FreeCAD

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Your own 3D parametric modeler.

www.freecad.org

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.

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Coordinate system planes not visible (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/freecad@lemmy.ml

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I just downloaded FreeCAD to build a simple part and was following this tutorial to learn my way through the basics. Unfortunately I got stuck pretty quickly around the 2:38 part where I need to select a plane to start a drawing in. For some reason, the coordinate system planes don't show up even if the eye icon is lit up. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

Upon posting a screenshot here, I think my CachyOS KDE theme might have something to do with the display as I view a mostly blank white screen while the screenshot is showing black for some reason. I've already tried changing the theme under Preferences but it seemed to make things worse, with some parts of the Start tab being unreadable.

EDIT: I should also point out that the FreeCAD client was downloaded via the CachyOS Package Manager. I heard sometimes using software from Flatpaks and other similar sources clashes with system themes. Should I use a different installation method?

How it's supposed to look like:

How my setup looks like:

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[–] nis@feddit.dk 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I had the same problem. The solution was to start freecad from the commandline with an extra parameter.

I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: Here: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/17491

[–] GlockSwitch@forum.guncadindex.com -2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Kopsis@forum.guncadindex.com 5 points 1 day ago

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).

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

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.