I am not an engineer. I’m not even good at math, and my spatial reasoning skills are nonexistent. With that in mind, here are the CAD programs I’ve tried.
Blender, Pros: Free, surprisingly comprehensive. Cons: Not parametric, can’t precisely measure or constrain models, all the extra stuff you get like rendering has no use in 3D printing.
Onshape: Pros: Easy to use, convenient (I’ve successfully edited a model on my phone), free*. Cons: Runs on someone else’s computer in the cloud, not private, enshittification is sure to come shortly if history is any indication.
Fusion360: Pros: seems to be what everyone else is using. Cons: enshittification is already happening, runs locally with limited saves in the cloud so you don’t own your files but also don’t get the run anywhere convenience of the cloud.
Plasticity: Pros: buttery smooth workflow, pay once run forever, runs and saves locally. Cons: Not peremetric so hard to go back and adjust things later.
FreeCAD: Pros: free, open source. Cons: workflow as rough as sandpaper, constantly crashes.
Plasticity and Onshape have proven to be the most productive choices for me. If only Plasticity were parametric it would be the perfect software for me personally.
I want to like FreeCAD, I really do, but it’s so hard to use. I love Plasticity, but it’s meant for making 3D assets for games etc. using hard surface modelling, not so much for manufacturing.
If I may digress for a moment, I work as a network admin. I’m familiar mostly with Cisco at work, but use Ubiquiti at home. Cisco equipment is monstrously expensive from a consumer or prosumer perspective, and the only way to get true hands-on experience is to buy used equipment from ebay which may still be pricey.
Ubiquiti’s market strategy seems to be to make the kind of gear that a network admin would want in their home. It’s inexpensive relative to the big fish like Cisco, but has a fairly comprehensive feature set. The idea is to entice Joe IT guy to buy Ubiquiti gear for his house, fall in love with it, then push for the company to switch to Ubiquiti the next time they upgrade.
What I want is the Ubiquiti of CAD programs. Easy to use, low barrier to entry but comprehensive enough to use professionally.
Suggestions/comments?
You must log in or register to comment.
I will be blunt. If you are as bad at math and spatial reasoning as you say, then CAD probably isn’t for you. You will always find it difficult and unrewarding. Design and engineering require a mindset you might not have.
As far as “cheap and easy and professional” CAD they ALL require effort to learn and money to gain entry for commercial versions. CAD is a skill and skills require effort to acquire. And it sounds as if you have no desire to put in very much effort.
For a CAD program to meet your want of cheap and simple, (professional means a lot of money and takes more than a few minutes of effort), look at TinkerCAD. It’s free and simple enough that I teach that to 5th and 6th grade students well enough for them to make simple objects. Ain’t nothing wrong with starting there and learning how to think about design and CAD before you might try and step into more demanding software.
Woof.
Put down your participation trophy for a minute. It’s nice you feel the need to ride to the rescue, but sometimes the truth just sucks.
OP openly claims to have poor math skills and lacks spatial awareness. If that’s the case, he’s not ever going to have an easy time. Those are 2 skills you need to have, at least to some degree, if you even want to start with designing things. And he naively expects,“free, easy, and professional” results NOW! Then lists his reasons on why he doesn’t like any of the free versions of OnShape and Fusion and FreeCAD. And I doubt OP would do any better with SolidEdge either.
OP wants something he cannot have-- instant skill without personal effort or aptitude, (again from his OWN words). Life don’t work that way Buttercup.
Hey, horses don’t say woof.
You can save files in fusion 360 locally. It’s just not the main way the program encourages which sucks.
I think you have to like export instead pf save but you do get a .f3d file which is the same as what gets saved to the cloud.
My solution to the same issue was OpenSCAD. But it might not be for the faint of heart. For me, this is a godsend, working 100% in my mindspace.
If they so said have no math or spatial reasoning then OpenSCAD is the last tool for them to try.
deleted by creator
As I said, it’s right for me, but it might not be for everyone. If I was to invent a CAD system, I’d write something exactly like OpenSCAD…
Maybe I suck at CAD but love OpenScad as its easier for me to understand.
I second this. It was my step after tinkercad and never looked back. But I do love programming so maybe biased.
RS Design Spark?
I haven’t used it in a few years but I remember it being alright for hobby stuff.
Depending on your system I think, I have been using Sketchup 2017 (whatever the last free version was they released) for years to make 3D models for all kinds of purposes, incl 3D printing. For my brain it has proven to be the most intuitive tool to learn, it’s been a really long time so maybe I have forgotten but I feel like the barrier to entry was pretty small. There is a lot of content out there from people giving tips and tutorials. There are plug-ins still flooding around that have really good functionality. I use it with a Connexion 3D Space Navigator mouse that’s prob 10+ years old. That’s been a godsend and adds so much efficiency and flow to the tool.
I don’t know if you can still download it from Trimble but there are sources for it elsewhere.
Have fun, whatever you choose.
I liked TinkerCAD.
That’s not a parametric CAD software though. And it has the same pitfalls as Onshape.
TinkerdCAD is nice to slap together a few shapes or objects (as long as they don’t need to be dimensionally accurate), but once you want to chamfer all egdes of a cube you are faster learning an entirely different software and creating the object from scratch.
I use a free version of sketchup make from 2008. You can still find it out there on the internet for download.
The last free-to-run version of Sketchup is from 2017, and ironically you can download it from the official website, you just have to dig for it. It isn’t immediately available, and they try their best to sell you the latest version.
I’ve been using freecad with great success for years now and I’d say while I agree freecad is rough in terms of ux, it is highly usable, especially after 1.0 version. I feel like investing time in overcoming its flaws and weaknesses will pay off in the future, as it will enable access to a stable, eternally free and reliable software. Though I also agree it crashes frequently, I set a very frequent auto save and I don’t often get screwed now.
FreeCAD is a spectacular second CAD tool to learn. Once you understand the concepts and workflows for one of the industry standard tools, you will know how to translate that to FreeCAD speak as it were.
As a first CAD tool it is atrocious. It crashes while you are exploring new tools and you just don’t have the vocabulary (or muscle memory) to actually ask questions or search for answers.
If someone really wants to get into hobbyist CAD (for 3d printing), probably the best flow is to start with TinkerCAD, switch to Fusion 360 (assuming you aren’t running linux. Onshape if you are), and once you are comfortable and can build basically whatever you want change to FreeCAD if you want more control over your toolchain.
And if someone wants to do this professionally? Fusion 360 is the endstate. Maybe you’ll end up at a firm that uses the other family (which I think Onshape is part of?) but you will basically never find a company that wants FreeCAD formats.
FreeCad was crashing on average every two minutes when I tried using it last month. I really want to like it but crashes need to be toned down…
Edit: everyone is saying stable builds are fine, but I was just using whatever nixos had packaged. I’d assume that’s the stable build but may be wrong.
Also, amd system with up to date drivers so that’s not my issue. Maybe sketches are just unstable?
No issues with Freecad here and I am on linux + Nvidia!
Are you sure that your system is up to date? are drivers ok?
I’ve been using it for months now and I had zero crashes. Is this a platform thing or just because I’m mostly only using the parts menu?
Possibly, it mainly crashed dealing with sketches.
Well, it definitely isn’t suppose to be THAT bad. I can get a crash every half an hour or even longer. Usually for no apparent reason - like when I want to sketch on a face and the app switches from PartDesign workbench to sketcher or wise versa. And then after restart that doesn’t happen again. That is annoying, has been happening for ages and would really like it to be fixed. But it’s not every few minutes, more like half an hour to an hour.
I have had FreeCAD crash apparently because of something I did. Like it couldn’t handle some operation and couldn’t fail gracefully.
Yeah I have used Freecad for ages and never had an issue, also use an NVidia GPU. Hopefully you get your issue sorted, because freecad really is good and only getting better every time.
Maybe use a release and not a weekly build?
Install the stable versions not the developer versions. Freecad is seriously good. I’m using both freecad and NX on a project. NX for drawings because freecad still chokes on drawings. But its getting better for drawings. We’ll be fully jumping to freecad soon.
I really don’t understand why people have so much trouble with FreeCAD. It does everything the other software does, it just crashes on occasion.
It just crashes on occasion.
Yeah you see, that’s kind of a deal breaker.
FreeCAD is dogshit if you have any other experience with commercial software.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s dogshit as I’ve been enjoying the beta releases. What I will say though is that the workflow feels different enough compared to every other commercial CAD program I’ve tried (solidworks, fusion, inventor) that it required me to effectively re-learn the software rather than jump right in. Pretty much every other CAD program didn’t have this problem, in part because they’re more forgiving when you violate best practices.
FreeCAD is much more rigid in comparison. If you follow its best practices, it works wonderfully, but when I came from another CAD program my previous experience kept making me run into issues.
Yeah, maybe I was a bit harsh. I will admit, I have not tried FreeCAD recently but when I did use it I thought it was terrible. I use Creo for my job but personally like SolidWorks and Fusion for my personal use. FreeCAD just frustrated the hell out of me. I definitely commend the developers for creating a FOSS CAD software though.
Yeah, it’s absolutely not at the level of beginner and user-friendliness that you’d expect out of a professional CAD package yet, so it’s understandable you had a rough experience. I think we’re all hoping that FreeCAD will eventually see a similar level of improvement that Blender and KiCAD got in this area. Both of them were originally much worse in terms of usability, but after enough effort (and investment from major players like CERN in the case of KiCAD and community members), they ended up being really competitive packages.
I saw a bit ago that blended has an addon or plugin or something that adds parametric functions
I think I got the impression it’s less powerful that proper parametric cad or something, but I figured I’d mention it in case that makes it a more viable option for you!
Blender has an add on project called cad sketches in development. It’s free to use and is donation supported just like Blender is. I haven’t used it myself but it wouldn’t hurt looking into it.
You can buy add-ons for this to auto-generate standard gear-forms and threads/bolts/holes. It is also parametric.
Fusion is easiest to get going for ‘serious’ projects as a beginner.
I will use it while I can, or until an equal alternative is available. Nothing lasts forever.The problem is that Parametric CAD kernels are complicated and expensive. There are some recent open source efforts but they are slow going. Just look at how bad Freecad is after all these years to see how difficult they are.
I’m quite experienced with SolidWorks and have used both Creo and NX as well. I can’t stand the likes of Freecad or Fusion because of that. Luckily I have access to the professional ones for my day to day modelling.
One option to look at is Solid Edge, they have a maker version that is free and it’s a proper professional package many companies use.
Solidworks has a cheap maker version. You can save locally. It’s always been shit, so it can’t get enshittified /s.
Alibre is the only perpetual affordable license CAD software I’m aware of unless you want to use student/hobbyist versions of other software.
Alibre is quite good. All the features I need, price is OK. If you don’t need all the features Alibre Atom3D can be bought for 250€, the full version starts at 1000€. That’s really cheap for CAD. The only thing missing is Linux support.
