this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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I still have no idea what I'm doing really. Just too determined to give up I guess, and it's been such fun. Anyway I made a guitar pedal light switch cover. Still a lot of work to do, and every time I look at FreeCAD the wrong way, the model breaks, but it's been a fun experience nonetheless.

On a side note, anybody have any idea why the face of the model is rough textured, while the foot switch on the lower half is flawless?

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[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you can get used to an open source tool like free cat, don't let anyone here dissuade you from it. Something to be aware of with the closed source tools is that at any moment they can take them away. CAD tools like that are super expensive if there isn't a free plan, and there's every reason to believe that someday the free plan will go away.

I haven't been able to wrap my head around freak out because just not that smart, but that doesn't mean I don't realize tinkercad can go away at any moment. It metaphorically keeps me up at night.

[–] arc@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think FreeCAD would win a lot more converts if it focused on usability. Fusion360 and Onshape are parametric modelers just like FreeCAD yet they're way simpler, taskcentric and more forgiving tools to use.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The worst thing about FreeCAD is that it's extremely unreliable. You click a wrong button and your work is gone.

[–] arc@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Forgiving is the word for this - being able to undo mistakes and recover. I reckon FreeCAD would massively benefit from doing a complete feature freeze and focusing on usability for a couple of releases.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It's not about being forgiving or not, FreeCAD is just ridiculously buggy. They are trying to do too many things at once and none of the things actually work in the end.