So I recently switched to All Linux, All The Time. No real complaints. But back in my windows days, I more or less realized that Fusion 360 really is That Damned Good. Basically every aspect and feature is intuitive in ways that just seem wrong for a CAD tool
It looks like I can use wine and some funky scripts to run a significantly older build and… I might do that. Or I’ll go back to tinkercad. And, obviously, FreeCAD is what I should use and FreeCAD might have the worst UX on the planet.
Are there any good middle ground tools? Not quite as good as FreeCAD but works on linux/wine? Or am I gonna get my TinkerCAD on?
Thanks
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m all about the FreeCAD. I was one of the main people answering questions and posting on the FreeCAD reddit before reddit completely died on the 10th of June. Feel free to ask questions here.
I would 100% sub to a FreeCAD comm!
Thanks for that! Learned a lot on that subreddit.
OpenSCAD does the job for me, though I’m not particularly experienced in CAD things. I’ve tried FreeCAD and Fusion 360 (on Mac) previously and they just look too confusing for my taste.
With OpenSCAD I can at least approach the modelling in the same way I approach things at my say job: by just writing some code 👩💻
Example: https://github.com/ddnomad/printables/blob/main/models/dell_t420_525_bay_drive_bracket/main.scad
I can agree with you that FreeCAD has a terrible UX and isn’t intuitive. With that said FreeCAD is a powerful tool to use especially for the price.
If you wanna try it here’s my workflow for a new doc:
-
Open a new Project
-
Go to Part Design Work Bench
-
Follow the Task Suggestions of, Make New Part (blue stair case), then create a new sketch
-
When making a sketch make the entire shape, White Lines are what will be projected, Blue Construction lines are not
-
Exit the sketch and pad it out
-
Build off the existing sketch faces and start new sketch
-
goto step 4 until the entire shape is done
FreeCad to Fusion 360 is like Gimp to Photoshop. They both do the same thing, but the workflow is different. While FreeCAD does have it’s flaws, and trust me I’ve seen a large amount of them especially on large CAD designs with multiple parts. I honestly prefer it since it works no matter the OS I am on.
-
I actually learned to love FreeCAD, and was originally running it on windows. It’s quirky, but very powerful, and keeps improving with each revision. With that, the switch to Linux was seamless.
I’m slowly making my way through the learning curve for FreeCAD. Already in far enough that I have no plan to touch Fusion again.
Agree the UI isn’t great, but once you get the tools organised how you want them and get your head around the slightly different ways of doing things it is super powerful.
I switched from Fusion to OnShape a while back, because it has an Android app and works great on my tablet. It has pretty much all the features I ever used in Fusion (exclusively for 3D printing designs) and I find it as intuitive as Fusion. I recommend checking out Teaching Tech on YouTube, they have an awesome tutorial for OnShape.
I use OnShape and it works great. There is also Plasticity, a newer CAD application that has a Linux version and looks promising.
OpenSCAD is my primary CAD program, but it’s not for everyone. CadQuery looks interesting but in a similar vein. I’ve used Onshape some and liked it, but it’s not free as in speech or beer, but it does have a free hobbyist level (at present).
If you like OpenSCAD, you should definitely give CadQuery a try. I’ve used both, and CadQuery absolutely blows OpenSCAD out of the water.
I love OpenSCAD. I use it very frequently to make designs for home 3D printing.
You can give QCAD a try.
QCAD is a free, open source application for computer aided drafting (CAD) in two dimensions (2D). With QCAD you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schematics and diagrams. QCAD works on Windows, macOS and Linux. The source code of QCAD is released under the GPL version 3 (GPLv3), a popular Open Source license.
The current version of QCAD is 3.28.
As others have said, Freecad is actually really good once you get used to it. I use the real thunder fork for the sake of the Topo naming fix. I have also used openscad, but only if I’m making something customizable to share.
Honestly if you want best free cad program there is nothing close to FreeCAD, sure UI isn’t super modern but as someone who had to use CATIA in high school it looks amazing, just slap dark theme on it so it doesn’t hurt your eyes. If you are up for paid version there is BricsCAD but price is spicy, not sure if it is possible to find pirated version for linux or if you are even interested in fucking with that.
Not everyone cup-of-tea, but build123d/cadquery is pretty good if you like programming. I used it to make some dovetails joint which would be annoying to do with gui cad.
Im also all Linux and like many of the other commenters, I mainly use openscad as my primary and freecad. There is a lot of free training video and walkthroughs for both.
I’ve heard that SolidEdge and OnShape were good obscure linux CAD alternatives. is the standard though, so you might not find a lot of functionalities in the former ones.
I do most of my modest work in OpenSCAD though so I might not be the best for recomendations
Recently I used SALOME for doing CAD. The Shaper work bench has parametric modeling with the sketches that you extrude or cut from. I found it powerful and easy enough to use that I replaced my freecad workflow with it. The big thing that sold me over freecad was the simplicity of creating more complex triangulations for stl export, and easily grouping faces for export into different files.
I haven’t tried any complex surface creation, I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls short in that regard. I guess feature wise it probably doesn’t have everything freecad or fusion 360 has, but I found it works great for my needs. Great for 3d printing and geometry creation for CFD simulations.
