Back in college, I had a few classes on CAD (mostly for engineering design), and I became decently proficient with CATIA, SolidWorks, and Autodesk Inventor. Now that I’m getting into 3D printing, I’m coming back to CAD and finding my skills pretty rusty.
I plan to use FreeCAD as my main tool. Could anyone please recommend some tutorials that I can complete that would give me a solid working knowledge of FreeCAD and help me brush up on CAD in general?
MangoJellySolutions on YouTube is really good.
Honestly?
Unless it is a VERY strong ideological reason, there is no reason to ever subject yourself to FreeCAD. It is an awesome tool but the UI/UX is so illogical that it makes Blender seem sane. And, to be fair, Blender IS sane once you start thinking the right way. FreeCAD you have to think like twenty different ways.
And for 3d printing? If you are windows (or mac?), the free version of Fusion 360 is all you need. If you are Linux things get a bit more annoying but I have found myself genuinely loving OnShape (also apparently the lineage goes back to the tool I learned back during high school). Yeah… everything is theoretically publicly accessible and forkable which is good from a community standpoint and bad from a privacy. But my designs aren’t anywhere near good enough for industry to steal and I can always use a code name for anything that I might not want people to know I am working on.
That said, I think there have been a few semi-sketchy forks of FreeCAD that give it a sane UI/UX? I think Maker’s Muse did a semi-recent video where he talked about a few of those.
Freecad 1.0 actually is a lot more intuitive than it was a few months back in my opinion. I would recommend to give it a try.
Its still a but clunky at some points but for basic stuff its not bad to use
JokoEngineering had some good videos though they are starting to be dated.
For someone with zero experience (meeeeee!!!), which would you recommend?
I’m not an idiot but I have no idea where to even begin. I have a 3D printer and I will need to make small, somewhat simple parts for a couple of projects I’m working on.
Simple parts for 3D printing can be done with TinkerCAD. A free and basic CAD program that can do what you want. It runs in your browser window so it’s platform agnostic also. Though I will tell you phones and tablets are very poor tools to do CAD work in. Larger screens and a mouse are virtually a necessity if you intend to not get frustrated.
After that, Fusion 360, (Windows only and a bastard install of local and cloud requirements), is popular with 3D printer enthusiasts. It’s a stripped down version of AutoDesk’s professional tool. There is also OnShape, another full CAD program that has a free license that runs in a browser window like Tinker CAD. The UI is a bit harder for newbies to navigate than Fusion. But there are limitations to hobby users.
FreeCAD is open source and a local install with support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Newbies tend to find the CAD concepts difficult, (mostly because they are based on more proper workflows and design knowledge. FreeCAD will often punish sloppy workflows of beginners). And newbies tend to find the UI confusing. But they are working on it. The latest 1.0 release features a lot of improvements that user have complained about for years. But the learning curve is still steep and it takes some effort for those without real CAD experience and an unwillingness to practice the craft.
I’m going to throw this copy/paste out again:
SOLIDWORKS MILITARY EDUCATION SERVICES PROGRAM SOLIDWORKS is a proud supporter of our active military and veterans, and thank them for their service. We are pleased to offer the SOLIDWORKS Student Edition at a discounted rate to military actively serving in the US or Canada and/or veterans.
It’s $20USD /$40CAD per year. I’m on my 8th year or so.
Even if you’re not a veteran, Solidworks for makers is $48/year, or $38/year through “Titans of CNC.” You get a grace zone of up to $2000 in profit before they expect you to get a non-hobbyist license, which unfortunately is quite pricy.
For comparison, Fusion only gives you $1000 of revenue, but the cheapest commercial license for them is much cheaper; basically, they just want you to buy the license once you pull in enough sales to cut them their check. OnShape has no similar scheme, forces free users’ designs to be open, AND has a clumsily worded EULA that raises a distinct possibility that other users can take your stuff and sell it, but you can’t. Solid Edge is a simple “non-commercial use” for the free tier. Alibre doesn’t do free at all, but offers a very cheap version that’s limited by features instead of license rights.
Meanwhile, you can use FreeCAD for whatever the hell you want, forever, with no one looking over your shoulder.
I know which avenue I’d much rather take, quirks of the software be damned.
I haven’t tried FreeCAD in years. Has it improved much?
It’s still a quirky old beast, but it’s much improved over the versions from years ago. They finally feel good enough about the assembly workbench, UI improvements, and topo-naming mitigation to release version 1.0.
I feel like it’s finally at the point where the issues are minor enough that I have the patience to deal with them. I’ve been using the release candidates for the last couple of weeks and mostly it comes down to remembering to save regularly and occasionally having to shut it down and restart. Honestly, some of the commercial solutions aren’t drastically better in that respect!
I think anyone coming from a place where they have a ton of experience in SolidWorks or Fusion might want to hold out a little longer, though it’s definitely worth a try. If you’re coming from a place where you have to learn a new program anyway, you might as well learn the free option that will only continue to improve.
