You don’t even have to touch any “advanced” modeling features for FreeCAD to be useful. I primarily use extrudes and revolves of sketches in the Part Design workbench. The workflow is exactly the same as what I do at work every day in SolidWorks.

FreeCAD doesn’t let you be as loosey-goosey with geometry as some commercial software. That’s because they don’t have an army of developers paid to work on “nicety” features like that.

I can break SolidWorks models the same way that I can break FreeCAD models. No CAD software is immune to this. Some fail more gracefully than others. It doesn’t mean it’s unusable. You should have seen the repairs I had to make to a SolidWorks model today because I needed to convert a generic extruded feature into a sheetmetal feature…. It took a few minutes, but it’s no different than fixing things in FreeCAD because you changed the design.

I just hope none of the injuries are serious.

It was a massively frustrating match. I completely agree that the officiating of this match was pathetic. I can’t blame the guys for feeling like they were playing against an extra man. The ref and VAR unnecessarily inserted themselves into the game and just flipped it on its head. So disappointing.

I think I heard that the ref has been in the league for 13 years. I’m not sure how given how awful he was.

Reminds of this classic clip of Jerry Glanville letting a NFL ref know how he feels 😂

https://youtu.be/vxGEOEOylNA?si=7byN1YtOMDuQCN0T

It was a ton of fun to watch! I’m so glad Morris got that goal. He deserves to score for how often he makes plays happen for others. Yeboah’s pass for Cucho was a thing of beauty.

Doesn’t anyone know why Matan wasn’t in the lineup?

I like how we never stop attacking and hustle. That’s the thing that impresses me most about this team: hustle.

You can also see in other teams that they rely on one player to carry them. With this Crew squad, everyone is dangerous and gives it their all.

Great win for the good guys today. Hope Farsi’s injury isn’t bad. Glad to see Schulte get a clean sheet to start the season and Cucho already with his first goal. Too bad it wasn’t two with the penalty.

I really have enjoyed their style of play this season. Their time of possession was astonishing and the absolute hustle out of all of them was so great to watch. The number of times that opposing defenders would be outrun on long balls was awesome. I can’t get over how fast our guys are, especially Farsi and Yeboah.

This is a TEAM, and not a collection of individuals.

If you are used to using F360 or SolidWorks, this is the version of FreeCAD you should be using. It doesn’t have the TNP problems that the main branch has. Of course, just like commercial CAD, it’s possible to break models by deleting references, and you’ll have to fix them. Experienced users of CAD know this is always possible.

I’ve been using RealThunder’s branch of FreeCAD for a few years and I’m able to do whatever I want, pretty much just like I do in SolidWorks in my day job. Most of my time is spent in the PartDesign workbench, which is really what most people designing for 3D printing should be using.

Remember that you’re using software built and maintained by volunteers. If you want constant improvement, you’re better off paying people whose sole job it is to work on the software. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth paying for.

I also have this question. What is so different about the workflow between FreeCAD and other 3D CAD software? If you can do one, you can do the others.

I would love for you to explain how the workflow is any different than in something like SolidWorks? I use SolidWorks in my day job and I use FreeCAD exclusively for my personal projects. It was a pretty seamless transition for me. Sketch->Feature, repeat, paying attention to order of operations in your model tree. What’s so different?

Is FreeCAD’s UI a little rough in places? Perhaps, but a lot of the things that people complain about in FreeCAD are present in commercial software. If there’s one thing that SolidWorks might do better is allowing you to get away with things like over-defining geometry accidentally. It’s more forgiving of lazy modeling.

FreeCAD has improved significantly in just the last few years. There is a good community around it. We need more people using it and learning how to model.

Like others have said, Autodesk is a piece of shit company that continues to be customer hostile. They pulled the rug out from underneath users years ago with F360.

FreeCAD is a good alternative. A lot of people complain about the UI polish, and complain that models break. I'll admit that the UI isn't as polished as commercial software like F360 or SolidWorks. However, it's just as easy to break models in SolidWorks as it is in FreeCAD. I've been using 3D CAD for over 20 years, and it's always been a problem. Even with all of my experience, I still have to fix references that get broken as I make design changes. The more you use 3D CAD, the less you run into situations like this because you're able to think ahead and avoid them. Talk to any experienced CAD user and they'll tell you the same thing.

The workflows of FreeCAD are just like commercial software for most functions. There are definitely features that commercial software has that FreeCAD doesn't, but that's where you have to make the judgement about whether it's worth it to pay for it.

For me, I'll continue to use FreeCAD for my personal projects. I use SolidWorks at work, but we have different demands there, and it's worth the company paying the maintenance for it.