I've really been looking forward to this! This announcement post is really sweet, and makes me glad for all the folks who worked on it.
Hopefully one day it'll get an easier ui for fusion 360 and Solid Edge users (like myself). I really want to use free cad but every time I try it's super frustrating to do even basic things and often takes so many extra steps I just end up cading it up in solid edge instead
I don't know why Solid Edge doesn't get more love. IMO it's comparable to Fusion for basic part design, and it's fully local.
I actually got a license for Alibre, so I'll keep using that until my hair finishes turning gray.
I was running into some errors with the FreeCAD Appimage in Linux, but the Windows version is running fairly smoothly, and it's finally getting enough helper prompts and heuristic interface things to be less unwieldy, but it's still FreeCAD. For instance, I'm still trying to find the easiest of three or four kludgey ways to project a face onto a sketch, and none of them are as easy as the purpose-built tool for that in Alibre.
I don’t know why Solid Edge doesn’t get more love.
~~No free hobby license like Autodesk does for fusion360.~~
There is a free hobby version.
AFAIK at launch they didn't and now the tutorials and people have firmly settled into Fusion360. Unless Autodesk screws up or removes the hobby license it won't change. People are lazy and learning that fusion360 exists is so much easier.
Oh shit, I didn't know Solid Edge existed. I thought fusion was the only free commercial 3D cad software. Thanks for the heads up, I'll check it out.
Edit: Just had a look at Alibre Atom3D, I think I'll give that a try too, the price is reasonable to own forever.
It's, oh jeez, six months old by now, but back in the spring I went through all the ones I'd tried. I ultimately settled on the middle tier for Alibre, with a permanent license. Pricier than Atom, to be sure, but feature complete for any needs I can imagine for myself as an utter amateur.
Just tried it out, there have definitely improvements been made since I last tried it, I'm happy to see it get better.
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