best foss cad software?

jackpot@lemmy.mlbanned from sitebanned from site to Linux@lemmy.ml – 125 points –
37

You are viewing a single comment

Sadly, I couldn't fine even one that was at least usable in my experience.

I model a lot for 3D-printing, and of course tried FreeCAD.
It had a very steep learning curve and is very unique in its workflow, compared to other CADs.
I somehow got the hang of it, but it still was very much not usable.
It crashed every 5 minutes, the UI is very convoluted, and even the simplest tasks take half an hour, compared to the 2 minutes it takes on other software.

Since Fusion360 doesn't work on Linux, there's pretty much only Onshape.
Apart from being a SaaS-product ("cloud based"), and therefore out of your control, which I strongly dislike, it's absolutely great UX wise.


But good news, there are people working on a solution. I will add the name of the project later if I can remember it again.
Edit: found it: https://github.com/dune3d/dune3d

There are also people forking the engine and some core features of FreeCAD and want to turn it into something better, but I don't know if they've made something out of that idea yet.

I personally never had a problem with Free cad. It's the only cad software I ever used, so I can't compare it to others but it just worked after I learned some basics.

If you've used any mainstream CAD software like Inventor, NX, or Solidworks then FreeCAD is extremely clunky in comparison.

1 more...

But good news, there are people working on a solution. I will add the name of the project later if I can remember it again.

Im definitely interested as well, we got plasticity I suppose, but that doesn't have a timeline and is missing a lot of more advanced features

I added the link into my original comment for you :)

Thanks! That's awesome, I'll check it out. Hopefully it will one day be able to match more professional software in terms of functionality and stability

What linux were you using if you don't mind asking?

@Guenther_Amanita @jackpot

Nobara has a pile of graphics optimizations, as well as OS fixes for programs like Blender and daVinci Resolve. It should work well for other CAD programs.

At this time Fedora. I used both the Flatpak and native package, but both were very prone to crashes.
I used it for some time too on Windows, same problem. It isn't a Linux issue, it's a FreeCAD issue. It's too convoluted and bloated, while probably not having enough maintainers.

You should try arch or an arch fork, arch doesn't leave broken upstream pkgs unpatched too long, either they work or they are out

@Guenther_Amanita

I am already.
While I don't plan to use FreeCAD in the near future, I already use Arch in Distrobox on Fedora Atomic. I quite like it, but still mostly refer to Flatpaks first when possible, since they have a lot of users and are better sandboxed.

1 more...