@Daniel_Bull I thought it was like a forbidden sin to use blender as a cad tool
@Francis_Courchesne Obviously Creo is going to be more fleshed out then any of the options listed here. It has almost 30 years of engineering behind it. Its just what I learned in school and use everyday for work. So I like it :). I am going to look into the free direct modeling express as well.
I mostly use freecad and run into some of the same problems you’re talking about, but it’s easier for me than either blender or openscad. A lot of my friends simply love openscad, though. Among my 3d printer friends, it’s the clear favorite, with sketchup in second place.
sketchup drives me insane. Even trying to edit native files (say change a Wades extruder body to accept m4 bolts) is almost impossible.
Solidworks.
@Joe_Spanier most of your problems could be solved with a little learning. I was making tutorial videos but it drifted a bit. Other issues such as datums and assemblies are been worked on. Don’t give up!
I use blender and netfab for my print files. When going from my microscopy data I also use Amira.
Amira? I’d not heard of that. Off to google it…
@Joe_Spanier really? LOL, I’ve not heard that one 
I just used blender as out of the list of CAD software I found it was a package I had actually heard of and was free I removed the timeline tweaked the scene a bit to match my printers bed and have been using it since
I do not come from a Pro Engineer/Creo background so I wonder what the heck are “datum planes”. What are they used for? Why would they be essential to modeling? There is no such thing in SolidWorks, Inventor or Solid Edge, CAD software I’m familiar with. FreeCAD’s current limitation is the sketch support limitation, and it’s being addressed. But there are workarounds, I posted one on the FreeCAD G+ community.
The sketcher is not 100% perfect and when your sketch has 150+ constraints it starts to get sluggish, which is why I tend to break down my sketches and not makes them too big. I prefer making multiple successive sketches and 3D features than a single humongous sketch with a single 3D feature. One killer feature the Sketcher has is the solver messages box. At least it tells you what are the conflicting constraints. I have not seen that in ANY commercial parametric CAD software I’ve tried.
Planar faces are needed to map a sketch. If you couldn’t map your sketches it’s possible your faces weren’t planar but BSpline surfaces. I’ve seen that happen to solids created with the Part Loft tool.
Erroneous statement. There is no assembly module yet, but it does not prevent you from creating assemblies. What the assembly module will do is facilitate assembly creation with 3D relationships, instances. AutoCAD does not have an assembly module yet thousands (millions?) of designers use it everyday to create assemblies.
I seldom get freeze ups. Have you at least taken the time to report this in the FreeCAD forum? If users don’t report bugs, how do you expect the project to improve and fix them?
Affordable CAD you might consider are Viacad, sharkfx, moi.
Rhino is also an option too, as us turbocad.
@Normand_Chamberland thanks for your response! I was hoping someone with a free cad background would respond. Don’t take my comments as bashing the software. I actually like it quite a bit and would like to see it flourish. Let me respond to your comments in turn.
A datum plane is a common term in drafting in general. All of those softwares use them and even board drafting for that last 100 years has used the datum concept. It basically makes a plane that can be used as skeleton geometry to place sketches on for protrusions or to reference features too. The reason I was trying to do it is the part design tutorial on freecad’s website uses them in the tutorial but never shows how to make them.
I compiled version .14 and sketcher was significantly better. Still like you said not 100% but much better. The issues I had were simply trying to to make a hexagon for a nutseat. I was trying to use quite a few construction features and found that when you combined the construction and feature geometry constraints it just became too much so I had to rethink my method. Still was over complicated but worked.
It would be nice if sketcher have a construction geometry option with things like infinite lines that need less constraints. It would also be nice if it highlighted conflicting or geometry with insufficient constraints. Pro-E and Siemens NX both do this if you want examples of commercial software that does it. Not that I’m complaining, just ideas for future.
What’s weird with this one is I had earlier sketches mapped to this face. I was also asked to open an earlier save and map sketches to the face. This example I had holes I had made in the face and was trying to add hex pockets to them.
OK you got me there. There is an assembly work bench but the buttons didn’t do anything. Maybe they weren’t implemented in the built I compiled? I thought they should since it had “assembly” in the name. This could also be me not knowing how to use the tool.
And assigning parts a point to exist in 3D space and call that an assembly just isn’t right. Unless you can create relationships to parts based on there geometry and reference them to each other your just sticking to parts in the same picture.
Granted your correct AutoCAD has been doing this for 30 years but PTC and Unigraphics have been doing actual assemblies since the early 90s. I hope the devs see the value in building parametric refs into models. Granted I don’t understand the code behind the work but I do understand the power it brings to the table.
Let me be clear. I WANT to use freecad. I think with some polish this thing could kick ass and the talk even though it’s old of a cam package has me really keen. As well as the idea that someone built a Kuka robot interface. Just awesome and I know some other people that will be very interested ink this work when I come back to my job from break.
Hello Joe, those are good questions. I don’t have much time right now to answer all of them but will come back later. Quickly: that tutorial may have been for an experimental development branch that has yet to be merged to the main source code. As for the current Assembly module it is not working, but a new one is in the works (also in a separate branch). It’s in its early stages so it’s not really functional ATM. Hopefully the official release of 0.14 will include it. Some people are already testing it.