62 replies
18h46m
Unless you have solidworks through your job or school, FreeCAD on mac is the way to go.
Solidworks is great until you have to buy your own license. This costs MULTIPLE thousands of dollars. You cannot purchase a "hobby" version that actually gives you the desktop version. I used solidworks up until my company license got pulled. Additionally im not a student anymore so no luck there.
I used to use Fusion - but it was never as nice as solidworks. My student edition expired and now im out of that to.
Now I use FreeCAD on Mac. Takes time to adjust and I cannot model as quickly, but saving $$$$
You can rent a non-commercial license for $99 a year. Still sucks because it's the usual SaaS hostage situation.
They also recently raised the price of a real license by making you purchase a couple years of updates (which are typically ~worthless as a user). I was half prepared to swallow the $4k or so but that extra bump made me balk again.
There is no moderately priced, fully featured CAD on the market. Unless FreeCAD has recently overhauled their UI, it is immensely painful to do things which are 2 clicks in Solidworks.
In the US, a few thousand dollars a year is moderately priced relative to salaries.
Whose salaries, exactly? In most of the country, that's a couple months rent for an entire middle class family. I earn well, and I cannot imagine ever paying that much for any piece of software unless I needed it for a profit-making venture and the ROI was very obvious and very positive.
any piece of software unless I needed it for a profit-making venture and the ROI was very obvious and very positive.
Yes, that's right. Weird that a business making powerful software is targeting that market and not hobbyists.
Fusion was initially (and still is to some extent) targeted explicitly at hobbyists. At one point the CEO made lots of noise about his commitment to the maker community. 'Course since then Autodesk went from a company run by a maker to a company run by a marketing dweeb and a beancounter.
Sorry, but Autodesk was always run by beancounters. They wanted their share in office products, and went lucky with CAD. Read John Walkers "Autodesk Files".
In the context of Fusion, it was the pet project of Carl Bass who is very much a maker. He constantly championed free access for hobbyists to Fusion 360. I suspect a big part of his departure was due to not having any path towards monetizing the huge cash sink that was Fusion. Bass' replacement was the chief marketing officer.
People that use CAD for a full time job? 2k/yr is basically nothing. As a business expensive it’s a rounding error.
Right but there are people who use CAD for 3D printing projects around the house too. For them a few thousand a year is extreme.
The US national median salary is $59,384 per year as of Q4 2023.
https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/
Right. How much would you pay for software that saved your $60,000 designer weeks per year?
And how many of those saved weeks are being spent fighting draconian licensing software? In a past life I had a few architectural firms as clients and actually getting AutoCAD licensing shit to work was a huge pain point.
You need to balance those weeks spent fighting licensing issue (seriously?) against the time that's lost by using a piece of software that is a nightmare to use... if it doesn't crash. Which it does all the time.
Admittedly, it's been 2 years since I last used FreeCAD, but I've spent literally more than a hundred of hours with it trying to make it do what I wanted it to do only to come to the conclusion that mechanical CAD probably just wasn't for me.
And then I tried Onshape and, surprise, it wasn't me after all.
Irrelevant; such a license would be purchased by the business and wrote off as a loss on the income/loss sheet.
Needless to say, for a business a few or even several thousand dollars a year is practically nothing if it's critical to business operations and ensuring productivity.
If you're buying this for your own personal use? Yeah, you're gonna need a lot of disposable income or some really good justification. For your own small business use? Yeah, you're gonna need to justify that cost against your estimated annual income and other losses.
What's irrelevant to what? The actual market for CAD software is well funded businesses that are buying it as a productivity tool, so of course their approach to the cost is very relevant when trying to understand the pricing.
Yeah, but probably not for someone who needs Solidworks for their job.
Solidworks perpetual licensing has always had an annual maintenance fee associated with it, but they changed it a couple years ago where if you let your maintenance subscription lapse they charge you for the years you missed plus an additional fee. They also increased their maintenance prices by like 30% last year.
So we are now in the process of switching to Creo which, while being a user experience nightmare, is so much more stable and runs faster than Solidworks.
Agreed about FreeCAD, the user interface is terrible and even though Ondsel exists I just can't stand the way the program works. As much as I want to use FOSS software there really isn't much that beats the commercial products if you have access to them.
FreeCAD seems to operate in the same way as Catia (ie v5/v6), or at least have been developed to follow the same approach to things.
Saying that as I used to use Catia years ago, so the FreeCAD approach wasn't completely foreign.
It's beyond that though. How many different, incompatible, assembly bench plugins are there these days?
Yeah, the different, incompatible assembly plugins is why I stopped using FreeCAD a few years ago.
That's reportedly been fixed (guess they picked a winner?), but I haven't taken a look since. I probably will, at some point, but I generally have a different focus these days.
They didn't pick a winner. They (Ondsel and others) evaluated all the workbenches, chose the best ideas and built a new workbench around a new (well, new to C++) solver.
There was an Ondsel blog post about this:
https://ondsel.com/blog/default-assembly-workbench-7/
Ondsel helps a lot with that. FreeCAD 1.0 I think also now has a default Assembly bench.
BricsCAD?
I've been looking for a while at BricsCAD (as an alternative to VariCAD), but when you add in sheet metal folding and ability to export and import STEP, it starts getting expensive.
I just checked their site and their 20% off prices actually seem reasonable—at least before realizing they are yearly costs.. They do sell also perpetual licenses where you pay for the product of your selection and then a yearly maintenance fee, and this would perhaps make the most sense for a hobbyist, but this already feels a bit expensive.
I've been trying to get into FreeCAD, but some of my existing models seem to be a bit slow with it, not to mention the different workflow. But I'll give 1.0 a shot!
BricsCAD is ok. It's more of a direct modeler with constraint support though. It may or may not matter to you depending on the kind of work.
I tried it for a while, and while I generally liked it, also got stumped by the artificial limitation of STEP import/export, which made it a non-starter even for hobby projects. This is, IMHO, the dumbest thing they could do in terms of licensing.
You should try Ondsel fork of FreeCad.
Once they release 2024.3 I probably will! They are definitely saying all the right things. I filled out their user survey and was pleased to see UI/UX at the top of the responses. If they start delivering meaningful UI revamp I will certainly send them some money - I cannot express how much I want a KiCAD equivalent for mechanical CAD to exist.
How about https://www.plasticity.xyz/? I didn't try yet, but looks great.
I just picked up Plasticity earlier this week to start trying to learn it, it's been on my radar for a while. I've been using TinkerCAD for years for making my simple models, and it works really well for the basics but there are things that become painful there that Plasticity has promise of making a lot easier.
One of the first tutorials I went through was really frustrating though. Some of it may be that Plasticity is a quickly moving target right now (lots of tutorials are for v0.x or 1.4, with current being v24, for an idea).
A lot of the pain was this tutorial just didn't touch on the basics it was assuming you knew. Some of it was just getting used to the tool and figuring out what mode you are in and which you need to be in to accomplish what you need to do. I struggled a lot with just getting keyboard shortcuts and the trackpad navigation to work. I never did find a description of mouse/trackpad mappings (possibly made worse by there being ~5 themes you can select from).
It shows a lot of promise, but there's going to be a bit of a learning curve. But there was a learning curve on TinkerCAD too, I just need to keep that in mind.
Pricing is ok: free 30 day trial, $150 for a license with 1 year of updates, and $299 for the Studio license. I don't use CAD that much, like maybe a model a month or less, so it's kind of a big bite to take for me personally, especially with it being young and likely to need to spend $150/year for a while here as it's revving up. The Studio version's xNURBS feature seems like it might be really enticing, but just makes that even harder for me to bite off.
I probably should try OnShape just because they do have that free plan.
I'm also looking at OpenSCAD for doing parameterized models. I installed it last night and asked Perplexity AI to generate a model, and it made a good start at it, but couldn't quite get the tongue-and-groove right.
Yes, I had a really hard time getting used to the UI. Later found the ModernUI Workbench plugin which made it a whole lot better. https://wiki.freecad.org/ModernUI_Workbench
edit: This plugin seems unmaintained and Ondsel is probably the way to go now if you want a better organized UI.
You can get a cheap license if you're current or former military. (US at least)
Cheap license of what? SolidWorks? Fusion? OnShape?
Edit: I can google that. I was just surprised that I've been using the stuff at work for over a decade and I am juat now hearing about it.
You can use OnShape for free as long as you're OK with the models being publicly visible. I find that fine for learning and personal projects.
I've dabbled with OnShape, FreeCAD, and SolveSpace, and of them SolveSpace is the one I've ended up using the most. OnShape was nice, the GUI was pretty intuitive, I liked the way it worked, but I just feel weird trusting anything to a free plan on a cloud service. I don't really mind the public part, but it always felt tenuous that the plan would remain free so I didn't really feel like I could trust it long term.
FreeCAD was complicated and opaque, I never really put in the time to learn it, it just felt a bit clunky, but I keep meaning to come back to it.
SolveSpace seemed a bit mysterious at first, but just a bit of learning and I found myself pretty comfortable with it. It's not nearly as fully featured as some of the others, but it clicked well for me.
SolveSpace and FreeCAD are both FLOSS software.
I've done some FreeCAD and OpenCAD, but SolveSpace is a new one to me. Will scope it out.
FWIW, I agree on the free platform thing. I can't bring myself to put my actual projects on there.
Have a look at zoo.dev too. Formerly KittyCAD.
It's the educational version of Solidworks --- did it a while back when my son was in high school and he found it useful for doing his CAD homework.
Why "on Mac"? Is it required? I'm interested in trying out anything that might help to break Autodesk's monopoly, but not at the expense of having to use a Mac.
Yeah there is zero reason for mac.
Freecad on Linux is great, and for commercial packages, onshape on chromium on Linux runs better for me than fusion on windows did.
When I tried out FreeCAD on Ubuntu a couple years ago, it was an extremely frustrating experience. I was following a tutorial for new users until I got to a part with a simple instruction that involved clicking a button on the toolbar. The only problem was, the button wasn't there, and the instruction was so simple that it didn't specifically say "click this button at this location", it was more like "do this thing". It was worded in a way that made me think "it must be obvious and simple, why can't I figure this out?" After way too much time spent digging through menus, trying to configure the UI and searching online for a solution, I installed the Windows version out of frustration. The button was right there, front and center. The Linux version I had installed was just straight up missing it.
FreeCAD has come a long way since then, although it still has a pretty steep learning curve. Once you get the paradigm of it, though, it's manageable.
I use it most days, and am very happy with it. Although I'm not an actual designer and I don't have a great deal of experience with other CAD software.
Probably OP's only as experience of FreeCAD and other CAD software on mac
I read it as "I have a mac and this is what's available", not "you should get a Mac in order to run this program".
Onshape has been my cad software of choice for all my local 3d printing needs. It’s honestly pretty damn good.
As a recovering FreeCAD user: Onshape is amazing.
Same boat. Onshape is so intuitive. What many people don’t realize is that onshape is free as long as you don’t mind your designs being public. All of my designs are open source so for me it’s actually a benefit.
Onshape is great. I use it as well for random things.
I do expect them to do a pull-rug on the free license at some point, like fusion did, especially now that they've been bought by PTC. If they do, the commercial license is too expensive IMHO compared to other offerings for what they offer.
I had the option to use the educational license at some point, but we couldn't get to renew it (ironically, we got a dirt-cheap Creo license afterwards).
Just to keep things in mind it can go anyday from free to too-expensive.
I had a few complex designs in fusion360 I essentially lost at some points due to the price hikes. I decided to endure the pain in freecad. It's getting better.
This. Onshape just works. Even their sheet metal tool is quick and easy.
I recommend Ondsel as well, which is free without restrictions (they have paid tiers that have cloud features, but those aren't necessary). They should include the FreeCAD 1.0 fixes in a few days. HUGE improvement to the FreeCAD GUI, and it saves in FreeCAD format so you're not stuck.
It's also worth noting that they work with FreeCAD and make pushes to them too. So using either helps both. I've been very happy with the developers and they are very responsive on GitHub.
Just to start, I want to acknowledge that the problem space is tremendously complex; the FreeCAD developers have put in a lot of effort and it's amazing that a project like FreeCAD exists at all.
Not trying to disrespect the other FreeCAD developers, but it seems like things have improved remarkably since ondsel started taking a more active role.
The project seemed to exhibit a (common) impulse to prioritize extensibility too much. The "workbench" architecture and python API let you do some really neat stuff if you're willing to dig into the weeds. But, from the perspective of a community outsider (so take it with a grain of salt), the development process seemed to be a good example of Conway's Law in action. The workbenches let everyone have their own sub-projects to manage without stepping on each other's toes. This led to a lot of resulting complexities, inconsistencies, and instabilities, which made the approach a net negative (imo) in terms of tradeoffs.
With ondsel, there's been more focus on holistic improvements and getting the individual modules working together more smoothly, which I greatly appreciate.
I still recommend RealThunder's fork (https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/) at the moment, even though his fork is a bit lagging at the moment.
Most of his contributions to the topology fixes got merged back into freecad now, but his enhancements to UI/behavior aren't (yet), and they make a night and day compared to ondsel too.
I didn't find any significant limitation to RealThunder's assembly3.
In any case, while far from most commercial offerings, FreeCAD is progressing and the future looks bright. I've stopped using f360/onshape in the last years for my hobby designs. Once you know the specific limitations of freecad+occt (something you learn in each cad program) and how to work them around effectively, it's already pretty powerful.
"on mac"
Apple is GOAT at marketing. Incredible how much control they have over people.
Yeah, because nobody ever writes 'on Windows' or 'on Linux'. It's really only Mac users who every specify which platform they're recommending something about.
What do you mean? They are just saying that their experience is with mac, so they recommend the mac version? If anything the incredible thing is that such a normal statement can actually be perceived as something else as soon as Apple is mentioned.
My first experience with 3D was with AutoCAD 10 or 11 when they had "2 1/2"D. I've used ProE, Catia, Unigraphics, SolidEdge, Solidworks, Inventor, etc.
The workflows in FreeCAD are completely irregular and alien compared to those others. It's incredibly frustrating to use and I have had zero luck becoming fluent in it.
Looking forward to the day when FreeCAD is a viable and stable option for free parametric CAD. There are a few free options for direct modeling, but not for parametric design.
As far as commercial software goes, my current favorite CAD software for hobby use is Rhino[1]. It's not parametric[2], but it's stable, fast[3], can import and export a wide variety of 3D file types, and it's pay-once-per-major-release. It's not cloud-based. The marketing around it seems to emphasize design/architecture/artistic use cases, but it also works well for dimensionally-accurate mechanical parts.
For those eligible for a student license, the pricing is reasonable (cheaper still if you shop around among third-party edu software vendors). Surprisingly, the student license also allows commercial use.
1. https://www.rhino3d.com
2. Well, Rhino is not parametric in the usual sketch-based way. People do wild things with the Grasshopper plugin.
3. Rhino also runs on macOS, w/ hardware acceleration of graphics via Metal
There is now a USD$10/month subscription for Solidworks. The software includes an astounding amount of bloat but it does work.
Yeah, the OSS aspect of FreeCAD is a win for sure.
With Solidworks, they have things like the "Maker" edition which is only US$48 per year:
https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
I grabbed a perpetual license for the Maker edition when it first came out (free at the time) though I don't think I ever got around to really using it. ;)
There is a "personal" version of Fusion 360 which isn't tied to enrollment. It has some limitations (only 10 "active" documents; some advanced features are locked), but overall, I think that's still the most accessible entry to CAD for hobbyist makers, especially with all the tutorials for it out there.
I think that with the current state and trajectory of FreeCAD/Ondsel, they have a realistic chance of catching on. However if FreeCAD really wants to be the version that is installed (rather than Ondsel), I think they really have to get to a more regular release cadence.
Why not use the hobbyist version of Fusion? it's free for non commercial use.
SOLIDWORKS for Makers is $48/year [1]. That subscription includes a proper SOLIDWORKS installation, Dassault is pushing their web stuff, but you don't need to use it. Also, it uses local files by default, unlike Fusion [2]. The subscription comes with a no-commercial-use clause and the files can't be opened in the commercial version, but I'm sure if push comes to shove the file thing will be fixed on the high seas.
Re: Mac: SOLIDWORKS runs perfectly well in Parallels on M1. I moved from Fusion and it's been great. Just having fully working G3 surfaces/constraints [3] and patterning on sketch points alone is worth the expense.
[1] https://www.solidworks.com/solution/3dexperience-solidworks-...
[2] Recently Autodesk changed the policy and now Fusion360 will remove your files if you don't pay and not log in for a year.
[3] Something that I don't think we'll ever see in FreeCAD, considering the pace of Open CASCADE development https://git.dev.opencascade.org/gitweb/?p=occt.git
One day these guys are going to look up and FreeCAD is going to be the industry standard. All because they didn't know how to license individuals.