I am actually very optimistic about ondsel and I hope there will be more money and coordinated work put in this software. I suspect freecad to be a lot more usable in 2 years if ondsel continues to grow and improve :)
Sketchup is a “direct” modeling software, while FreeCAD is a “parametric” or “history based”, so most of the things work totally differently. Here is a nice article comparing these different approaches in modeling software: bluentcad.com/…/parametric-vs-direct-modeling/
So the biggest problem won’t be to find similarly named commands in FreeCAD but to learn about this completely different way to model things.
I would imagine most of these would have an analog in some way. They are really the most basic commands, like translation, rotation, draw a line,rectangle or circle, apply material/texture, view angle front etc…
Yes and no. The part workbench, which is mostly (but not entirely) deprecated in favor of the Part Design workbench has some of these, and I think there may be a couple of nods in the direction of synchronous/direct modeling, such that a few of the commands could exist, but the standard workflow for parametric history modelers just works differently enough that things don’t really translate.
For instance, “draw a rectangle” exists, but it exists in the 2D Sketcher mode/workbench that is then padded (“extrude” is the more common term) or rotated into 3D space. It’s quite rare to just plop down primitives and merge them, though if you fight the prgram quite a bit, you can make it do some of that. Groups work so differently as to not really be the same tool.
Now, I do think direct modeling gets a bad rap sometimes, especially in communities where most people are not professionally drafting multi-part assemblies, but are instead making single standalone parts/prototypes, which is exactly what direct modeling was invented to do well. They are slightly different paradigms though, and FreeCAD is WAAAAY over into the realm of “Sketch, Extrude, New Sketch, New Extrude, Third Sketch, Insert Pocket, etc. etc.” This enables the parametric history that lets you go back and, for instance, modify every screw hole at once, or to change every chamfer on face X to be a fraction of the original height. It looks Sketchup can do some of that, but it’s not the main design paradigm.
The end result is that while, yeah, you could probably find something more or less analogous to most of the hotkeys you’ve programmed for Sketchup, there is a very good chance that you simply won’t use them nearly as much, or together in that same way.
While I’m piling on, Sketchup is also natively mesh based, meaning there’s a “resolution” limit to your parts that won’t exist in FreeCAD or other NURBS modelers (some of which are also direct modeling). Among NURBS direct modelers, Rhino3D is a great choice if you’re still a student, and BricsCAD shape is a pretty decent free-as-in-beer one, especially if you use Linux; it even has a little human paper doll to help you establish scale. DesignSpark Mechanical is another good direct modeler, but it’s windows only and unless you want to pay for a (fairly cheap) subscription, it has painfully limited import and export options.
Thanks for this great writeup. I first learned the draw in 3d with sketchup and I really hit a brick wall when trying other CAD software. Not only having incompatible keybindings (just controlling the camera is a struggle, it seems every single program does it differently). I do understand why people would want to have parametric and history based drawing. In complex parts making changes in sketchup can be a real struggle, sometimes I will just slice of a plane of the the model and redraw the offending section rather than to try to change it.
But I find making everything parametric, really bogs things down. It’s probably because I don’t really understand how it works behind the scenes and I’m fighting the interface all the way.
What I was hoping to do was, first better master sketchup by understanding each tool and mapping them to more sensible keyboard bindings. And then for each other CAD software, change the keybind and camera controls to at least make the transition as painless as possible.
I was hoping most actions would have some analog but it seems this is not the case.
Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT to try and match the PartDesign keybinds to sketchup keybinds
<span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_AdditiveHelix -> SketchUp/Follow Me: Sweeping a sketch along a path is similar to SketchUp's Follow Me tool, which extrudes faces along a path.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_AdditiveLoft -> SketchUp/Push/Pull: While SketchUp does not have a loft tool, Push/Pull can be used to extrude shapes, which is somewhat similar to lofting between profiles.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_AdditivePipe -> SketchUp/Follow Me: Similar to the additive helix, using Follow Me to extrude a shape along a path.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Body -> SketchUp/Make Group or Edit/Make Component...: Creating a distinct body in FreeCAD is somewhat analogous to grouping objects or creating a component in SketchUp.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Boolean -> SketchUp/Solid Tools (Pro Only): Boolean operations in FreeCAD can be likened to SketchUp's Solid Tools, like Union, Subtract, etc.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Chamfer -> SketchUp/Move+Ctrl (to create a copied edge for manual chamfer): SketchUp doesn't have a direct chamfer function, but you can manually create one by copying edges and then moving them.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Clone -> SketchUp/Edit/Copy + Edit/Paste: Duplicating objects in SketchUp can be achieved through copying and pasting.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_CompPrimitiveAdditive/Subtractive -> SketchUp/Push/Pull for adding or subtracting volumes: While not direct analogs, using Push/Pull to add or subtract material can be a workaround.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_CoordinateSystem -> SketchUp/Tools/Axes: Creating a new local coordinate system in FreeCAD is somewhat akin to redefining the axes in SketchUp.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Draft -> SketchUp/Move: While SketchUp doesn't have a specific tool for drafting angles, you can manipulate geometry with the Move tool to achieve similar results.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_DuplicateSelection -> SketchUp/Edit/Copy + Edit/Paste: Similar functionality for duplicating objects.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Fillet -> SketchUp/Follow Me for manual filleting: SketchUp does not have a direct fillet function, but you can create rounded edges manually using the Follow Me tool.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Groove -> SketchUp/Follow Me: Creating a groove by sweeping a shape can be mimicked with the Follow Me tool.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Hole -> SketchUp/Push/Pull: Creating a hole in SketchUp is often done by creating a circular face and then using Push/Pull to remove material.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_InvoluteGear -> (No direct analog in SketchUp): SketchUp doesn't have a built-in function for creating gears.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_LinearPattern -> SketchUp/Move+Ctrl (to create copies): The closest in SketchUp is making multiple copies of an object along a line with the Move tool.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Mirrored -> SketchUp/Scale: You can mirror objects in SketchUp by using the Scale tool and flipping the object across an axis by scaling it to -1.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_MultiTransform -> (No direct analog in SketchUp): SketchUp doesn't support this in one step, but various transformations can be applied sequentially.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_NewSketch -> SketchUp/Rectangle, Circle, Arc, etc.: Starting a new sketch in FreeCAD is akin to beginning a new drawing with SketchUp's drawing tools.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Pad -> SketchUp/Push/Pull: Extruding sketches into 3D space in FreeCAD is similar to using SketchUp's Push/Pull tool.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Pocket -> SketchUp/Push/Pull: Creating a pocket with a selected sketch can also be achieved with the Push/Pull tool in SketchUp, essentially removing material.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_PolarPattern -> SketchUp/Move+Ctrl (to create radial copies): Radial array copies in SketchUp can mimic the polar pattern functionality.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Revolution -> SketchUp/Follow Me: Revolving a sketch around an axis in FreeCAD is similar to using SketchUp's Follow Me tool for lathe-like effects.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_ShapeBinder -> (No direct analog in SketchUp): SketchUp doesn't have a feature directly comparable to FreeCAD's ShapeBinder, which references geometry across bodies.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_SubtractiveHelix, Loft, Pipe -> SketchUp/Follow Me + Push/Pull: These subtractive operations can be emulated by creating shapes and then using Push/Pull to remove material.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PartDesign_Thickness -> SketchUp/Offset + Push/Pull: Creating a thick solid from a surface can be approximated by offsetting a surface and then using Push/Pull to add thickness.
</span>
But I find making everything parametric, really bogs things down.
This comes down to personal preference and specific app familiarity, but for a lot of parts, yeah, following the parametric workflow is slower. That’s why there is a space for direct modeling in industry; it’s used for rapid prototyping and for getting a “dumb model” ready for FEM analysis. I maintain that it therefore also works well for Joe 3Dprinter to make a very specific object to mount his toothbrush to his sink; nobody is going to need to revise the screw spacing on their one-off object because their hardware vendor goes out of business.
In complex parts making changes in sketchup can be a real struggle, sometimes I will just slice of a plane of the the model and redraw the offending section rather than to try to change it.
I sometimes use an obscure German app, “BeckerCAD 3D Pro” that I got on sale for $25, which is, best I can tell, a nerfed and rebranded AutoCAD knockoff with more of a 3D focus (the “real” program is called CADdy++, from a small software and consulting firm that must have bought a lifetime license to one of the CAD engines decades ago). Even the top BeckerCAD version doesn’t include the parametric history, so between that and TinkerCAD, I have definitely done the “glue a new cube on and redo the operation” thing.
I was hoping most actions would have some analog but it seems this is not the case.
In the end, it’s all still 3D modeling. There are definite similarities in the concepts, and most of the differences come down to speed and scalability for certain tasks. It’s only the workflows that are so different. I think the ChatGPT thing is very telling, the way it’s also struggling to map the tools 1-to-1. I will say the latest FreeCAD releases, especially the Ondsel “light fork” that’s already based on the upcoming 0.22, make getting started a lot more intuitive.
Not done freecad scripting so disclaimer that this isn’t tested and the like, I do some python for work though. So, looking at the api docs for make_facebinder it looks like it can accept a second, optional parameter that will name the resulting object. I’d say start there.
I made it work with the help of the FreeCAD Forum!
I’d post the correct script up there but since i changed GPUs today and Mesa drivers apparently bugged out FreeCAD i can’t even start the program right now :D
I really want to like freecad but I have no idea how to do anything in in and tutorials drone on about useless shit like everyone has done for the last decade.
Meanwhile I needed to make a 3d printed part for work so I pulled out a laptop and made the part in onshape which I had never used before. Of course onshape has its own list of shitty stuff like owning everything you make but the point is I was able to make the part by clicking on buttons that seemed like what I wanted. Freecad had like 609 extra buttons that look like they should do what I want but they totally don’t. F360 has about the same intuitive usage but signing in and license and such are irritating even if you don’t have to use different computers.
Does anyone have recommended tutorial for making parts that doesn’t flow like a food recipe with the life’s story as an intro and melded in with the instructions?
Every CAD program has buttons for functions you may never use for the types of objects you design. A lot of commercial CAD has taken the approach of defaulting to a basic limited set of buttons that most people use. You can usually customize the interface to add any extra functionality you need. FreeCAD puts everything out there by default and you also have the option to customize to your needs. How can they possibly know what you need? As soon as they leave something out, they’ll be crucified for it. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
With respect to tutorials “droning on about useless shit”, I’ll bet there are a lot of fundamentals being explained that are critical to understanding typical CAD workflows. It’s not just FreeCAD. These same fundamentals apply to SolidWorks, Creo, Onshape, F360, etc… It’s all generally the same.
The people that I see complain about FreeCAD often say they have no experience and that it’s because FreeCAD is somehow bad. I use SolidWorks every day at work and I use FreeCAD at home. I had no trouble learning FreeCAD because the modeling methods are the same. All CAD shares some common problems that you learn to avoid by experience. However, you need to learn the basics and make some mistakes to get good at it.
Many people start with intensely complex parts and get upset when they can’t make what they want. Practice with easy parts and experiment with different methods. Often, there is more than one way to make something in CAD. Some might be better than others, but it’s situationally dependent.
Learn the basics, practice, and keep learning and you’ll be fine regardless of what CAD you use.
In a quick read, it sounds like the video you are referencing might be an old one. There’s a lot of functionality in sketcher that is relatively new that used to be done in other workbenches. And even more in the forthcoming 0.22 release.
FreeCAD can be tricky, but once you learn a workflow that keeps things smooth, it helps a lot - and that comes with experience. And while I certainly have had to watch videos and read docs on how to do some things, I’ve had to do the exact same thing with commercial tools I’ve used. And sometimes, you just have to delete a bunch of steps and re-do them. This can be frustrating, but aside from the topology naming problem, that’s really the same on the commercial products too - CAD can be frustrating. And in a lot of cases all you really need to do is go back and re-reference to work through the naming problem (such as a sketch or operation referencing a face that is now different).
In summary - it takes time and effort to learn, it’s not a simple tool. Once you start to work with it, and learn to do things the way FreeCAD wants you to, it gets a lot easier and you’ll be very productive.
For what it’s worth, my favorite FreeCAD YouTube videos are from MangoJelly’s channel. Many, many times I’ve been stuck on something and he will have a video on the exact thing. A recent one for me is failed fillets on curved surfaces and learning how tangency matters.
I hope this helps. It’s a powerful, but complex tool, with plenty of pitfalls, but once you spend the time to work with it, it’ll do what you want it to.
Oh, and one more thing - there’s a commercial product Ondsel built on FreeCAD. They are contributing a lot back to FreeCAD (and I think some core FreeCAD devs are part of Ondsel). While commercially wrapped open source can be good or bad, I think this will help move things forward for FreeCAD in a positive way. I’ve been running Ondsel myself (it’s FreeCAD at the core) as it has many 0.22 features in the current stable release.
FreeCAD is the way it is mostly because it’s not optimized by multi-billion dollar companies with teams of developers and UI/UX engineers. It’s very much the do-all-the-steps-your-self CAD package.
That said, there are loads of bad or outdated video tutorials out there, and generally people tend to find one way to do a thing and then market their video as THE way to do it. Treat FreeCAD like Linux, there are lots of “correct” ways to use it, and also don’t expect it to be something it’s not.
If you feel comfortable with it, it would be cool for you to make a short video of where you are stuck, or where you feel you are doing unnecessary steps, and maybe we can help you reach our goal in a simpler way?
I like and use FreeCAD, but I’d have to chime in and say you don’t need a multi-million dollar company to develop better UI/UX - FreeCAD has some notoriously bad workflows.
The established user base and complexity of the software probably don’t exactly make a major UI overhaul easy, I’d reckon, so I would wager the problem is mostly historical, i. e. it grew without critical evaluation and now we’re here.
Yeah that’s fair, I do think that a big UI/UX redesign that makes it magically user friendly in a single release cycle would be next to impossible with the funding the project has though, and unfortunately a long drawn out redesign (what’s currently happening with, say, RT’s UI improvements) would likely have a lot of the problems that got us to this point as well. UI/UX benefits from a closely integrated team working towards a singular goal in my (limited) experience.
Now that I’m thinking about it a bit more, the project moves very slow and is for some reason extremely cautious about contributed core code so when things do need to be improved they become workbenches or addons and splinter the workflow even more.
This PR for example was a massive hurdle for some transparent overlays and went quite quickly in comparison to other features github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/7888
Yes, the FreeCAD UI does need an upgrade. With more on-canvas working, and streamlining of tasks. I’m sure it will happen, but due to limited capacity, that will take time. It’s hard to find people with experience in CAD and programming and UX.
I started with FreeCAD and therefore luckily never experienced a more intuitive solution. So far I managed to achieve everything I needed mostly using YouTube tutorials and the forum. Although it definitely has some bugs I’m really happy with it. =)
i just tried it, didnt understand how to constrain a sketch, and quit to find something more intuitive. why cant my mouse click tell the sketch what it is, instead of manually defining all of it geometrically or whatever. maybe i’m just dumb, but thats how it was for me
You just have to invest the time to learn it. There’s nothing I’ve done in other platforms that I haven’t been able to do in FreeCAD. I also don’t find it harder to learn or more obtuse than other tools I’ve used (Fusion360, SolidWorks, Blender) - but you do have to understand how to do things the way FreeCAD wants you to. Once you get over that, you’ll learn how to work around the limitations and see how truly powerful it is. When you do get stuck, there are tons of YouTube videos to help, and the documentation isn’t terrible.
I think that is pretty much the point. The software expects me to do something a certain way, that just does not click with me and the workflow is not used by other software. So the steps to get there are not as intuitive
I get that completely - though I’d argue the same is true of Fusion360 and SolidWorks, both of which I’ve used to varying degrees - and struggled through similar issues of getting the thing to do what I want. After a few projects on FreeCAD, things started to go a lot smoother, at least for me, as I got into the workflow that worked. It can be very frustrating when you get unspecific errors, or going back to change something in an earlier step breaks everything (which is an especially well known issue with FreeCAD, but can happen with any modeling programs).
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