3DPrinting

It's improving faster. It's still a frustrating, crashy experience, but it's getting better quickly, hopefully it reached critical mass and will do Blender.

I used SW professionally for years before I retired and SW was suddenly not free to use for me anymore. Personally, I found the switch to FreeCAD was pretty easy for me. But the ease or struggle to learn something new varies a lot between people.

Best I can tell you is to forget everything you "know" from SW as best you can. And when you get frustrated that what you are doing in FreeCAD doesn't work like SW, try to remember we ain't in Kansas anymore Toto. That's how I had to approach things.

Good Luck! I'm pullin' for ya!

I've never had professional experience with CAD software and tried both onshape and freecad at the same time just before fc1.0 release, onshape for some reason was like using iphone or something like that while freecad was just ok. There are frustrating limitations and some things are broken and require workarounds true.

Same boat. After using Soldworks everything else feels soo unpolished. But I've tossed Photoshop for Gimp and it's getting easier with time, so I'll make this work too.

I've done all my work in Freecad for years. Its really good at converting a stl back in to a solid. Some think its hard to do but its really easy and consistent. Some take more steps than others but its a solid tool for doing a rework on a 3d printable object. I can usually in a matter of minutes split a stl into separate models for multi color printing.

Checkout Deltahedron freecad tutorials on youtube. As a complete beginner, I got reasonably good at freecad pretty fast with them.

Keep trying and keep practicing. Install FreeCAD and practice with MangoJelly tutorials to learn.

One thing that often makes it hard for people switching to any new CAD is things don't work the same way. So do your best to forget the way you used to do things. Fusion isn't FreeCAD and FreeCAD isn't Fusion. You will need to learn new things. So don't expect it to work the same way.

The next thing that is very helpful is to find models to practice and gain confidence and skills. MangoJelly tutorials are great to learn from, but you need varied practice to gain skills. Here are 50 models you can practice with to gain confidence and skills using any CAD program. Other practice models can be found if you do some searching.

Good Luck!

It even does Finite Element Analysis and a separate mode for architecture.

I've been using it since it was a weekly release, (now I mostly use the 1.2 weeklies), and it's been very stable even on a low powered mini desktop with 8 Gbits of shared RAM. I think they are finally finishing up the timeline that was set out when they went after the TNP mitigation and general cleanup of the disaster that was .1X series of FreeCAD with the 1.0 release.

Spoiler Alert: I think the 1.2 Weekly releases are even better yet. So give that a shot if you are willing to put up with occasional breakage and problems. The more users of different skills with different hardware can really help speed the killing of bugs if you report issues. Besides, it's just plain fun!

He's very good. He is one of the developers of FreeCAD. MangoJelly tends to be my go to though.

I just recently discovered him and watching someone who knows what they're doing use the workflows the right way has been a FreeCAD game changer for me.

What's the vendor lock-in like with Onshape? My father used a "free" year of Solidworks and when it was over he was locked out from all his projects unless he paid. He uses FreeCAD exclusively now and is happy to own his files.

I have used Fusion and can get what I want from it. But I have an intense dislike of the clown car UI.

So sit down and watch MangoJelly's tutorials and practice them. Enjoy that smooth Aussie voice. It takes time to learn new things so don't give up. We're pulling for you!

It's pretty simple don't watch it then. No one, least of all me, is going to force you to watch it.

I was the same way. I started with OpenSCAD and it made way more sense at first.

But what drove me to FreeCAD was when my parts started getting more and more complicated. I think it was being able to chamfer or fillet all the things that really pushed me.

I am in awe of experts of either program though. I think I still really love how openSCAD is so much easier to understand the steps someone took to get to a finished model when you look at other people's work. And you can just lift pieces out and reuse them.