I know the basic concepts.
So I use other people to translate these concepts to something that works.

(in fact we are still looking for programmers)

[janoc]

I don't think that has to be true.

No, but it certainly was the case for KICAD. A lot of the UI and workflow strangeness that KICAD was known for was due to the original design decisions of its (then) sole author. When you are alone on the project, you can't afford to "have wonderful ideas and have others implement it" because you are the only person who can actually do the work. So you both prioritize and some things will be less than ideal by sheer necessity - nobody is expert in everything.

[Karel]

Just beware of random breakages with Fusion360. Yesterday I had to fix some stuff because the last update broke some APIs at work. With the forced updates Autodesk treats Fusion360 users as unpaid alpha/beta testers for things that may appear in Inventor or their other CAD products. It is not something I would rely on for anything serious.

Like Eagle 8 users...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/eagle-8-3-2-eagle-exe-has-stopped-working/td-p/7368957

[free_electron]

That's the problem. Tools like KICAD or FreeCAD were not started/written with the intention to become professional tools or to satify the needs of more users than the author of the software. So once the projects got large enough and useful enough for being of interest to the larger community, there was a technical debt to pay.

Add to that: they were built by programmers that don't understand the root problem of making a board. It is still considered as a polygon pusher. give 'em some drawing routines , store vectors and make some and/or/xor operations and off we go. -FAIL-
Everything else is an afterthought. "but it's all connected with according to schematic" . yup , and we all have seen the kind of schematics they produce ... it's amazing the router technology is not merely converting the flylines into copper. then again ..

[b_force]

I don't think that has to be true.

No, but it certainly was the case for KICAD. A lot of the UI and workflow strangeness that KICAD was known for was due to the original design decisions of its (then) sole author. When you are alone on the project, you can't afford to "have wonderful ideas and have others implement it" because you are the only person who can actually do the work. So you both prioritize and some things will be less than ideal by sheer necessity - nobody is expert in everything.

I guess you're right.

It wouldn't be my approach, but it all depends.
If someone is thinking longterm you can better have a proper looking interface, simply because it's much easier to show for potential investors etc.
It makes or brakes a program.
You can have wonderful things, but if people don't use it because it's to buggy or simply doesn't work well, it's still worthles.
Than it's just a great idea idea sitting on a shelf.

It's to bad that most developers (also in electronics) don't realize this concept.

[Mr. Scram]

Do you know that you can have fusion360 for free is some circumstances, if you fit the criteria is a nice idea to take a look

https://www.autodesk.com/company/legal-notices-trademarks/terms-of-service-autodesk360-web-services/autodesk-web-services-entitlements

Putting all your data in someone else's basket and potentially losing your IP and infrastructure overnight doesn't sound attractive.

[janoc]

Add to that: they were built by programmers that don't understand the root problem of making a board. It is still considered as a polygon pusher. give 'em some drawing routines , store vectors and make some and/or/xor operations and off we go. -FAIL-
Everything else is an afterthought. "but it's all connected with according to schematic" . yup , and we all have seen the kind of schematics they produce ... it's amazing the router technology is not merely converting the flylines into copper. then again ..

With due respect, you are wrong in this case. The Kicad author is actually an university prof in electrical engineering. So I would think that he has made quite a few boards before he has decided to start coding his own tool for their design.

And I am not quite sure what are you getting at with the schematics quality - the schematics editor in Kicad is actually pretty decent, certainly comparable or better with Eagle, LTSpice or tools like EasyEDA. That someone designs crap with it is certainly no fault of the tool, though.

[janoc]

It wouldn't be my approach, but it all depends.
If someone is thinking longterm you can better have a proper looking interface, simply because it's much easier to show for potential investors etc.
It makes or brakes a program.
You can have wonderful things, but if people don't use it because it's to buggy or simply doesn't work well, it's still worthles.
Than it's just a great idea idea sitting on a shelf.

It's to bad that most developers (also in electronics) don't realize this concept.

Well, yes, that applies when you know from the start that you are designing a product for sale. Then you are right.

However, tools like Kicad or FreeCAD are not in this category - and not because they don't cost money. They were conceived first and foremost to address some specific need of their authors which other tools didn't at the time. Or simply because the author enjoys doing the work and is doing it for fun. People making tools for themselves don't care about impressing investors or bugs in functionality they don't use. They want something that solves their problem, pretty UI is less important. And people who write code for fun will work on what they consider fun - which is rarely UI.

It becomes a problem only once the tool "outgrows" their authors and becomes more widely popular. So you need to look at it from this angle. Judging these programs from the same point of view as commercial applications that were designed for sale from start (regardless of price) is not really fair, because their objective wasn't the same -  Jean-Pierre Charras (the original author of Kicad) certainly didn't start it 25 years ago with the goal of competing with Altium or Eagle (neither of which even existed back then - there was Protel for DOS).

[Mechatrommer]

If someone is thinking longterm you can better have a proper looking interface, simply because it's much easier to show for potential investors etc.

maybe they dont think longterm. maybe the idea is, once they got it working the way they want (personal use), they open source it, any user want to make it better, they have to code it better, and then compile it on their own, thats the idea. and a one man band SW development doesnt need investors as in multi million factory producing physical products company, even if they want to think longterm. and if they think longterm, you better be ready to pay for it.

It's to bad that most developers (also in electronics) don't realize this concept.

maybe they do, its just too much commitment on other things thats readily more profitable to them.

[Mr. Scram]

I guess you're right.

It wouldn't be my approach, but it all depends.
If someone is thinking longterm you can better have a proper looking interface, simply because it's much easier to show for potential investors etc.
It makes or brakes a program.
You can have wonderful things, but if people don't use it because it's to buggy or simply doesn't work well, it's still worthles.
Than it's just a great idea idea sitting on a shelf.

It's to bad that most developers (also in electronics) don't realize this concept.

Most engineering or otherwise specialist software isn't designed with a great UX. Doing this right takes a lot of time and effort to perfect, and the focus of development often lies elsewhere. Also, due to their niche position, customers generally don't just go elsewhere because of the looks. Standards, costs and reliability are often considered more important. Finally, there might actually be an incentive to make the software slightly cumbersome, rather than easy to use, because you can then also sell training.

So it's probably a combination of priorities and lock-in.

[b_force]

It wouldn't be my approach, but it all depends.
If someone is thinking longterm you can better have a proper looking interface, simply because it's much easier to show for potential investors etc.
It makes or brakes a program.
You can have wonderful things, but if people don't use it because it's to buggy or simply doesn't work well, it's still worthles.
Than it's just a great idea idea sitting on a shelf.

It's to bad that most developers (also in electronics) don't realize this concept.

Well, yes, that applies when you know from the start that you are designing a product for sale. Then you are right.

However, tools like Kicad or FreeCAD are not in this category - and not because they don't cost money. They were conceived first and foremost to address some specific need of their authors which other tools didn't at the time. Or simply because the author enjoys doing the work and is doing it for fun. People making tools for themselves don't care about impressing investors or bugs in functionality they don't use. They want something that solves their problem, pretty UI is less important. And people who write code for fun will work on what they consider fun - which is rarely UI.

It becomes a problem only once the tool "outgrows" their authors and becomes more widely popular. So you need to look at it from this angle. Judging these programs from the same point of view as commercial applications that were designed for sale from start (regardless of price) is not really fair, because their objective wasn't the same -  Jean-Pierre Charras (the original author of Kicad) certainly didn't start it 25 years ago with the goal of competing with Altium or Eagle (neither of which even existed back then - there was Protel for DOS).

Ok, yes very good point indeed!
I guess I naturally think about making things a bit more user friendly if I share stuff.

To be clear, I am not judging, I am simply making observations.
At this stage you can say that KiCad has arrived on a stage that they (REALLY) need to start working about these things.
I guess my reason for mentioning it, is simply because to make people more aware of it.
I noticed a lot of frustration and heavy discussions around these kind of subjects.


Btw, with all the respect, but the fact that someone is a professor doesn't always mean that know it all.
We are talking more about practical experience in this case.
So what works or doesn't work for people.
For that reason almost every professional program has the ability to completely change the interface to your own taste.

[hermit]

Add to that: they were built by programmers that don't understand the root problem of making a board. It is still considered as a polygon pusher. give 'em some drawing routines , store vectors and make some and/or/xor operations and off we go. -FAIL-
Everything else is an afterthought. "but it's all connected with according to schematic" . yup , and we all have seen the kind of schematics they produce ... it's amazing the router technology is not merely converting the flylines into copper. then again ..

With due respect, you are wrong in this case. The Kicad author is actually an university prof in electrical engineering. So I would think that he has made quite a few boards before he has decided to start coding his own tool for their design.

And I am not quite sure what are you getting at with the schematics quality - the schematics editor in Kicad is actually pretty decent, certainly comparable or better with Eagle, LTSpice or tools like EasyEDA. That someone designs crap with it is certainly no fault of the tool, though.

I wondered about that statement as well.  gEDA is another example of people using the software, writing the software.  In gEDA it really shows in the workflow sometimes. The main problem I had with it was I'm not a code monkey so the learning curve was just way too steep so I switched to Kicad.  Yeah, used Eagle when I had too.

[hermit]

To be clear, I am not judging, I am simply making observations.
At this stage you can say that KiCad has arrived on a stage that they (REALLY) need to start working about these things.

Kicad is in the process of rolling out a new release.  While most of the developers don't visit the forum they do get feedback on what the users want/need from it.  It does what I need but my 'need' is very simple.

[b_force]

To be clear, I am not judging, I am simply making observations.
At this stage you can say that KiCad has arrived on a stage that they (REALLY) need to start working about these things.

Kicad is in the process of rolling out a new release.  While most of the developers don't visit the forum they do get feedback on what the users want/need from it.  It does what I need but my 'need' is very simple.

This is going offtopic (a bit to specific).
I have seen the new release. And I think they should put energy in things that have more priority (like the interface)
Don't get me wrong, it's great what they have done so far, but the lack of certain things is frustrating as hell.

[asmi]

I have seen the new release. And I think they should put energy in things that have more priority (like the interface)
Don't get me wrong, it's great what they have done so far, but the lack of certain things is frustrating as hell.

What is a priority for you might not be so for someone else. For one, I didn't really have a problem with KiCAD GUI per se, my issues were mostly with half-implemented, outright buggy or missing features, which ultimately forced me to fork out on Orcad PCB Editor. BTW Orcad's workflow is very similar to KiCAD's, so time spent using KiCAD was not all lost to me. But before I switched, I've managed to design a somewhat complicated 4-layer board in it, so it is definitely possible even if not simple.

[free_electron]

With due respect, you are wrong in this case. The Kicad author is actually an university prof in electrical engineering. So I would think that he has made quite a few boards before he has decided to start coding his own tool for their design.

With all due respect to the professor : How many of his boards are in daily use in industrial/commercial settings ? 1 ? 2 ? 5 ? 100 ? It is easy to make 1 that only has to work on bench in a perfectly controlled environment and is allowed to goof up.

Things change when you have to make 100's of boards that are in mass production at rates of 100.000 to 100.000.000.000 copies per board. I have done PCB layout for harddisks. They make 1 million of these drives per day, and have been for the last 5 years ...  I have done boards that run at 70 GHz+ , i have 8 layer boards with 4 ounce copper per layer that carry 400 ampere. All mass production

Signal integrity , manufacturability and lots of other things come peeping around the corner. The CAD tool needs to know how to handle that.
For a lot of these entry level or homebrew tools such things are an afterthought, or even worse, the people making the tool haven't even heard that such things need to be done or such technologies exist ! How about embedded passives ? capacitive layers inside the board? resistive layers ? copper slugs ? complex design rules to mitigate the formation of anodic filaments ( like limiting how close drill strikes can be ? reliability things like tenting / encroaching , teardropping , silkscreen clip under small parts, soldermask sliver mitigation. ) Copper balancing , aspect ratio control driven by copper thickness. The software needs to be able to handle that and crosscheck that the layouter does not make violations against the rules. Most of these rules are unknown to even experienced layouters.

PCB design is NOT easy. it is not just throwing down some lines and holes. you can not do it with MS paint or autocad or a vector drawing tool. There is a difference between drawing a board and designing a board. Many PCB packages out there are good drawing tools, they are not good design tools. Simply because they behave like a vector drawing tool with some whizzbang in it. There is no 'board problem awareness' in them.

[Mr. Scram]

While I cannot do anything else than to agree with all of that, I doubt that a professor in the field wouldn't know about it at least in a fleeting sense, and probably in a fairly profound sense.

[b_force]

While I cannot do anything else than to agree with all of that, I doubt that a professor in the field wouldn't know about it at least in a fleeting sense, and probably in a fairly profound sense.

I don't wanna put down any professors, but my personal experience is exactly the opposite.
For all of the reasons free_electron is mentioning.

[Mr. Scram]

I don't wanna put down any professors, but my personal experience is exactly the opposite.
For all of the reasons free_electron is mentioning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any reasons listed why a professor wouldn't know about his field in at least a cursory sense.

As a side note: almost 2 billion hard drives or boards in a single revision is an impressive feat. There can't be too many people doing something similar, or we'd all drown in hard drives

[free_electron]

While I cannot do anything else than to agree with all of that, I doubt that a professor in the field wouldn't know about it at least in a fleeting sense, and probably in a fairly profound sense.

judging on the students rolling out of university : when given a board to layout ( let alone make a correct footprint ) : it is a disaster. If a few students are bad . You can blame the students . If the whole shift is bad ... it ain't the students : it's the education , or lack thereof . And that is solely to blame on the teachers. They simply don't know any better.

[free_electron]

I don't wanna put down any professors, but my personal experience is exactly the opposite.
For all of the reasons free_electron is mentioning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any reasons listed why a professor wouldn't know about his field in at least a cursory sense.

As a side note: almost 2 billion hard drives or boards in a single revision is an impressive feat. There can't be too many people doing something similar, or we'd all drown in hard drives

a few years ago the total volume of harddisk made in a year was 650 Million. shared between 2 manufacturers : WD and Seagate . That's 1 million a day, each manufacturer.

When you do boards for such volumes ( and these are complex boards. high speed, diff pairs, impedance controlled, length matching , power distribution , signal integrity. DDR memories , signals at 3 to 4GHz )
every corner is looked at. if you have 0.1% scrap due to a marginal footprint causing solderability errors : you will be tarred and feathered ! These boards have to be manufacturable in bulk, assembled in bulk and they have to work electrically too ! These drives are sold with 5 year warranty. if it turns out they have massive returns after 4 years because a chip is failing due to not enough thermal vias underneath ... there is going to be some fingerpointing at the layout designer.

There is not a sane person that would attempt that with Kicad. You coudl do it but it would involve a massive amount of manual work and manual checking. Simply because the tool is unaware and lacks the features required to do the crosschecks. Yes you can do a DDR4 layout in Kicad. You can also do it with masking tape on vellum. But you will be ripe for the mental bin afterwards. You need software that you can feed the playing rules so that it can verify in realtime that what you are routing is according to the rules.  Attempting such work using a ripup and retry approach is sheer insanity. Tools that are stuck in : user place , calculate , crosscheck , flag cycles so the user can retry are useless. You need  systems that can do this in realtime , as you are routing. Computers are bad at solving the spatial problems. ( that's why there still are no working autoplacers , and autorouters are mainly crap as well ).

The good software combines the spatial solving skills of the human with the calculation speed of the computer to perform the crosschecks. And these crosschecks can be electrical, mechanical ,thermal ,signal integrity , manufacturability, solderability , current load capacity and many many other things. These things can easily be cast into rulesets that can be crunched by all that horsepower in the workstation. The cad program can show, in realtime, what all options there are. The human can then pick the spatially best one.

In theory , if all is electrically connected it should work... in theory ... and that is what professors tend to excel at.

[b_force]

I don't wanna put down any professors, but my personal experience is exactly the opposite.
For all of the reasons free_electron is mentioning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any reasons listed why a professor wouldn't know about his field in at least a cursory sense.

Oh, well, there is an extremely simple explanation for that.

Because a professor is teaching classrooms and is involved in other fields as well.
Therefore he can't spent the time and energy that's needed to get to know all of these things.

In theory , if all is electrically connected it should work... in theory ... and that is what professors tend to excel at.

This is also exactly my experience.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that, not at all even!
But it's just a different expertise.

A baker bakes bread and a butcher chops meat.
A good professor is smart, but just doesn't always have the practical experience.
free_electrons example is a little much, but I have seen exactly the same experience first hand multiple times when having to deal with interns and professors.

[janoc]

To be clear, I am not judging, I am simply making observations.
At this stage you can say that KiCad has arrived on a stage that they (REALLY) need to start working about these things.
I guess my reason for mentioning it, is simply because to make people more aware of it.
I noticed a lot of frustration and heavy discussions around these kind of subjects.

What gives you the idea they aren't working on it? However, do keep in mind the hobby/non-profit/pet-project aspect of it. It still applies, even though it is not a one man project anymore. There is no deep pocketed company behind it. People were up in arms with excitement that CERN is behind it but CERN people (which were 1 or 2 part-time folks, I believe) are working first and foremost on things that CERN projects needed. So they added stuff like the push-and-shove routing.

And re lot of frustration and heavy discussion - that's the issue. Lot of discussion but nobody actually contributes to the project (whether by code or money) and expects someone else to fix things. As if there was "someone else" to do it. There isn't, it is as simple as that.

Then there is also a lot of griping because Kicad/FreeCAD/whatever doesn't work in the same way people are used from other tools. Or lacks a specific feature. So it is immediately declared useless, piece of crap, good for nothing toy. Etc. As if someone was forcing them to use the software.

Criticism is good but it needs to be constructive. Declaring something unusable only because it doesn't work the same way as Altium/Eagle/whatever and demanding it to be changed, as is often the case, is not really helpful. Granted, some developers may not be the easiest people to work with, but that is not really an excuse. Being able to compromise and to deal with difficult personalities is also part of engineering.

Btw, with all the respect, but the fact that someone is a professor doesn't always mean that know it all.
We are talking more about practical experience in this case.
So what works or doesn't work for people.

I certainly wasn't implying that. But when someone works in the field he did (I believe he is retired now), he certainly wasn't only a theoretician. And the folks from CERN who use Kicad to design and build boards for their particle detectors also don't know what they are doing? CERN is hardly so cash-strapped to not be able to afford something like Altium, so I guess there may be some other reasons why they are using (and supporting) Kicad .

For that reason almost every professional program has the ability to completely change the interface to your own taste.

I guess we are not living in the same world then. Or Microsoft, Autodesk,  Unity3d, Unreal, Blender, etc. (just to name a few things I use on a daily basis) didn't get the memo. At best you can customize colors, screen background and hotkeys (sometimes not even those). And that's that.

Oh and I guess Apple is not professional at all by this standard - the vendors mentioned above are mostly lazy to add customization options, on the other hand Apple actively removes them or discourages their use for the sake of the control of the 'experience'.

Or my Emacs, which is notorious for its customization possibilities, is the poster child for usability. 

Sorry but this is a silly argument.

[Mechatrommer]

this is way off-topic already.... my suggestion to OP is to have a look at the FreeCAD code, and see if anything he can contribute to the community

[free_electron]

What gives you the idea they aren't working on it?

The fact that it is not in there from the beginning means they started off wrong ...

We have first discovered fire, then the wheel , then the combustion engine.
When designing a new piece of software is version 1.0 going to let me design at 'fire' level , or at 'combustion' level ?

The same goes for making a new PCB tool. You first need to see what is required of a MODERN PCB tool before making yet another vector drawing program that you can wrench board design on to.
Modern PCB tools go far beyond 'drawing' .bill of materials, variant management , supply line , integration with other tools ( like mechanical cad ). Linking realtime between schematic and PCB.

The fact that kicad has no integrated libraries, and you still need to edit files before you can go from schematic to PCB means the authors do not understand the problem. They treat the schematic capture tool as a graphical tool to make a netlist. A second tool then reads the netlist and lets you wire packages accordingly. The fact that footprint assignment is done in the PCB tool , and not in schematic means they don't understand multiple issues. 

If i select a part in the schematic , this needs to be something that can be purchased. So it has a fully qualified part number , which in includes the pcb footprint. Simply putting down 7805 in the schematic is useless. who makes it ? what package ( can be anything from to220 , to92, sot89 , sot223 to any kind of other package )

Ultimately the PCB design system needs to deliver an accurate bill of material that matches schematic and layout. The pick and place data needs to be there.
The output is a complete set of machine readable data that allows the board house to make the board, and the assembly house to assemble the board.

Efficient PCB design tools set things up in such a way that you only need to enter the minimum amount of data required and they derive all data required from that.
If you need to muck with intermediate files or do things by hand it means the PCB tool is lacking functionality. And all PCB tools lack functionality. We live in a complex world.

But, it does not do any good to make another PCB tools that uses methodology of 40 years ago. That is just an academic experiment in making yet another tool that does things we could do 40 years ago.

[hermit]

Reading a lot of what you wrote I have to wonder when the last time you used Kicad was?  Either that or you didn't take the time to learn the software.  I'm an over educated hobbyist that helps a friend with his startup from time to time.  I'd never pretend to tell someone that depends on this type of software for a living what they should be using, but let's be fair about what we say about the software here.  Some of what  you describe is not the software I've been using of late.

You CAN add footprints in the capture software.  Either as a part edit or as a drop down that brings up all parts.  I don't use BOM but users on the Kicad forum aren't generally thrilled with it so they have written and shared scripts and customizations.  From my perspective I'm at least a tad better off with it than I am with Eagle.  My first was ORCAD pre Windows.   I liked that a lot.  Hit r and a resistor shows up.  Hit c and you get  cap.   

And just to stay on topic.  Someone just wrote a FreeCad plugin for Kicad to do 3-D part modeling. Seeing that some of the more prolific 3-D model contributers are using FreeCad, it is at least good enough for that. 

[free_electron]

1) Reading a lot of what you wrote I have to wonder when the last time you used Kicad was? 
-snip-
2) You CAN add footprints in the capture software.  Either as a part edit or as a drop down that brings up all parts.
-snip-
3) they have written and shared scripts and customizations. 

1 : doesn't matter. it should have been in there form the beginning. If i buy a car it should be complete. Having a car where the wheels and motor will come later is useless.
2 : wrong approach. There is no need to 'assign footprints'  . There needs to be a library where parts are defined. Once you are in schematic capture phase the part should already be defined.
3 : the fact that someone else needs to write that means the original developers did not do a good job.

And that is what i have been saying : the original developers do not understand the problems of real world PCB design. They started off with the idea:  let's make another vector drawing tool that can be used to generate copper structures. What they have done is made a fancy rubylith editor. Orcad 3.1 under DOS was more advanced that Kicad is today. It had integrated libraries, forward/backward annotation , pinswap and many other features that are not in base KiCad. you need add-ons and plug-ins to get there. Not good.

[Mr. Scram]

I respect your professional opinion and experience a lot, but I think you might be a bit off the mark here. It seems to be a horses for courses thing. There is no universal outline to which all PCB design packages should adhere. Not everyone is interested in designed complex n-layer boards with all sorts of high speed signals buzzing about. I could complain that my neighbour's sail boat is utterly inadequate for international container shipping, and I wouldn't be incorrect, but I don't think it is a sensible complaint either.

Whether something has been intended for something from the start doesn't seem to be too relevant. What something was yesterday doesn't matter, but how it pans out today does. There are numerous examples of something evolving over the years, growing from an awkward tool for another job, into a nice and effective tool. I can complain about Windows not supporting NTFS back when I used it in the 90's, but it sure does now. Dismissing it because it didn't back then seems unreasonable. Whether the community added something or the developer seems mostly semantic. It's a matter of different organisational structures.

As a final thought: whether there should be a library or predefined parts doesn't seem to be an universal truth. It looks a lot more like a matter of opinion. Whether one approach is better or worse than the other, sure, but that too is up for debate.

[hermit]

As a final thought: whether there should be a library or predefined parts doesn't seem to be an universal truth. It looks a lot more like a matter of opinion. Whether one approach is better or worse than the other, sure, but that too is up for debate.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/favorite-schematic-pcb-software-with-large-database-for-components/msg1318873/#msg1318873

[janoc]

What gives you the idea they aren't working on it?

The fact that it is not in there from the beginning means they started off wrong ...

We have first discovered fire, then the wheel , then the combustion engine.
When designing a new piece of software is version 1.0 going to let me design at 'fire' level , or at 'combustion' level ?

The same goes for making a new PCB tool. You first need to see what is required of a MODERN PCB tool before making yet another vector drawing program that you can wrench board design on to.
Modern PCB tools go far beyond 'drawing' .bill of materials, variant management , supply line , integration with other tools ( like mechanical cad ). Linking realtime between schematic and PCB.
...

I respect your experience in the field, but did you actually bother to read the replies I wrote to others?

Kicad is over 20+ years old program, with the first (unpublished) version from 1992! DOS version of Protel was the standard back in the day when the development was started, SMD were a newfangled novelty and boards with more than 2 layers were almost unheard of (at least in the "market" Kicad was targeting).

So what are you talking about "modern PCB" tools or proof of starting off wrong? Hindsight is wonderful, isn't it? I guess Altium or Cadence have also started with everything done right to today's standards from version 1.0, correct?

Also, how many of the professional grade tools actually do have the features you are describing? Such as the real-time linking between schematics & board. Most that I have seen require you to annotate the schematic/board and then push the changes to the other tool (or "pull" them from there, it's the same). Not exactly what I would understand as real-time. (and, FYI, Kicad is capable of doing both forward and backward annotation - it used to be a bit awkward with having to re-import the netlist before, recent versions have it fairly seamless on a button press).

What is so difficult on accepting that this is an old program, with some design decisions that are more than a decade or two old and that, unfortunately, take time to change? Especially given the resources that the Kicad team actually has. Why people keep assuming that it is some sort of newfangled tool released a year ago by some kiddies that have never seen a transistor in real life? That would be the only case where such analysis would make somewhat sense.

That doesn't mean that there aren't things to improve in it - I believe you have yourself written a fairly extensive post on things that need to be fixed for it to become usable for more advanced/professional work some time ago and I pretty much agree with what has been written there. That's a fair criticism and constructive suggestion for improvement.

But bashing a tool only because it is not designed up to "modern standards" (whatever those are) or because the author(s) didn't have the benefit of 20 years of hindsight when designing it is a bit unfair, IMO.

[Bassman59]

and you still need to edit files before you can go from schematic to PCB

Not true.

The fact that footprint assignment is done in the PCB tool , and not in schematic means they don't understand multiple issues. 

Except, no. You can -- and many users do exactly this -- create what we call "atomic parts," that is, parts in the symbol libraries which include the necessary footprint.

If i select a part in the schematic , this needs to be something that can be purchased. So it has a fully qualified part number , which in includes the pcb footprint. Simply putting down 7805 in the schematic is useless. who makes it ? what package ( can be anything from to220 , to92, sot89 , sot223 to any kind of other package )

Give the part a name that is unique and representative of the part you can buy, and add a simple Part Number field to the symbol and everything you want is there. And, again, the part is in your library, so every time you place DRV134PA on your board, you get the right footprint for your layout, and then you can generate a BOM that includes your Part Number field.

The functionality I describe has been in Kicad for quite some time, like three or four years.

The user group discusses this workflow.

[janoc]

The fact that footprint assignment is done in the PCB tool , and not in schematic means they don't understand multiple issues. 

Except, no. You can -- and many users do exactly this -- create what we call "atomic parts," that is, parts in the symbol libraries which include the necessary footprint.

I will just add to that that the footprints were never assigned in the PCB tool. While one can change a footprint in the PCB editor, it is not meant to be used in that way and assigning footprints like that would take ages. This function is meant only to fix a mistake when you discover that you have used the wrong footprint variant for the part. Perhaps @free_electron meant that the footprints are created using the PCB editor? Because that would be true (and there is nothing "controversial" on that, IMO).

The original workflow used the cvpcb utility that takes a netlist and generates a pairing between the symbol/part and the footprint - you get a table listing all components and assign the footprints en masse. This could be automated/simplified by specifying the footprints right in the schematics (either a specific footprint or a filter of admissible footprints, either of which can come from the part library) when one selects components - then the cvpcb tool will use these and pre-fills the table for you.

Newer versions of the program offer a choice of the workflow. Either the "old school" - add parts in the schematics, use cvpcb to assign footprints (potentially using filters specified on the components) and then move to the PCB editor. Or the new style where everything is specified in the schematics and there is no need for the intermediate cvpcb step.

And if one is specifying the footprints in the schematics, there are still two options - either to specify the footprints by hand for all parts every time a schematics is made or to have them stored with the symbols in the libraries (the "atomic parts", basically the same system as what e.g. Eagle does). So there is a ton of flexibility in how to manage the workflow.

I think @free_electron isn't very familiar with the tool he is criticizing.

[firewalker]

Ok, i've been playing with freeCad.  It seems, considering it's free, to be pretty well featured, but there seem to be soooo many bugs it's pretty much un-useable. Have others found this, or is it something i'm doing wrong?

For example, i do a sketch, fully constrain that sketch, and then sometime later, after some further operations, it's reports an error with that sketch and it now has excess or insufficient constraints suddenly.  This is especially true if you try to make an even slightly parametric model, ie your constraints are based on other geometry!

Sometimes, if i save and restart, all is well again for a bit, but sometimes, say something pocketed out using the sketch geometry is now different.  It also seems just about impossible to go back into the lower items in the tree and change anything with messing everything up that's been done after that point.  What's the point in parametric design if you can't change anything??

 

Unfortunately I have to agree with you. I had to design some really simple parts. Many bugs, undocumented changes, things vanishing etc.

Alexander.

[PartialDischarge]

Hows the latest 0.17 version of Freecad, anyone working with it?

Also the terms of Fusion 360 may have changed? Cause I believe that at the end of the 30 day period they are forcing a payment plan

[janoc]

Hows the latest 0.17 version of Freecad, anyone working with it?

Also the terms of Fusion 360 may have changed? Cause I believe that at the end of the 30 day period they are forcing a payment plan

0.17 works mostly OK, they have fixed a ton of bugs. Of course, it is not Fusion 360, there are still no assemblies (my biggest bugbear) and the UI is sometimes idiotic (especially compared with e.g. Onshape, Fusion has its own share of stupidities) but for most simple modelling I am doing it is good enough.

Re Fusion 360 payment plan - that's the default 30 days trial period. Then you have to take a license, either paid or, if you qualify, the free enthusiast/startup one (but do read the conditions - many startups wouldn't qualify, it is very restrictive!). The free license is good for 1 years, then you have to repeat the process. Just verified my old account, it still works like that.

[landracer]

FreeCAD has been working great for me since .016

I figured I'd post a few pictures of a bigger assembly, and other MISC BS currently being worked on. All this talk of Fusion360.. BLAH! Subscription base software = GARBAGE, two thumbs down in my opinion. I think it all boils down to a learning curve. No matter the software...  This would be like comparing GIMP to Photoshop... Both do EXCELLENT jobs, albeit one a bit harder to work with then the other, all to accomplish the same if not identical results as the other. Call it as you will... You can say to same for the IDE's and EDA's. I'm sure in the end, the story will tell itself. THE PRODUCT...

All I can say is, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT be afraid of FreeCAD, it truly does GREAT work!. Honestly, I wouldn't use anything else myself. But hell, I guess FreeCAD just works for me, and I'm partial to open-source.

I figured I'd post on this FreeCAD topic to start my 'first EEvBlog post', I know a bit old... Sorry if that goes against the rules. I just figured someone should advocate for FreeCAD in bigger sense. If you can get past the 'FREE' isn't as good as 'PAID FOR' mindset. Then you, and only 'YOU' will be liberated. Good Luck!




Some PCB's and Case's for those PCB's, all done in FreeCAD. and it generates G-CODE, which also work's great in the CNC...

[janoc]

That's pretty impressive work. I am using FreeCAD myself but I am seriously missing some sort of assembly support to mate multiple pieces together without having to model them in-place. What are you using for that?

[landracer]

Thank you very much for your kind words. 

As for "assembly support to mate multiple pieces together?" Like a 'solid fusion' of several parts?? I'm not sure I'm following you exactly? Maybe you can elaborate a bit on what you're looking to do? OR, we probably should start a new post for FreeCAD 'MISC' or something and we can start posting there. I didn't really want to hijack this topic. As it was solely a response to the buggy nature of Freecad, and way to much Fusion360 talk.

FreeCAD is only 'buggy' if you are using the program WRONG. Operational order is important. Honestly I'd say even using the FreeCAD Daily branch, version .018, bugs are minimal/non-existent these days. IF it crashes, something you're doing or possible hardware/driver fault... Nevertheless I digress.

 I will note, I started from scratch learning this program.(with extensive machine shop/mastercam knowledge) Every answer I've ever looked for as been found on the web, OR FreeCAD's web forum https://forum.freecadweb.org/ Most everything has been implemented with relative ease.

[Warhawk]

Thank you very much for your kind words. 

As for "assembly support to mate multiple pieces together?" Like a 'solid fusion' of several parts?? I'm not sure I'm following you exactly? Maybe you can elaborate a bit on what you're looking to do? OR, we probably should start a new post for FreeCAD 'MISC' or something and we can start posting there. I didn't really want to hijack this topic. As it was solely a response to the buggy nature of Freecad, and way to much Fusion360 talk.

FreeCAD is only 'buggy' if you are using the program WRONG. Operational order is important. Honestly I'd say even using the FreeCAD Daily branch, version .018, bugs are minimal/non-existent these days. IF it crashes, something you're doing or possible hardware/driver fault... Nevertheless I digress.

 I will note, I started from scratch learning this program.(with extensive machine shop/mastercam knowledge) Every answer I've ever looked for as been found on the web, OR FreeCAD's web forum https://forum.freecadweb.org/ Most everything has been implemented with relative ease.

Thanks for the motivation. I really want to get rid of Fusion360. Two thumbs up for the "subscription=Garbage" definition.

[janoc]

Thank you very much for your kind words. 

As for "assembly support to mate multiple pieces together?" Like a 'solid fusion' of several parts?? I'm not sure I'm following you exactly?

I was thinking mating multiple pieces together using constraints/joints. So that I could e.g. model a table top, 1 leg and use that leg 4 times to assemble the table by mating it to the table top in the corners. Or build a mechanical linkage where two parts are rotating around a pin. Etc. Right now I am using OnShape for this kind of work.

FreeCAD is only 'buggy' if you are using the program WRONG. Operational order is important. Honestly I'd say even using the FreeCAD Daily branch, version .018, bugs are minimal/non-existent these days. IF it crashes, something you're doing or possible hardware/driver fault... Nevertheless I digress.

That's probably a tad optimistic. Just yesterday it crashed on me several times when I was trying to measure some distances on an object. Fortunately no data loss.

Also creating fillets in the sketcher is a lottery - you select two lines, hit F (or click the button) and then pray ... It often crashes or does crazy things, even to the point of creating obviously incorrect/invalid results. The sketcher in general could use some work - I find the ones both in Fusion360 and OnShape a lot more intuitive and reliable to use.

[Obi_Kwiet]

How is the drafting in FreeCad? I liked modeling in Fusion 360, but the 2D drawing output is basically worthless. Which makes the whole thing worthless. There's no point in spending time modeling something just so you can have a bunch of pretty pictures. The whole point is being able to produce a shop drawing that shows dimensions to assist with assembly. It's shocking that the whole software is hamstrung by not having a useful output capability. It's like having an EDA that can't make Gerbers properly.

[janoc]

How is the drafting in FreeCad? I liked modeling in Fusion 360, but the 2D drawing output is basically worthless. Which makes the whole thing worthless. There's no point in spending time modeling something just so you can have a bunch of pretty pictures. The whole point is being able to produce a shop drawing that shows dimensions to assist with assembly. It's shocking that the whole software is hamstrung by not having a useful output capability. It's like having an EDA that can't make Gerbers properly.

I haven't played with it extensively but it can produce the 2d drawings of your model. You select which type of projection you want and you get a nice sheet with the drawings on it, then you can add dimensions and whatever else you want.

Or you can use the tools in the Drafting workbench and create your drawings in 2D from scratch.

See:
https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Manual:Generating_2D_drawings
https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Draft_Module
https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Draft_tutorial

[Doctorandus_P]

I have been experimenting with FreeCAD for some time and I find it quite usable.
On the other hand, there are a few standard deviations between the modal human and me.
Even if Fusion439845 ran on Linux I would still discard it after only the breefest moment.

Work on FreeCAD 0.18 is now going on.
Do you see the zero and the dot before the 18?
Can you imagine why they are there?

The landcruser guy made some nice screenshots, and I could too from a project I'm working on (but won't share just yet).

For me personally the choice is pretty simple.
I do not know of any open source project for 3D desgin that works on linux, and if it is either not open-source or does not run on Linux then it's simply not acceptable for me.
I've read some vague things about brlcad, but it does not sem to be maintainded or improved for 10 years or so, and besides, I really like KiCad and there is the "StepUP" for FreeCAD to exchange data between FreeCAD and KiCaD.

Some day all those commercial companies will go bust.
There will be no tolerance anymore for propiretary software and closed ransomware.
At the moment they still manage to create an illusion of scarcety and are fighting extort money from their customers.

[JuanGg]

I have used FreeCAD since version 0.13 and it has enabled me to make many projects involving 3d printing, some of which are shown below.
While I agree it has bugs and what not, I consider it usable.
I have been using Fusion 360 on an education license for a couple years now, and there is no contest, but it would not be a fair comparison.
But taking a look at the newer versions of FreeCAD, it seems that a lot has been improved since, and I am sure it will continue to do so in years to come. When I feel like it, I will eventually switch back.
    Juan

[NiHaoMike]

FreeCAD is what I normally use for 3D designs.
https://www.thingiverse.com/NiHaoMike/designs

[rollatorwieltje]

FreeCAD is only 'buggy' if you are using the program WRONG. Operational order is important. Honestly I'd say even using the FreeCAD Daily branch, version .018, bugs are minimal/non-existent these days. IF it crashes, something you're doing or possible hardware/driver fault... Nevertheless I digress.

Well...

Pretty much every tutorial I see teaches you to make objects by mapping sketches to surfaces. Which seems to work fine as long as you never change a previous sketch... When you change a previous sketch the faces get renamed internally, so all following sketches lose their mapping. I don't know if this is the correct way to build parts, but if it is, it's not really what you'd expect from something that claims to be parametric. Yes, the construction is parametric, but never even think of adjusting one of the parameters afterwards. It's maybe not a bug, but I would call it unexpected behavior.

[janoc]

Well...

Pretty much every tutorial I see teaches you to make objects by mapping sketches to surfaces. Which seems to work fine as long as you never change a previous sketch... When you change a previous sketch the faces get renamed internally, so all following sketches lose their mapping. I don't know if this is the correct way to build parts, but if it is, it's not really what you'd expect from something that claims to be parametric. Yes, the construction is parametric, but never even think of adjusting one of the parameters afterwards. It's maybe not a bug, but I would call it unexpected behavior.

That sounds like a bug. I certainly didn't see this issue with 0.17. However, it is true that if you go back to a sketch that has been used to create e.g. an extrusion or a pocket and start to heavily modify it, all bets are off. Usually simple stuff like changing dimensions is fine. Adding fillets or changing topology (adding/removing holes) from the sketch can make the program go nuts, though.

However, I have seen similar problems also in Fusion360 - which is an order of magnitude more complex program ...

To some degree it is to be expected because while you can do all sort of things to the sketch, not all will have a meaningful result on the existing object (e.g. if redoing the original operation on the modified sketch would result in an invalid object) Then you will get regeneration errors and/or glitches.

[bson]

Does it support User Parameters?  I never got into FreeCAD enough to figure this out, but I just launched 0.17 (what I have installed) and don't see anything like it.  I can't see how it's possible to recompute the timeline from parameterized objects without this, for example how would it know say an extrusion cut should be INTERNAL_HEIGHT+WALL_THICKNESS*2 just because I changed the wall thickness someplace?  Unless it has some other method of setting inter-object parameter constraints?  The FreeCAD "parameter editor" seems to be just for UI customization...  If I type "height/2" into a parameter field it completely ignores without either an error or a message of any sort - it just silently discards what I typed!

[janoc]

Does it support User Parameters?  I never got into FreeCAD enough to figure this out, but I just launched 0.17 (what I have installed) and don't see anything like it.  I can't see how it's possible to recompute the timeline from parameterized objects without this, for example how would it know say an extrusion cut should be INTERNAL_HEIGHT+WALL_THICKNESS*2 just because I changed the wall thickness someplace?  Unless it has some other method of setting inter-object parameter constraints?  The FreeCAD "parameter editor" seems to be just for UI customization...  If I type "height/2" into a parameter field it completely ignores without either an error or a message of any sort - it just silently discards what I typed!

Yes, it does. It is a bit non-obvious, though. Open the Spreadsheet module, create a new spreadsheet and type in your values there. Then right click each and set "alias" in the properties - that will be the variable name.

Then to refer to the values you open e.g. the dimension you want to set and click the round f(x) icon in the right corner of the entry box. That will open the expression editor. There you can then use the defined variables as e.g.:

Vars.thickness

"Vars" is the name of the spreadsheet and "thickness" is the alias of the field you have defined in the spreadsheet.

[0db]

is there any opensource alternative to FreeCad?

[janoc]

is there any opensource alternative to FreeCad?

Well, FreeCAD is open source. If you mean another CAD that is also open source, then not really, I am afraid. CAD is a very niche field requiring fairly high math skills so not many programmers are willing or able to work on it. It is also not very sexy work, unlike reinventing a Javascript UI framework for the umpteenth time ...

There are a few open source tools that may or may not do the job but none is as complete as FreeCAD:

- https://www.openscad.org/
- http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- https://librecad.org/ (this one is excellent but only 2D drafting, originally a fork of commercial QCad)

And a few obscure things that are more of interest for niche uses:
- http://implicitcad.org/
- http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
- https://brlcad.org/

There is also Blender (blender.org), but that is not really a CAD, more a mesh modeling program for 3D graphics.

[Oleander]

Please look at VariCAD. It is not free nor opensource, the price is several hundred of euros.  Well designed - using it is nice. Linux and Windows versions are available.

[janoc]

Please look at VariCAD. It is not free nor opensource, the price is several hundred of euros.  Well designed - using it is nice. Linux and Windows versions are available.

But that isn't what he asked for, right? Because if we start talking about commercial solutions, there are many far less obscure and more advanced options, some even free (as in beer) for personal use - Fusion360, OnShape, DesignSpark, ...

[Gyro]

And a few obscure things that are more of interest for niche uses:
...
- http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
...

It may be obscure and niche, but from the video, Antimony looks really neat. Thanks for the link.


Edit: Damn, it's only Mac and Linux. 

[janoc]

If you like that, look at OpenSCAD. That's the same idea just without the messing with the graph GUI, which gets unmanageable pretty fast for anything complex.

[Just_another_Dave]

is there any opensource alternative to FreeCad?

Well, FreeCAD is open source. If you mean another CAD that is also open source, then not really, I am afraid. CAD is a very niche field requiring fairly high math skills so not many programmers are willing or able to work on it. It is also not very sexy work, unlike reinventing a Javascript UI framework for the umpteenth time ...

There are a few open source tools that may or may not do the job but none is as complete as FreeCAD:

- https://www.openscad.org/
- http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- https://librecad.org/ (this one is excellent but only 2D drafting, originally a fork of commercial QCad)

And a few obscure things that are more of interest for niche uses:
- http://implicitcad.org/
- http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
- https://brlcad.org/

There is also Blender (blender.org), but that is not really a CAD, more a mesh modeling program for 3D graphics.

I normally use Salome platform for designing 3d parts at home (https://www.salome-platform.org/), as I find it to be the most similar to the CAD software I use at work. Unluckily, it does not include any module for making mechanical plans, so I have to use QCAD for that purpose, but it has a good integration with open source and commercial FEA simulators.

Solvespace 3 also looks great, but I haven’t tried it yet. However, I need to check if this version has a single window mode, as using multi-window programs in windows annoys me a little bit (toolboxes tend to end up being always below the main window)