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FOSDEM and KiCAD + FreeCAD day 2025 (blog.freecad.org)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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29 January 2025 in Brussels. Probably the next good candidate for a 1.0 release event as well. Latest blog has them down to four release blockers, though that number can certainly drift back up as well.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I know you said you tried Realthunder fairly recently, but a huge push for v1 has been to bring his toponaming mitigation in, in a scalable way, along with UI improvements (but only marginally improving the underlying 1990s Catia paradigm) and Ondsel and others have done some good work on the Assembly bench. Like I said, it's better; it's just not quite THERE yet. I'm going to give it another try when 1.0 is officially released, and I do love having it around. The fact that it works at all is a minor miracle, but Blender and KiCAD show what's possible.

EDIT: Just saw that Ondsel is shutting down, though several of its employees were already FreeCAD contributors.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm less beatdown about it than you, I think, but I invested several hundred dollars into software for my revenue-free hobbies just to have a stable CAD suite with stable terms of use, and much of it was specifically down to FreeCAD not being what I want it to be. I very much feel your pain. :-)

[+] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

it does the basics, it does it well

I liked it when I tried it. I did want something with a parametric history, or I might have gone with that. I already had a no-history suite that worked okay that I got on sale off a German shovelware site for EUR20/USD25. As an aside, "3D Pro" is the only version that's worthwhile at all, and then only at about the price I got it.

I just want a proper open source alternative in the CAD space.

Yeah, the only one I've seen any sort of development on is Dune 3D, and it's a one-man shop that goes in fits and starts, to judge by its Matrix room. It's also got some quirky workflow and UI issues of its own, and will likely grind to a halt once the dev is content that it can produce the kinds of electronics enclosures he wants to design.

There's also Solvespace, if you trust FreeCAD to fillet and chamfer your STEP files, lol.

OpenSCAD et al are outside my expertise. Conceptually, I understand code-to-CAD. I just don't engage with design in that way.

Basically, you're right. FreeCAD is it. If it turns you off, options are limited.