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

submitted 5 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] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I used KiCAD to design one incredibly simple PCB (literally just traces and vias), but while there's huge room for learning and growth, it basically went smoothly once I understood the paradigm. I have watched enough videos to get a feel for FreeCAD, and it could meet my modest needs soon, but everything is still much harder than it needs to be, and there are far too many people to keep happy to let its most popular workbenches become what they need to be.

When I was trying to simply import a DXF to extrude, and it couldn't handle that on either Linux or Windows, I finally gave up and bought a perpetual license to Alibre. Now I just hope they continue to exist in some form sufficient to maintain the Licensing activation server.

I am rooting for FreeCAD, and I'm following it with great interest. It is undeniably better than it used to be (the Ondsel soft-fork is kinda nice), but I'm just hoping it will be competitive for simple part and assembly design by the time my version of Alibre starts to feel long in the tooth. The heuristics, stability, and UI of the commercial suites are just much farther ahead right now.

[+] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 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 5 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 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 5 months ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Rather than following things that don't work well lol like SOLIDWORKS, freeCAD could use some feedback on how things function in UGNX. Where SOLIDWORKS is barely able to handle opening a full model of a mouse assembly, NX is capable of opening a fully featured airplane model.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Another example, the extrude feature in SOLIDWORKS is different than the cut tool. In NX things are simpler, you can either create a cut or an extrusion all in one feature. That's the level of stupidity in SOLIDWORKS that freeCAD should look at NX to avoid.

A much more important thing is figuring out the topology problem. Eliminate that