FreeCAD Reviews

FreeCad is very good. There is another free CAD project: sourceforge.net/projects/cadplatform/

I've downloaded and installed FreeCad on a Windows 8 Platform but I am unable to open the program to start using it. Can you please help

Experiece from commercial CAD or not? It is just a matter about the way you are used to work. Once I got the hang on how to use FreeCAD it was really usefull to me. People praise Solidworks and Autodesk products simply because they are expected to be good, and people take the time and learn how to use them. CATIA would provide even more possibilities if you learn how to use it. At the end, the young and hungry generation might learn how to work in FreeCAD at start, then competing tools will not be as appealing at first glance. I really urge experienced CAD users to take the time to truly learn FreeCAD before giving up. Also for an opensource tool it must be easy to get started for a novice, because no one will pay for expensive education if you haven't spent a fortune on the software license. So I strongly agree with the concept of having an intuitive user interface, but I won't argue that FreeCAD can evolve even further, I really hope it does...

FreeCAD rocks!!!! The people complaining should realize that if they don't know what they are looking at they really shouldn't comment. I've yet to have it even work properly on my 64 bit windows system to get moving with it, a graphics issue, but I can see the API started, showing an entry point, Python being used, examples, and the transformation matrices are right there to be had!!! You might not understand what this is very important for, but I do!!! I'm going to give it a go. If I can help I will. I can't thank the people who have put this together enough. All those 'features' that people are asking for can be added by them for the most part. The important work is not only decent, but available where other CAD softwares will hide that functionality to control usage and sales. It's finally time to write some Python for me. I like the idea that I may be able to write something that works for someone else and then them not getting taken advantage of by the OS and CAD companies afterwards. I can't think clearly when I code if I can clearly see that what I develop will be used as a tool to take advantage of the people that I am trying to help in the first place. Kudo's to the crew regardless. You have done a great job already.

I've been using it for a few weeks now. It started out promising and I was able to make some good models for 3D printing. Then I hit a wall trying to do boolean operations. Apparently the OpenCasCade library that FreeCAD uses for booleans is not too robust. The end result is that I can't get the results I want which ultimately makes this a dead end for me. I'll keep using it for basic work, but I would never promote this to my peers/colleagues as a tool that gets real work done. I'll change my review when I can get consistent/quality results from boolean ops.

Cool app, works great!

600 5 star ratings <-- haven't used a professional parametric 3D cad program. 150 1 star ratings <-- have used a professional parametric 3D cad program. A shovel is a godsend if you were digging with your bare hands. It kind of sucks if you had an excavator. FreeCAD is nowhere near professional 3D cad software such as Solidworks or Autodesk Inventor, which cost thousands of dollars/euros. Features are sparse, ui is clumsy. But it's free. I tried to give this 2/5, but I honestly cannot. For I have used professional 3D cad software.

I discontinued Autocad and tried Freecad do continue drawing my house in 3D. I tried to move objects and extrude planes, and create walls... nothing was possible?? When I click a plane I can not extrude it.. the extrude button stays grayed out??? I have tried all kind of options for 20 minutes. Nothing works. Maybe this program actually is capable of doing anything, but the user interface makes it impossible to use. I am happy to teach the programmers how to make it user friendly. Terrible software. I can not use it.

Freecad is nice program and it is getting better with every new version. I use it with CalculiX (calculixforwin.com) for FEA analysis with commercial programs

Promising. But at this point on my Mac only promising. As the old adage said: "If it sounds too good to be true, that in fact is probably the case!" Best of Luck.

Really promising piece of software. But be sure to check version ... Right now it is about 0.something. This means there is a long way to go before it is finished. The software might seem unmature because it is not finished, not bacause it is bad or unusable. Just bear this in mind and you wont be disappointed.

Very nice! Extremely user friendly CAD with advanced features - love it!

Very nice, 10x!

Es un buen software 3D CAD pero no incluye una función de manejo de derechos de autor para todo el proyecto ni para la exportación hacia otros formatos. It's a good 3D CAD software but have not a rights management extension for the project or unless for the STEP file export. Please include a function for rights management.

Bonjour, Logiciel bien pratique même si je suis loin de connaitre toutes les possibilités. Merci Cordialement

Unbelievable. Easy to use, latest technology. Real 3D solids, not just drawn as meshes. But supports meshes, too and 2D drafting. Right hand coordinate system. 3D viewer without constraints works as expected. Try that with over-hyped sketchup! Would recommend to anyone.

Pro tool for free, what a magic

Thank you guys very much for such a great work! I couldn't believe simply what I downloaded today! My plan is also to add some modules specialised for CFD.

Incredibly frustrating bit of software. Extremely unstable. 100% reproducible crash with the loft tool. Unintuitive interface. Trying to simply rotate a sketched part 90deg along an axis almost never gives expected results. I did it once by accident. Simple functionality is hidden or poorly labelled. Mouse control for zooming and panning is horribly unintuitive and doesn't work anything like any other 3D modelling or CAD package.

Honestly - The Workbench interface is not the best choice. Having to understand what each workbench is for should be the last thing a user should have to worry about. CATIA <--- interface is horrid. About 13 yrs behind. I hate working with CATIA. An intuitive straightforward interface would be much better.

The standard orentaion is wrong ... the use of ambugious terms like width which should be X instead is y ... and length is used for X it should be y. Sorry to say this is not a professional engineering platform or any other. Please lets have a discussion about this.. the standard view 3/4 is also wrong ... 0,0,0 should be at the lower left hand of the frount face... Its arguable everything is ... however the view should be from the objects point of view not a god/creater view when you work on the left hand side of the object its the left hand side of the object the not god's left hand side... Thus in the program you have the left side of the object the left side of god and the right side of the object being the right side of god. I am classically trained and worked in aerospace eng. ... Computer Vision, AutoCAD, Have done a lot of "CAD" programing... Rhino makes the same mistake.. POVRAY uses the left hand rule with Yup.... at least FreeCAD is correct in using the right hand rule Zup ... because of the mix up with X pointing out of the screen the standard reference lighting is comming from over the left hand shoulder and it should be the right hand shoulder... all of this is easy to fix.... IF fixed I have an open source CAD text book that could be used for FreeCAD training ... I also own the GNUCAD name... and would be willing to work with you... I have access to Volumetric Cad modules that could be intergrated... sorry for bad grammer or misspellings.. don't have the time to clean this up... carl at Common Good Public License dot org..

Fumbled with it at first and not really a programmer, but after toying with FreeCad a few hours I came up with incredibly complex 3d models in minutes. For architecture, machine shop, cabinetry a very good start. Checked functionality on a few versions from 12 to 13.1823 to 13.1828 I found that 13.1823 seemed the most functional with Win 7 and Win 8 platforms. I've used Autocad R12. FreedCad is nowhere near as tedious to get the same result. Keep up the good work!

Seit Version_0.12 bin ich begeistert über die Stabilität und auch die Möglichken des Programms. Anwendung findet bei mir unter Win-XP und -Vista, Ubuntu und MAC-OS statt. Mit den Anleitungen aus Youtube und durch "try an error-Methode" kann man die Anwendung recht effektiv lernen. Update auf Vers_0.13 war auf allen Plattformen vollkommen problemlos und bis jetzt absolut stabil und kompatibel zur Vers_12. Ich bin gespannt auf die neuen Möglichkeiten in Vers_0.13 und kann nur FreeCAD nur absolut empfehlen!

works nicely

I upgraded to a new laptop but it has 2 gigs of ram instead of 4 on my old laptop and proably wouldnt run freecad with windows 8. The msi installer doen't work with 8 I would like to get into the great program open source is awsome it can grow.