After 22 years of development, FreeCAD has at long last reached the milestone of version 1.0. On this momentous occasion, it’s good to remember what a version 1.0 is supposed to mean, as also highlighted in the release blog post: FreeCAD is now considered stable and ready for ‘real work’. One of the most important changes here is that the topological naming problem (TNP) that has plagued FreeCAD since its inception has now finally been addressed using Realthunders’ mitigation algorithm, which puts it closer to parity here with other CAD packages. The other major change is that assemblies are now supported with the assembly workbench, which uses the Ondsel solver.
Other changes include an updated user interface and other features that should make using FreeCAD easier and closer in line with industry standards. In the run-up to the 1.0 release we already addressed the nightmare that is chamfering in FreeCAD, and the many overlapping-yet-uniquely-incomplete workbenches, much of which should be far less of a confabulated nightmare in this bright new 1.0 future.
Naturally, the big zero behind the major version number also means that there will still be plenty of issues to fix and bugs to hunt down, but it’s a promising point of progress in the development of this OSS CAD package.
MangoJelly Solutions already have a complete video course for FreeCAD v1.0:
https://youtu.be/t_yh_S31R9g?si=QO3DO_q3UkjtU81Q
Couldn’t recommend it more highly.
Awesome, thank you for that!
I’ve been watching MangoJelly Solutions for years, he really is the best at explaining how and why things are done. He does a great job with editing and he’s got a nice voice to listen to too, you wouldn’t think that should matter but when I was looking for help I couldn’t get past being irritated by annoying commentators. Damn Britts and their soothing voices lol!
I’m convinced that had we had all the MangoJelly Solutions tutorials back when Fusion 360 upset the community for the first time (2019?) there would have been even more exodus to FreeCAD. People really wanted to abandon the brutes but material to learn FreeCAD was sorely lacking.
If FreeCAD was complete enough, people wouldn’t need youtube tutorials for the basics to switch over.
Really, you can just jump from any commercial cad to another without tutorials?
Generally, yes. The basics tend to be intuitive in other apps. If the commercial apps were completely unintuitive then I doubt they would have ever gained traction in the first place. I can’t remember ever needing a Fusion 360 tutorial.
Yes. Just about – a quick google search about some specific feature may be needed, but not really a tutorial, though they usually provide the necessary help files as they come.
As long as you have a basic “quick start” document that details the basic interface and commands, you’re off to the races, because they all do pretty much the same thing: sketch and constrain, add and edit features, assemble, done. Each program might call things with slightly different names, but they’re usually obvious or helpful with tooltips, or you can just try and see if it produces the result. If you make a wrong move, they won’t explode in your face and usually explain why it doesn’t work, and offer solutions to fix the problem. Tutorials are only needed if you’re an absolute beginner with no idea what you’re supposed to do with CAD/CAM in the first place.
The only two that I have encountered that aren’t intuitive like that are CATIA and FreeCAD, and esoteric programs like OpenSCAD but those require you to learn the syntax first.
I started out with CATIA , and FreeCAD is “inspired” by CATIA, yet I could not pick it up without the tutorials. It’s they way in which these programs present and approach the task of CAD/CAM that makes it difficult.
It’s like entering someone else’s garage, full or weird tools that are bodged together out of pieces of angle iron and machinery made out of old washing machine parts and bits of broken power tools, unrecognizable bits of kit that do very specific things hiding in drawers and cabinets mixed with scrap nuts and bolts. The person who owns the garage is gone from the premises and won’t tell you anything.
You are standing on a plain concrete floor, west of a brown table with a big gash from a previous use of an angle grinder.
There is a small toolbox here.
– open toolbox
Opening the small toolbox reveals a leaflet.
– read leaflet
(taken)
“WELCOME TO ZORK!
Thanks Dude! GR8T input. Your opinion is valued by all. Especially me. Just saying. You RoCk!
kill·joy
/ˈkilˌjoi/
noun
a person who deliberately spoils the enjoyment of others through overly pessimistic and sober behavior.
“his perpetually negative attitude made him a real killjoy when others were trying to enjoy the moment”
” The Dark Side of Constant Optimism
“Pollyanna syndrome” can make facing reality more painful. ”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/you-are-not-meant-be-happy/202210/the-dark-side-constant-optimism
Version 1.0 is SO much better. I actually can get useful work done.
Congrats. But please be aware that the TNP is still far from solved!!!
Especially chamfers are a real problem. And I do not talk about chamfers on which you rely for other geometry later on. I mean following the rules and using chamfers and fillets LAST.
Try this:
1) make a cube, chamfer one edge.<
2) Chamfer another edge which meets the first chamfer (second operation).
3) Delete the first chamfer.
Now the second chamfer is broken, the edge was renamed and can’t be found anymore.
I opened an issue months ago for this. It was discussed wildly instead of being fixed.
I will use realthunders branch. It does a much better job!
For a short demo see the printables FreeCAD group: https://www.printables.com/group/freecad-designs-help-1Q7qqeR/comments/2198633
This ultra simple operation absolutely must not destroy the part. If it does the program is not ready yet.
I hear you, and while SolidWorks, for example, doesn’t have this specific problem, it’s chamfer/fillet features are also very fragile, and there are plenty of times where one needs to re-select an edge. One of the best mitigations for this in SW is it’ll show a dashed red line in space where the feature uses to be (often exactly on the edge you have to re-select). I haven’t tried FreeCAD 1.0 yet, and I suspect it doesn’t have this QoL feature, but I still don’t, personally, consider this a deal breaker.
There is a reason there are best practice methods for all the CAD packages – as soon as you stop actually specifically defining what you want and assume the CAD package will always know there is a 100% certainty it will break your model. In many cases you don’t need to be so explicit as you know the part and its potential tweaks, so most folks will just quick and dirty, but that can and will bite you in the end.
Not 100% but you’re pushing your luck the further you go along. If your demands are simple, the better modelers “just work” by clicking the auto-constrain button.
Indeed that is what I intended my sentence to mean, wasn’t as clear as it should be. Looks like I’m missing a word – it should have read ‘it will break your model SOMETIMES’ – as in there is 100% chance if you model sloppy it will bite you in the end, not 100% every model you ever touch will break.
to be honest adding chamfers in 3d most times is kinda a bad practice, and it breaks many programs.
like if possible only add to the 2d drawings
I work in mechanical constrction and noone does this. Most parts are manufactured right out of the CAM system and the part needs to be complete for that. The drawing is for tolerance checks and general measuring, coatings etc.
If you’re going to 3d printing the part, you have no other option than to include it in the model.
Huzzah!
I’ll wait for version 3.11 for Workgroups.
Who still uses AutoCAD these days?
People who can afford to pay for it.
Siemens solid edge is free btw
For non-commercial use.
Anything from Siemens is a hard no from me. Solidworks might just be the single worst program and designing environment I have ever been cursed to use
Solidworks is Dassault Systemes isn’t it?
The only 3D program I can start with a blank canvas and produce a printable model with is SketchUp (2017 so no net required). I must have tried about a dozen programs now and they’re all “not right”. From simple issues with rotating the model to complex “features” that interfere with letting me click on a point and draw a simple line.
Have you tried designspark mechanical?
Most CAD software follows the solidworks model of a feature tree. But SketchUp and Designspark Mechanical do not, they allow much more free-form editing of the model.
SketchUp does have one of the best interfaces in terms of navigating the model. The other programs are kinda “backwards” to it because they rotate the model and not the “camera”. Then again, Sketchup misses one axis of rotation and defaults to the view being horizontal so you can’t get to all possible angles. When the camera moves instead of the model, it’s too easy to get the camera stuck inside the model and being unable to zoom or rotate out because the step size changes depending on the reference point of what you’re looking at.
The drawback with Sketchup is that it’s solely a polygon based modeler, so the lines you’re drawing are edges of a face, not a solid, and you can’t do smooth curved surfaces. The modeler fakes smooth curves on-screen by softening edges below a certain angle that you can set. When drawing the model, you’re often left with hidden lines and polygons that seem to be touching but are not, or the faces are overlapping, so it doesn’t define a closed volume.
That is why you can just “draw a simple line” – the solver doesn’t care whether the resulting geometry makes any sense. It doesn’t even have to define a closed polygon – you can just have “lines” in your drawing for visual effect. Trying to add the parts together in boolean operations, or exporting to 3D printing software, will then fail for non-obvious reasons and fixing the problems usually means starting over from scratch. You kinda have to develop a habit of drawing only simpler shapes like boxes or cylinders and creating “components” that are known to be solid, and then adding and subtracting those to make sure the result is also solid – which is effectively the exact same thing as constructive solid geometry modeling, as seen in FreeCAD’s Part Workbench.
Btw. SketchUp is available online and free to use in the browser. I still use it for the quick and dirty jobs where all you need is a mockup of a model, so you have a good idea of what you’re doing in the real CAD software… a sketch if you will.
In a sense, SketchUp shows that it’s possible to do CSG modeling in an intuitive and straightforward way if your user interface paradigm is intuitive. It more than compensates the total lack of advanced modeling tools or even some of the basics by simply being so easy and quick that you’d rather do things the hard way than bother loading up the big guns for the job.
I have found your last sentence so true in so many cases, with many softwares. I know that there are better tools, softwares and workflows than mine in many cases, but I am just not doing it often enough to justify learning another tool /software.
( i.e. the same conclusion as https://hackaday.com/2024/09/19/design-and-the-golden-rule/#comment-8041763 )
Here you have to be aware of tripping into the “effort is efficiency” illusion, where doing a bunch of simple actions rapidly makes you feel like you’re accomplishing a lot in a short amount of time, while the actual work you’ve accomplished is comparatively little.
With a program that allows you to make broken models, you do, and you end up having to rewind and have thinking pauses to go forwards. That’s when you get the effort-is-efficiency trap, because you’re working hard fixing your mistakes and don’t notice the time passing. This illusion is heightened when you’ve become very proficient, being able to type in command line entries at 300 WPM or pointing and clicking with deadly accuracy like a Korean Starcraft player.
There’s a longer lead-in for doing the same work in a proper parametric modeler, that feels much slower than it might actually be. You don’t get that instant reward of seeing your model start taking shape in seconds from the moment you load up the program. Without the comparison, you’re never any wiser of how much faster you could have done it, so all you remember is how hard you were in hacking it off the hard way.