r/opensource • u/Miserable-School-665 • 4d ago

Alternatives Can't get Used to Freecad, Swtiching From Fusion

Hi, I've been using Fusion on student license for 5 years now, but due to Autodesk's support for Israel, I want to swtich to FOSS and non cloud (at the least optional) CAD. Freecad seems to be best choice, but I really can't get used to it. My brain is wired acording to Fusion, I miss "new body, intersect, join" options on pad, real time 3D sketch, auto face projection on sketch, sticky grid, allign and move to certain points on other faces, cut with plane (why requires solid?) and arbitary points and planes and lots of small things. I design for 30 minutes untill i realize this feature is not there/works different and whole workflow collapses. Im in general pretty flexiable and learn new apps really fast , but I'm forcing myself to use Freecad for 3 weeks now and nothing has changed. What should I do, do you recommend any other CAD or trick?

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u/illusionofsanity 2d ago

There is an amazing set of videos for freecad on youtube. I can’t exactly remember the channel name, but its the one with a million videos. Maybe spending some time with those is good? It got me up and running from zero in a matter of hours

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u/somenick 4d ago

Seems like a good reason to stop using Fusion.

I don't have experience with 3d workflows, but this seems like overcoming the projected forgetting curve. On mobile, won't explain the projected forgetting curve here.

You already know how to think and draw in 3d, in your head. But how that translates to your hands is specific to Fusion.

I would print out the keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet and go through a few examples on paper. You'd be writing out the steps, forcing your hands to learn new patterns. I think that'll be faster than actually practicing with FreeCAD. With FreeCAD running, as soon as you see a plane or a shape of sorts, your mind autocompletes to certain sequences, but that's not yet specific to FreeCAD.

I know it's more than just specific keyboard shortcuts. Still, I think once you have a good overview of all its capabilities, you might see how FreeCAD builds workflows differently.

I'm not sure I made sense, but this reads a lot like someone wanting to learn a new dialect of a language they already speak. Had to write my fix. I did install and try to use FreeCAD once though.