Can't even take a short break from 3D designing stuff. Glad I'm switching over to FreeCAD. All I wanted was to grab some dimensions from an old model.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Ah FINALLY there is a good fork. FreeCAD exists now for like 15 years, but almost no one uses it because the ui absolutely sucks. And the worst part is, the maintainers know it but they refuse to change it because they think they're geniuses and everyone else should conform to their twisted vision of cad ui instead of following the standard of literally every other cad program out there.
IMO the bigger problem with FreeCAD is the topological naming problem. It's very easy to get frustrated because your model broke due to a change you made in an earlier feature.
The UI isn't amazing though, and that unfortunately happens quite a bit with open source software. Hopefully it'll go the way of Blender and KiCAD with an eventual major release that overhauls the UI.
Yeah, coming in with no prior CAD experience I actually think freecad's interface makes sense, especially since I've used it for both 3d printing (one workbench) and mocking up building plans (a different lumber one I was able to download as an add-on - very cool).
I did run into the topological naming problem once though, and I'm far from a power user, so I've been meaning to check out the real thunder fork.
I keep bashing my head against the horrible UI way more as a beginner. Just as I manage to bring the million toolbars into a reasonable arrangement, I switch workspaces and then they're all messed up again. I couldn't care less about the topological naming problem right now
Hmm, that actually sounds like a bug. I haven't seen that on my end (once I set the locations of options in my toolbars they stay there, even after restarts). You may want to report that on their issue tracker. Sorry that you're having a rough experience!