There are various CAD challenges out there that come with bragging rights. Some, like the Certified Solid Works Professional Exam (CWSP) might actually look good on a resume. [Deltahedra] is apparently not too interested in padding his resume, nor does he have much interest in SolidWorks, and so decided to conquer the CWSP with FreeCAD in the name of open source — and to show us all how he did it.
Because these CAD exams are meant to show your chops with the program, the resulting video makes an awesome FreeCAD tutorial. Spoiler alert: he’s able to model the part, though it takes him about 15 minutes. After modeling the part, the CWSP exam needs you to find the mass of the part, which [Deltahedra] does with the FCInfo macro — which, of course, he shows us how to install and use. The second and third questions are similar: change some variables (it is a parametric modeling software, after all) and find the new mass. In a second exercise, he needs to modify the model according to a new drawing. Modifying existing models can sometimes be more difficult than creating them, but [Deltahedra] and FreeCAD pass with flying colors once again.
If you’re at all curious about what FreeCAD can do, this video is a really impressive demonstration of FreeCAD’s part modeling workbench. We’ve had a few FreeCAD guides of our on on Hackaday, like this one on reverse engineering STLs and this one on best practices in the software, but if you’d asked us before the release of v1.0 we’d never have guessed you could use it for a SolidWorks exam in 2025. So while there are kudos due to [Deltahedra], the real accolades belong to the hardworking team behind FreeCAD that has brought it this far. Bravo!
How important are certifications in the CAD world? Last I checked it was still mostly draftsmen who worked with CAD software. Of course, mechanical engineers did too, but they usually told draftsmen what to make.
For $5000, I am offering certifications on anything to anyone. I’ll even print and sign a diploma for you to hang.
I teach CAD courses at a state college and, at least around here, I can confirm that a cert can make the difference between getting a job and not. The SolidWorks certifications (CSWA, CSWP and CSWE) are industry recognized. A CSWP, for example, is more sought after than a A.S. in CAD. I’ve started requiring students to complete the certs for each class as it gives students 1 an edge.
The Autodesk certs are less thorough, so not as important. Still good to have if you’re looking for a job in drafting, however.
CAD Certs means s… For 20 years none of mine have been useful. CAD is just a tool like a hammer – not end goal. You need to know it so good that it is extension of you… CAD is just a means to present the design…
“You need to know it so good that it is extension of you”
I feel like the purpose of a cert is to communicate and verify this fact to a prospective employer- otherwise, yeah there’s not much point but that is a non-trivial purpose.
I stopped accumulating certs very early in my pro life as these failed to communicate real value of my skills. Certification is like driving license allowing you to drive a car legally – but are you a good driver? Instead I go and tell people that I can make their idea fly with help of some “tools from my box” and then goes the litany of software that I am pro in followed by case examples. It is not like I know each and every button in particular software(many options are niche) – rather I am proficient enough to make design real using most common (to me) options (usually faster than a guy with cert and closed box approach). It is more about planning/designing ahead before drawing/coding single line. I have seen so many certified people struggling with the design because they run themselves into corner of software limitations (trained by others just to get cert. – not being knowledge hungry to stretch the software to limits and go beyond).
Large corporations and governments love certs.
It’s basically an admission that they don’t know how to hire tech and just go with covering HR’s ass.
Accept ‘half-assers in suits’ everywhere as a cost of being so Fing big.
Given the ‘Peter Principle’ I don’t see what can be done about it.
Except rebuilding everything once per generation as the old one naturally fills with incompetents.
That’s a dream: At the moment governments are buried in ‘retired in place’ ‘workers’.
Paying them to ‘go away’ is net gain, but they just come back to trough.
You have to pay them to go away and trick a chump into hiring them.
In CA they have a special agency, just to transfer ‘net negative workers’ to, so they’re out of the way, can’t fire them.
CAGSA building is one whole city block, 5 or 6 stories in downtown Sac, just S of Broadway.
I’ve great a SWCP.
When I got back to the office after the show and showed it to my employer, I got “That’s nice”.
Once upon a time when the exams were literally all day long, I think there was some benefit to the holder.
But it’s been so watered down and split up into eleventy seven categories, that I don’t reach out them has much merit on it’s own.
And to anyone who can do anything useful in freecad, I’m in awe. I’ve tried several times and failed to do anything more than piddle with it
I’ve been using SolidWorks don’t 96 btw.
Lots of typos, sorry.
Maybe one-day hackaday will have a real commenting capability.
We all expect everything to work correctly, but we ourselves don’t put the effort into things we do.
Thanks for all your assistance……
I have been a professional Draftsman/CAD operator for 30 years w/ no college degree or certifications.
cert is useless. PhD is minimum for any job change my mind
Are we talking about industry certification, 3rd party certification, or a type of community college credential certification? I ask because by daughter is going to earn something called a “SolidWorks Certificate” from her community college as she completes her CAD AAS.
The topic at hand refers to the SolidWorks Certification program. What your daughter is doing is a completely different thing. If she poped out with a SWCA or SWCP it would be awesome, bit the two certifications are definitely not connected.
Wow,
I just watched about 5 minutes of the video.
I’ll stick with my now 2 year old copy of SolidWorks.
Hopefully, a major benefactor will embrace freecad and bring some order to the chaos, like when CERN embraced kicad and made it into the industry defacto standard.
People sticking with FreeCAD, as they did for many years with KiCad prior to CERN, are what will keep it alive until such a scenario occurs. I do use FreeCAD as much as I can for simple projects and encourage others to give it a try.
FreeCAD is perfect for situations where you cannot justify budget for SolidWorks, but outsourcing the job to some company that does have SolidWorks would cost as much as buying the license for SolidWorks. Small things that need to be done, relatively simple, where low cost and quick turnaround are the key enabling factor. I have used FreeCAD and LibreCAD to design countless test fixtures, that were later laser cut or CNC machined using quick turn online services. Saved a ton of time, because the small things could be designed in about the the time it would take to meet with a consultant, explain what needs to be done and agree on scope and price. FreeCAD is like an FPV drone, SolidWorks is like a Javelin missile.
A litmus test is watching any of the myriad maker channels on YouTube.
Odds are they use KiCad because it’s unbeatable for the price, but I can’t recall many using FreeCAD unless it’s specifically to showcase it.
Honestly, they need more than a benefactor, they need an entire new mindset for the maintainers. Something that stuck to me was reading a long thread clamoring for more frequent releases in the long stretch between 0.18 and 0.19 (IIRC), and one of the lead devs responded saying they didn’t want to be more professional, and were happy to stay hobbyists. If you needed new features, just use the untested nightlies like they do.
Even now, there’s been only two patch releases since 1.0.0 last November.
Half the codebase is C++ and half is Python, just use what you prefer and if someone else can’t understand your code later, too bad! Entire duplicated workbenches because the author didn’t like the code organization of the other one. Very useful functionality punted to external add-ons, sure hope you already know to look for them.
I could go on, but I think the picture is clear.
Maybe you are right, but you are 2 to 3 years late. Meanwhile a professional team reworked the code (OnCAD IIRC) and backported most of the other fork code into the main branch. Topological naming issue was very well improved (it’s very rare it breaks now, while it was a constant headache in 0.x version). The project is better managed and it’s developing like crazy. Just look at the interface in the video, it’s completely different to what you’ve used in 0.18 years. It’s more smooth, it’s transparent, it doesn’t crash when you do whatever the dev didn’t intend, and so on. In short, it works. It’s still not perfect but it works well enough for daily usage (I’m using both FreeCAD and Solidworks). Many things are easier in FreeCAD than Solidworks now, believe it or not, like FEM and thermal analysis and don’t cost a kidney to use.
I’m somewhat surprised you can manage to find it that way for anything – as most folks sort of latch onto the system of their first CAD package and can’t handle any change in operating method very well. Even really obviously quicker, easier ones because ‘its wrong’ tend to get folks upset moving between packages…
Learning how to use the new tool is painful at first for most. Which to me is part of why that litmus test of Mike’s is flawed, as FreeCAD is opensource and not sponouring these folks, so as most tubers were given CAD packages years ago and just keep on using the same one unless some other package sponsors them… FreeCAD has been evolving too much from the pre-Alpha level release stuff to now a rather complete program, so really only the FOSS enthusiasts (or the broke) are likely to put up with that.
I do agree though FreeCAD has become really really darn smooth in the last few years with very few gotcha type moments that the other CAD packages don’t also have when you stray from best CAD practices towards the lazy we get away with doing this (usually) type methods.
Having worked with CAD tools for the past 30 years and tested a few versions of FreeCAD, but I always get the impression that it is a tool written by backend developers who have never seen a CAD tool, or a user interface.
That has always been my impression as well. The myriad of “workbenches” is your first clue.
As to using it because of the cost (free), that’s a farce. The SolidWorks user edition is $50/year, and if that is to steep for you the SolidEdge maker version is free.
I had FreeCAD installed for a long while on my Linux box, but when it came time to switch distros, I decided it wasn’t worth the drive space or consumed.
I wish them well, but am not optimistic it will ever be anything more than a toy.
It’s really quite decent now for basic needs. In feature freeze for 1.1 now, try it after the upcoming release. Main improvement I’d like to see made for 1.2 would be streamlining the expression editor and moving it from a modal dialog to just working when editing any value. Also the CAM workbench probably needs another year before it’s generally usable.
This is the sort of complexity that is fairly reasonable in freecad right now:
https://blog.freecad.org/2025/09/25/forged-in-freecad-xyz-micro-manipulator-for-sub-micron-motion-control/
The one thing which annoys me the most with FreeCAD is how sluggish the Techdraw workbench is when working on anything more advanced than a box with holes