this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
7 points (100.0% liked)
FreeCAD
1184 readers
1 users here now
Your own 3D parametric modeler.
FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size. Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history and changing its parameters.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments


As you've may of heard many times, I highly recommend you ditch Freecad and just use fusion360. The free version will provide you with every tool available in Freecad and some more. Freecad is, in it's current state, inferior in every way to the free version of fusion 360.
Does that "every way" include respecting your privacy and not locking your data into a proprietary undocumented format?
I will grant that FreeCAD is not as polished as F360 (though it has improved significantly in the last couple years). It also forces you to be more disciplined about design and especially sketch constraints (which I consider a good thing). But I have not found a significant productivity difference between FreeCAD and F360 (once I spent the time to understand FreeCAD's way of doing things).
Ehhh I initially thought similarly at first as well but the more I have used freecad the more it grows on me. At least I can have more than 10 projects in freecad lol.