this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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3DPrinting

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FreeCAD 1.1 is out (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 hours ago by Bluewing@lemmy.world to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Get it while it's hot! New goodies to use and an improved UI for users.

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[–] LycanGalen@lemmy.world 10 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I've been learning CAD for printing. I really want to use FreeCAD, but every time I try to do anything, I sink 2 hours into reading wiki's and watching videos. When I apply what I've learned, I end up with a cube (sometimes a cylinder!) and a wall of errors. Then I hop into tinkerCAD/fusion360 and create what I need in 15 minutes.

I'm looking forward to the day that FreeCAD is intuitive enough for me to hop in and do what I need in 15 mins without feeling like I'm manually programming a lunar landing. It's not there yet, but I'm happy to see the update.

[–] esc@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

But it's one of those really complex programs that require some knowledge of the problem field and familiarity with UI how can it be made intuitive? Never used fusion, but tinkercad isn't intuitive or simple.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 hour ago

Fusion is okayish, but definitely not something you can just jump into without going through some explainer tutorials. Especially when it comes to the time line.

I taught myself Autocad and even with that knowledge, fusion was kinda unintuative when starting out. It didn't take long to get into it though

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Wow this looks good

[–] cecilkorik@piefed.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

I really struggled to try to get into FreeCAD, but I don't totally blame FreeCAD because I've also struggled with "real" CAD programs, my brain just doesn't really seem to work that way.

OpenSCAD and other programmatic CAD on the other hand makes me feel like a goddamn wizard magically combining shapes in the ether to create the most absurd objects.

I explained this to my engineer brother and he laughed and said he had already thought about OpenSCAD being right up my alley and wasn't surprised, but he finds it extremely difficult and counterintuitive for him. It's funny how we must have totally different mental models of working with 3d shapes I guess.

[–] enkille@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

coming from a company that used solidworks, i've always found trying to use freecad infuriating, even moreso after onshape came out and i saw what could be done even in a web browser. but seeing as it's foss, i'll keep trying it every release.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Yes, I would like to use freecad. And for reference I love blender and use it almost daily. The freecad interface and work flow just kind of bounce me off them so far. I can sculpt, model, paint, rig and edit video in blender. Right now getting started making a basic part in freecad seems like black magic.

[–] esc@piefed.social 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Maybe your brain just isn't wired to use it(yet), my experience with blender and other 3d modeling software was like black magic, and cad software was at least transparent.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Possible. In free cads defense I started learning blender in 1996. Didn't really get proficient till 2012 lol. Though I have used AutoCAD fine. But that was way back in 1994 under DOS.

[–] esc@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I've never had professional experience with CAD software and tried both onshape and freecad at the same time just before fc1.0 release, onshape for some reason was like using iphone or something like that while freecad was just ok. There are frustrating limitations and some things are broken and require workarounds true.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

I've both used CAD software professionally and worked on CAD software as a developer, and I also find FreeCAD weirdly frustrating. It's not the crashes; it's something about the workflow.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 7 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

It's improving faster. It's still a frustrating, crashy experience, but it's getting better quickly, hopefully it reached critical mass and will do Blender.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I'm at about 130 models in FC 1.0 and have yet to see a crash. There are things TinkerCAD can do that Fusion 360 cannot, like import and edit a large STL.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 1 points 2 hours ago

Maybe it's the Linux build? What are your running?

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Come on this just seem disingenuous, or extremely lucky. It's great it's out there but calling it stable is not one of them. Yesterday my freecad crashed for just closing a sketch that I didn't even change and now all edge/face references are broken. (anyone a tip how to easily fix that? Doing it manually takes ages)

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Ok. So apparently I did get crashes and never realized it. Thanks Lemmy!

[–] Decq@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah I find it hard to believe. Maybe you're just sticking to a small subset of features. I don't know. Didn't mean to berate you or anything. But I have had so many corrupted saves and random crashes I'm starting to more and more use openSCAD.

[–] LacklusterGamer@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Reading this I can't tell if you are talking about solidworks or freeCAD. JK but man solidworks is still one of the buggiest programs. If you use solidworks though the Solidworks error report screen is just part of the experience. Still I believe the gold standard for design software out there over NX, AutoCAD, and CATIA.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 2 points 2 hours ago

I went from SOLIDWORKS to FreeCAD and I miss the former a lot, I think I'm objectively 5 times slower on FreeCAD, but alas, SOLIDWORKS is not supported on Linux and not open source, so I must endure.

[–] ReasonablePea@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This is great! I was impressed with 1.0 but there were a lot of quality of life improvements needed to get it to match the big CAD guys. Looking through this it looks like they've got most of the baseline functions and easy of use accomplished.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

It even does Finite Element Analysis and a separate mode for architecture.

[–] Naich@piefed.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Yay! 👍