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Has anyone used FreeCAD, Kicad and other ffos software?
The recent post on foss software got me thinking about viable foss alternatives, particularly non programming related.
I just came across FreeCAD and am wondering if anyone has experience using it, how it compares to Solidworks, Autodesk, Rhino or Catia?
I was shown Kicad at uni by a ladtech and was very impressed, way easier and more flexible then whatever microchip software they where teaching.
On a broader level what other professional ffos alternatives do you guys know about?
Is anyone using this stuff on a professional level or is it more hobby at the moment?
Yeah I think you got it with the lock in, but on the flip side I would imagine it's better for employers if the software they use is free, it should increase the chances of finding employees that already know how to use it.
Yeah Solidworks is kind of a ridiculous download, so many features and addons, it feels a bit much sometimes.
Ever since I read Seveneves I have had this dormant interest in Ham radios and using the iss to bounce a signal. I got a page that talks about ham radios when I googled NEC2C, so not completely sure it's related to what your doing, but it seems very interesting.
But it is, kinda. Solid works is not the best example, but all Autodesk products are free for students. From what I can find, solidworks is $20/year for students, which is dirt cheap for someone to learn the program.
I use OpenSCAD all the time, and I've convinced my friends to learn it too. Paired with LibreCAD it can do amazing things.
Yeah wow, I've been looking for something like LibreCAD, I used Rhino a few times just to make a flat dxf drawing and it felt a bit ridiculous.
Some people prefer Inkscape to do this, so here is one more option for you
Yeah i've used inkscape, but always got the impression it was not very good at doing accurate measurements.
I'm an outsider to all this. I can count the number of times I've used CAD software on my fingers and toes. However, I've seen inkscape being used in the workflow of a lot of DIY laser cutters, etchers, routers, 3d printers, plotters, and x-y tables of all descriptions.
It's meant for designing things to be printed onto thin strips of mulched dead trees. That's not what you'll be using it for, but that does behoove the program to make accurate representations of physical things.
Mind you, I've really only seen it being used to vectorize things or convert things between various formats. Never for actually designing things.
I've been using FreeCAD for a few years for most of my 3D printing CAD and it always left we with mixed feelings.
My main problem is how messy it feels and how unclear the workflow is. A lot of tools are duplicated across multiple workbenches and they all work in slightly different and incompatible ways. The 0.17 update has helped a lot by concentrating a most of the basic features into an overhauled "Part Design" workbench, but quite a few features are still lacking in comparison to proprietary software.
Kicad on the other hand is really impressive. I don't have any experience with other electronics CAD software, but once I got used to the keyboard shortcuts and UI I found it very easy to work in.
Other "professional grade" FOSS software that's worth looking into in my opinion is Blender and Ardour. I've been using both regularly for around 10 years and they're great pieces of software.
I'm a regular Solidworks and Catia user. A while back, I had plans to learn FreeCAD , downloaded it and messed around briefly. The attractive part of FreeCAD is the python scripting. I'm very interested in the topic of design automation and doing any generative stuff with the Solidworks API has been an incredible chore. I don't know about Catia scripting but if the user interface is any hint, it's probably a hot mess.
My impression of FreeCAD is that it isn't quite fully featured enough to be a viable replacement for either Solidworks or Catia, in the context of mechanical assembly design. I read a few threads on their forum about implementing a geometric contraint system but I haven't kept up with the progress. For part design, it seems pretty good. My biggest gripe is the sort of slop-drawer presentation of workspaces. In Solidworks, there are Parts, Assemblies, Features, Sketches. There is little overlap, there is only one "workspace" when editing any of those things. In FreeCAD, it seemed less straightforward and I never really got a good birds-eye view of the workflow.
You probably know but Grasshopper as a plugin for Rhino that is apparently quite good for procedurally generating using their node system or python.
It's a shame they don't have mechanical assembly, it's kind of a great feature not just for testing assembly but having interdependent measurements makes small adjustments much easier.
I tried to use FreeCAD to design woodworking projects in the past (when I had access to a wood shop, grumble grumble sigh). It took a while to learn how it worked, but I think I got the gist of it. The issue I had with it was that it was incredibly unstable. It would crash constantly. I eventually gave up because of it.
I have only used BRL-CAD a very long time ago, I can't remember many details but I think I ended giving up. It'd probably be a different story if I tried it again today.
I've used FreeCAD a couple times for architectural drawings, and I was sorely dissappointed with how it stacked up beside AutoCAD.
The big issues that meant I stayed proprietary in future were:
Stability fluctuated like crazy. A small release could take it from solid to 5 minute crashes, or back. But you tended not to be able to predict it from changelogs.
Save corruption. It was frequent.
Rounding. I needed 100th of a milimeter accuracy. FreeCAD automatically rounded the dimensio. Though there is a setting to adjust rounding, there is none to tell it to not round, or at least to round less than the most significant digit added by the designer.