I’m looking for a recommendation to get beyond TinkerCAD (for 3d printing). I learned it in 2019 and came back in 2025 when I got my own printer. It is comfortable and fine for my purposes but lacks basic things like chamfer and fillets.
replyAnytime I try to jump into Fusion or FreeCAD I immediately hit a wall (like trying pirated Maya when I was a kid).
I would recommend pirating SOLIDWORKS and learning with that. It has the easiest UX of the parametric CAD modellers, and once you know the general sketch-extrude methodology you will find the others a lot easier.
replyActually I think they have a hobbyist subscription which isn't totally extortionate now if you want to stay legal. Maybe get it for a year.
Some years ago I tried to learn CAD by doing some FreeCAD tutorials, and failed. But I hear 1.0 was a big step forward, and the recently released 1.1 is also a big step, and it should be somewhat decent nowadays. Maybe I need to try again one day.
replyYeah it's vastly better in 1.0 than it used to be. I still think you might be a bit lost if you aren't familiar with parametric CAD, but it's no harder than Blender for example.
replyI just tested it out of curiosity and found that viewport manipulation behaves in a very similar way to onshape which feels very natural to me.
replyI've been thinking about trying to implement this in freecad but I'm still exploring the idea.
There are more than dozen different viewport navigation manipulation modes, latest version added two more (Solidworks and Siemens NX). You can pick whichever behaves closest to the program you are most used to.
reply