I am not a design draftsman, I’m not an engineer. My workflow is usually: I put something on the scanner, load the calibrated scan, trace the outline, throw a few sketches on various planes in there, round a few edges, print it and I’m done.

Fusion 360 scratches that itch very well but requires me to keep a Windows VM and also their free model felt more and more unusable. OnShape is a nice substitute that works fine for me, but I don’t like the “free or 1500€/year” approach. Without a middle ground subscription for makers it feels that I could lose anything the second their energy prices for servers go up or something.

The list of CAD software is exhaustive, so I am looking for recommendations that fit my “eh, click, click, click, good enough” workflow. FreeCAD is way too unintiuitive for that. I have tried getting into it, but 3D printing is a tool for me and the learning curve quickly made using it another hobby.

So. Suggestions welcome. Scalding criticism about my lack of enthusiasm and consumer mentality not so much, but I guess that comes bundled with useful advice, so, eh, I’ll take it.

  • TheMonkeyLord@lemm.eeEnglish
    19·
    3 days ago

    Personally I love openSCAD, but it is probably really unintuitive to someone without programming experience and even then has it’s own limitations.

    FreeCAD is in a weird position ATM, it is actually really good! …just not in the stable release… The Dev version is significantly more palatable, and they even went on a feature freeze to really push through with their major 1.0 release.

    For now though Onsdel (Sort of a fork of FreeCAD packaged with Dev release and UI improvements) has worked really well for me thus far!

    • mortalic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Is there a good tutorial or better yet, videos showing how to use ondsel? When I tried to use it, everything pointed at free car and the ui was too different.

      • TheMonkeyLord@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I am not certain, I have used FreeCAD tutorials for Onsdel to great success.

        I think what I do is just listen to the tool name they reference, and then just look where I assume it would be to find it, rather than trying to find tools in the same places as them