User Ratings

★★★★★
★★★★
★★★
★★
106
5
1
2
18
ease 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 2 / 5
features 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 3 / 5
design 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 3 / 5
support 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 3 / 5

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User Reviews

  • FreeCAD has long been a critical tool for me. I employ FreeCAD in a CAD to CAM role to acquire gcode for CNC milling and 3D printing. From FreeCAD16 to FreeCAD18 it has been used on various projects ranging including brass plate engraving, fishing lure creation, retro-design on a multiple barrel gatlin-gun, CNC driven ventilators, brushless DC hub wheel motors, etc. But with the introduction of FreeCAD19 and its upgrade to FreeCAD20, it has become totally useless. There is no clean upgrade path. Bottom-line is does not deliver. I am heading back to FreeCAD18 and keeping my head in the sand.
  • Good
  • Thank you very much for the program! Thank you for distributing it under a free open source license!
  • I'm using version 0.19. Get it from github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD. I've found freecad to be as powerful as the costy packages out there, and it's open source. You can compile it (I have) and you can add in plugins as well. I gave it a 4 out of 5 for ease because it's too powerful to be easy, although the tutorials on youtube really go far in smoothing the learning curve. I've designed very complex gear systems after only a couple of days of playing. I now design things, export to stl files, and then 3d printed them. Such freedom!
  • Excellent program for the design of buildings and structures. Thanks to the author of the project!
  • FreeCad has potential good features but somehow is not intuitive to use. It is time for a clean sheet startover in regards to user features. This is a computer program! There is too much guess work for the user. "Errors" occur with no explanation. There are too many Navigation Styles requiring changing from one to another to utilize every feature. Simple processes are missing such as multiple duplications in a radial pattern in the Sketcher. Maybe I'm just spoiled after using Inventor for 15-20 years. Use engineering terminology in the helps. Carry on.
  • Version 0.16 was fine is worked well enough. Version 0.17 is un- usable creating anything it just tells you it isn't a body or that it's a legacy item, even when you have just made it in 0.17. FreeCAD... retire 0.17 nice try
  • People who continue to download and rate FreeCAD here: please look below in the project summary, FREECAD MOVED FROM SOURCEFORGE MORE THAN 2 YEARS AGO!!!!! FreeCAD v0.17 was released in April 2018 and v0.18 is in active development. Please go to the official FreeCAD website which has an up-to-date download link: freecadweb dot org To those who complain about the unstable nature of FreeCAD: this is not the experience of most FreeCAD users. Did you actually download the latest version? To those who complain about the FreeCAD interface: granted it has a lot of room for improvements, and devs work on it. But they are all *volunteers* who contribute *in their own free time*, please remember that. Plus, anyone who's used parametric CAD software will tell you that without a minimum of training you won't be able to do much of anything. Stop wasting your time here, go to freecadweb.org where all is happening, and register to the FreeCAD forum where people will be happy to help you.
    5 users found this review helpful.
  • In my opinion this software is really promising, but from the usability standpoint, it's a piece of garbage. I couldn't create a relatively simple model without stumbling upon bugs every few minutes and the software would crash occasionally too. You create a box, try to fillet two edges it and suddenly it teleports 10cm lower. What the heck? I was really hoping to use Linux for CAD modelling, but it looks like I will have to install Windows just for that. Oh, and the user interface - it is a disaster and I think they couldn't make it any less user friendly.
  • I love FreeCad!!! The plugin selection is huge, sketch, draft, part .... There is a learning curve, but after you've built a few models it feel natural. This is a project I check twice weekly for updates. If you have a 3D printer I recommend building the parts in FreeCAD.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • This is how regular CAD should work: You draw a thing on a flat plane. Then you extrude that thing into the 3rd dimension. This is how FreeCAD works: You multiply delta with Avagadro’s number to get the apple pythagorean theorem. Then you use the apple pythagorean theorem to spaghettify delta with a circular eversion and the X value of a random pixel on the screen. That gives you Graham’s number. You hemispherize the Y value of that pixel from Graham’s number to get the square root of delta consumptionizationified. Consume that number to a random point in spacetime, and you get a cube. Repeat that whole process again to do things to the cube.
    2 users found this review helpful.
  • Install OFFLINE on BeeFree OS using wizard. Excellent
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • I had high hopes for FreeCAD. All the tutorial videos looked fantastic, here and there a small glitch, not too much to worry about as the goal was still achieved. My Mac OS X version of FreeCAD is unusable and extremely unstable. My user experience in this environment is sad to say a complete disappointment. I will try the Windows version and have better results to report.
  • I hesitate to give even a one star rating. This software is absolutely unusable. Cannot even rotate a 3d object around any of its axes without also moving it around the screen some random amount at the same time. Please remove this software from the world.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • I'm afraid I have to add my voice to perhaps encourage the developers (who are clearly genius's), but also to warn potential users. As many others are saying, the user interface is, sorry, diabolical. However, I have found it to be surprisingly robust, easy to install, and gives me just enough control to easily review designs from others -- excellent steps file import and export, good simple load and save & combine. It needs a ground up interface resign that was al least as simple to use as Google sketchup, and a simple snap grid of some sort instead of infinitely variable placement and rotation (so you can move something and back to precisely the same position) among other things..however, it is free, and currently there is no equal for free users (all I want to do is review things and make suggestions without buying something expensive). Libre is 2D, and BRL-Cad is more of a renderer from what I hear... maybe I'll try that next. So well done .. look forward to when it is finished and a coherent user-interface is added. Lastly, THANK YOU.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • This is nice and helpful software. Please, search the Title in You tube - (how to make facebinder in FreeCA
    2 users found this review helpful.
  • FreeCAD has great promise, but it's young and very much a work in progress as yet. I like its user interface and much about the capabilities so far - though it has a few odities and bugs still. However!!! As at August 2015 it allows you to design a single homogeneous part (e.g. a moulding) as a unit. But most real things require an Assembly of parts (e.g. mouldingS + screws + bearings, etc..) - and that's not there yet - which rather scuppers any serious use yet. You can of course design many parts and even place many components on the same drawing. But that's not the same as being able to assemble individual parts into a component/product/composite-part. I know there are some good intentions and good features in the pipeline, like the Assembly module and true Parametric driven* design capability. Providing these are well thought out and well implemented, they'll make it a great product with much potential. [ * FreeCAD at present allows specification of the values of attributes (eg. length, width, height etc.). These can be changed (edited) and redrawing happens. However, to me true parametric driven CAD is being able to use formulae and variables in the attribute definitions, so that changing a value ripples the effect through the whole model, not just one item. ]
  • Very good program! Thank you guys!
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • It's an excellent software. It still lacks: - assembly management - FEM support for Code ASTER (open source certified engineering sofrware). There's just Calculix support :-( - structured mesh support (it's needed for FEM model patch test) - spline in sketch
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • If the version number of FreeCAD were an integer, my rating of it would be much lower. Since the version that I am using is .15, though, I think that it's a very impressive piece of software. The people involved with the creation of this program are doing a great job. I use Autodesk Inventor in my day job and have previously used Pro/E/Creo. The user interface and sketcher in FreeCAD are bother frustrating to use compared to those. Some of that, of course, can be attributed to being more accustomed to my regular software. Some appear to be bugs - it appears that certain operations are unsuccessful - but this may also be my learning curve with the interface. I added the Assembly2 workbench and like it so far. From what I've read, adding real assembly capability to the software is a major undertaking, but assembly is crucial to making this software more usable. If my programming skills were above mediocre, I would find a way to help with this project. I still might at some point but want to learn the software better first to find out what works, what doesn't work, and what things I might like to see changed.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • It is a complex interface and using rules (example a form must be attach to the prévious form. what ever which parent you chose to create the new form. It is not a problem when you know, thanks to the communoty because it writen nowhere. Until now I do not succeed to make drawing for the work shop with cotation. Rockn says about FreeCàD "Mais vous savez que le futur c'est maintenant" I hope not, the 2D CAD where a lot more intuitive.
    2 users found this review helpful.
  • It's decent in some areas, but full of bugs and with a horrendous interface design and lack of options. It really needs a lot of improvement to avoid being the frustrating piece of software it is. Update: I decided to stop using it after giving it a lot of time. I just can't stand it. It's worse than an inkjet printer in the 90s. I can't remember so much frustration with any piece of software, and most of it coming from bad design decisions (i.e. seems to store external references as indexes to the element in the array of the sketch elements, so when one element in the sketch is deleted, everything done after goes crazy) and bad software development (lots of crashes and segmentation faults -especially when using its Python scripting). I think it will take a lot of work to make FreeCAD really functional, but right now it's not usable for any practical purposes (unless the design you're working on is quite simple). I won't recommend to use it unless you are playing or helping to develop it. And good luck with the latter.
    4 users found this review helpful.
  • Powerful and lightweight program. Easy to use.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • FreeCAD is the CAD software of the future from mechanical to architecture work. But you know the future is now. FreeCAD est le logiciel de CAO du futur pour travailler depuis la mecanique jusqu'à l'architecture. Mais vous savez que le futur c'est maintenant.
    3 users found this review helpful.
  • FreeCAD is a powerful open source (LGPL license) parametric 3D CAD program. It is still under development, and version 0.14 was recently released. FreeCAD has an active web forum too. See the Users Showcase area to see some of what has been done with FreeCAD. There are also forum areas for those people who may have trouble installing FreeCAD, and another area for people who need help using FreeCAD. I have some YouTube video tutorials under the user name bejant000 that are intended to help new users learn FreeCAD to make 3D models. I've been using FreeCAD for just over a year (so yeah, I'm biased) and thought I'd post this info to help new FreeCAD users.
    2 users found this review helpful.
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