FreeCad - free 3d software

[clivel]

I recently came across FreeCad http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page billed as free 3d parametric Cad which is open source and cross platform running on Windows, Linux or Mac.

I spent a little while playing with it last night after following this basic tutorial:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VR_XOPcaVw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VR_XOPcaVw[/ame]



But being a complete 3d Cad newbie, it was a bit of an uphill battle. And not having anything to compare it with, I have no idea how usable it is, nor if it is worth persisting in trying to learn to use it effectively.

Has anyone else come across FreeCad or tried to use it?

Clive

 

[JorgensenSteam]

I have Solidworks and Alibre, and the are very similar, with what I would consider pretty slight differences.

You can spin any part around in 3D space by holding down both mouse buttons in Alibre, or holding down the mouse wheel in Solidworks, and draging the mouse.

I have seen a lot of tutorials about 3D programs, and I must say, the tutorial above had my head spinning in circles, and almost none of it made any sense to me at all.

Maybe the program is ok, and it is just the guy who made the tutorial, but I found it totally confusing.

Since Alibre is not very expensive, and I think others use some other not very expensive 3D programs, there is not too much advantage to using a free 3D program, expecially if it uses terms and buttons that are very different than the standard 3D terms.

Typically you hear terms like extrude boss, and extrude cut.

At a very minimum, the guy above should be able to rotate the part by holding down some combination of mouse buttons. The way he changes views is silly. All that clicking on the circles is totally confusing.

Talking about turning something that is realatively simple into jiberish.
Well it is free.

You can find a lot of 3rd party tutorials on YouTube for Alibre, Solidworks, etc, that are excellent. The tutorial above is not good for sure.

 

[applescotty]

I tried out FreeCad a few weeks ago. I think it looks promising, but I don't think it's quite there yet. I've had a little bit of experience with an older version of Alibre.

The biggest problem that I found with FreeCad right now is that the Assembly module is still under development. Without this, from what I could understand, you can't assemble various parts into one model, at least not very easily. For me, this was the deal breaker. I want to be able to draw the various pieces separately, and then put them together into one assembly. It sounded like the capability was maybe a year away in FreeCad, from the discussion I found.

Scott

 

[Tin Falcon]

Looks interesting I did download it. I have also played with heeks cad/cam a little that is a different approach . Looks like the catch with heeks is the program is free learning resources will cost you. I am paid up to April 2014 on Alibre so will stick to that for now.
Tin