Your favorite free CAD Solution?

[rock soderstrom]

Hi folks, I would like to expand my construction abilities a bit because my private projects become more extensive.

Therefore I am looking for a free CAD solution with which I can design, plan and visualize housings, front panels, mechanical components, etc. Cool would also be an export function for CAM.

About my background, I have solid 3D experience in game dev. and VR productions.
Today I used my free time to watch some FreeCAD tutorials and I had to realize that the way of working there is fundemantally different. Quite complicated workflows and unintuitive usability.

Therefore my question to you. What do you use? What can you recommend? Are there strong solutions that are not so difficult to access?

 

[JohnRoberts]

You probably get what you pay for... I dived head first in to 3d cad several years back when I designed the IM plastic package for my old drum tuner (tooled up in China, plastic parts pushed in TX). They probably all have quirks and secret handshakes so choose a platform that will support you biggest/most complex future project so you don't have to retrain. I'm cheap so I bought a $99 wonder (edit- TurboCAD) and it worked well enough for my needs, but not without bumps in the road.

Who is you customer for the finished cad files. Maybe ask them for format requirements, and start from there.

JR

 

[Bo Deadly]

Sketchup is an extremely useful tool for quickly sanity checking clearances of parts in an enclosure. After watching the videos on YT, I was able to become proficient with Sketchup pretty quickly.

Designing panels or doing precision 2D engineering is a different story. Sketchup can do precision but being 3D, it's not going to produce DXF or whatever you need to actually have stuff machined. For that I use a combination of tools to generate non-splined single stroke fonts, a Java program to generate SVG for importing into Inkscape and then exporting DXF and sanity checking in Draftsight. It's a complicated process unfortunately. If I do another panel project and I'm feeling flush I might just pony up the coin for whatever the popular CAD solution is.

 

[ruffrecords]

Most mechanical CAD systems I found to be counter intuitive. I have yet to find one that does not need a complete change of mind set. In the meantime I use QCAD. It is 2D but free. There is a paid for version (but very cheap) that has some important extras so I bought that and the how to use me book ( on real paper). Oh and it runs on windows and Linux.

Cheers

Ian

 

[soliloqueen]

It's buggy but i find fusion 360 to be viable. I had never done CAD before. I picked up fusion 360 in about 2 days, but I did have 15 years of experience in game dev (with totally different tools).

 

[rock soderstrom]

Gentlemen, thank you for your feedback!

Sketchup is an extremely useful tool for quickly sanity checking clearances of parts in an enclosure. After watching the videos on YT, I was able to become proficient with Sketchup pretty quickly.

Sketchup is definitely more attractive than most other CAD programs. I gained some experience with it over 10 years ago. The warehouse is another plus (if it is still called that today).

For that I use a combination of tools to generate non-splined single stroke fonts, a Java program to generate SVG for importing into Inkscape and then exporting DXF and sanity checking in Draftsight. It's a complicated process unfortunately. If I do another panel project and I'm feeling flush I might just pony up the coin for whatever the popular CAD solution is.

I'm also quite capable of handling more complex data pipelines, but it would be nicer to have it all integrated into one comprehensive suite. The search goes on.

Most mechanical CAD systems I found to be counter intuitive. I have yet to find one that does not need a complete change of mind set.

So far I can only agree, I think exactly the same. A FreeCAD Youtube tutor yesterday needed 45min to generate a cuboid with two holes. Workflow and GUI straight from hell.

It's buggy but i find fusion 360 to be viable. I had never done CAD before. I picked up fusion 360 in about 2 days, but I did have 15 years of experience in game dev (with totally different tools).

After quite a bit of internet research last night, Fusion360 is also my favorite. I will invest some time here in the next few days and take a closer look at this package. The feature list is impressive, the handling seems to be more modern. I hope the work philosophy in Fusion360 is more similar to realtime environments like Unreal Engine or at least like 3ds MAX.

If all else fails I will convert Blender to a 3D CAD/CAM suite with a bunch of plugins.

 

[soliloqueen]

Gentlemen, thank you for your feedback!


Sketchup is definitely more attractive than most other CAD programs. I gained some experience with it over 10 years ago. The warehouse is another plus (if it is still called that today).

I'm also quite capable of handling more complex data pipelines, but it would be nicer to have it all integrated into one comprehensive suite. The search goes on.

So far I can only agree, I think exactly the same. A FreeCAD Youtube tutor yesterday needed 45min to generate a cuboid with two holes. Workflow and GUI straight from hell.

After quite a bit of internet research last night, Fusion360 is also my favorite. I will invest some time here in the next few days and take a closer look at this package. The feature list is impressive, the handling seems to be more modern. I hope the work philosophy in Fusion360 is more similar to realtime environments like Unreal Engine or at least like 3ds MAX.

If all else fails I will convert Blender to a 3D CAD/CAM suite with a bunch of plugins.

My experience is coming from realtime environments (Source, Unreal) and 3ds max and I figured out Fusion 360 in an afternoon with no consulting the manual. It's perfect for ex game devs. I was able to pretty easily sketch some pretty complicated stuff.

 

[rock soderstrom]

My experience is coming from realtime environments (Source, Unreal) and 3ds max and I figured out Fusion 360 in an afternoon with no consulting the manual. It's perfect for ex game devs. I was able to pretty easily sketch some pretty complicated stuff.

That sounds very good and gives me hope!

 

[thomasdf]

Fusion 360 is not free, but it's by far my pref one ! It's really really great.

 

[Brian Roth]

With CAD, it depends on the desired goal. For years I have used DesignCAD .....not free but quite reasonable in price compared to AutoCAD, etc.

I began with the DOS version perhaps 30 years ago and did a few upgrades into approx. year 2000-ish. Still using that ancient version with Win10. This is now the current owner of the app. I have no experience with the newest versions:

https://www.imsidesign.com/products/designcad/designcad-2d-2021
While my ancient version has some minimal 3D features, I never need them.

Hence my point. I lay out things like sheet metal diagrams after working with the Metal Mongers I selected. Examples attached which I show here via PDF copies. I am totally self taught re. drafting and taught myself how to draw diagrams for sheet metal fab with input from the fabricator.

More comments to follow......

Bri

 

[Brian Roth]

I also used DesignCAD for drawing system flowcharts as part of a entire design.

 

[Brian Roth]

As well a very "quick and dirty" "on the back of a napkin" sketch to check possible floorplans. In this case, I took a tape measure, wrote down notes, then spent maybe a half hour moving stuff on the screen to present to the studio owner. Quite informal, but to scale.

Bri

 

[totoxraymond]

I use qcad for 2d design, then import in freecad for 3d and CAM these days. Works like a charm for me.

Cheers,

Thomas

 

[ccaudle]

I have used OnShape before, and my boys have been using it recently for designing a competition robot (FIRST Robotics Competition). A lot of the FRC teams use OnShape now, but part of that is due to it being an online tool (runs in your browser), which has some advantages for multiple people working collaboratively. The tool is free to use if you make your designs public, then there are paid tiers for having private storage. Could be worth checking out just because you can try it for free without installing anything.
OnShape home page
The downside to an online tool like that is it requires net access, so no working offline while traveling, Internet outage, etc., and if you do want the private storage and product support, you pay eternally. The tool can export to standard formats like STEP, so you don't necessarily get trapped into the tool if you want to switch, but definitely something to consider.

The tools I hear most commonly mentioned for 3D CAD work are Fusion 360 that you already mentioned, and SolidWorks. Although checking just now, I see that SolidWorks has gone to a subscription model as well for their "Students and Makers" license.
Ugh, I see Fusion 360 is the same now as well (and about 5x the price of SolidWorks), and also Autodesk Inventor. I guess that idea of recurring revenue instead of a one time sale is just too tempting.

 

[Bo Deadly]

Ugh, I see Fusion 360 is the same now as well (and about 5x the price of SolidWorks), and also Autodesk Inventor. I guess that idea of recurring revenue instead of a one time sale is just too tempting.

But with a one-time sale you eventually have to buy again to use a new version and go through a potentially annoying transition. So it doesn't really make that much of a difference. As a software developer, I know that the software that's hardest to write and maintain is software that interfaces with a human like user interfaces, printing, etc because there's a lot of subjective opinion about how things should work. So for software that has a very sophisticated UI, $400 / yr doesn't seem that bad to me.The problem I have is when they tether you to logging in more than just once to activate the software. That's a huge foul IMO. I have no idea if Fusion 360 does that. I've never used it.

 

[[silent:arts]]

2D only, and not free (EUR 30):
https://www.lemkesoft.de/produkte/cadintosh

 

[john12ax7]

Fusion 360 does still seem to have a free tier hobbyist license. Is Fusion 360 better than Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor?

Personally I can't stand subscription based software. It's ok if you only need something for a limited time. But for a long time user it's usually much more economical to buy a perpetual license. Which of course is the reason companies are trying to eliminate them, less money for them.

You also need to be careful with "free" software that is not a local perpetual license. Good chance the rug will get pulled, essentially holding your designs hostage until you pay up. See draftsight.

 

[oran.outan]

Sketchup is probably the more friendly but I will not go to it now as the free version get lots of limits (and only online web editor now). You will have to take the pro (and pay for) if you want some extension and computer editor...
I still use it for make 3D stuff and/or 3D print but if you want to used a lasercut or CNC (ndlr 2D) you will need the pro...
or report the values to Front panel express or inkskape for DXF files/2D files... so a little boring...

if you start, sure not very friendly at first but I will give a try to freecad which will be the more flexible/extensible/open next... and free...

otherway, not so much (free) options

 

[industrialarts]

I used to do all the drafting for the installation/ integration companies I worked for. I used either AutoCAD for architectural mark-ups and I used Visio for all 2D and line drawings. For some 3D stuff I used SketchUp, which was amazing for free, but after they decided to charge for a useful version, I stopped using - but to be honest I had started to move away from drafting at that point. But for 3D and animation it was very impressive

You may want to check out Protocase if you are only looking to design enclosures, they offer free 3D design software. Plus, they manufacture custom enclosures, so it's a pretty good all-in-one resource. Full disclosure - I have not used them as I have not been making custom projects as of late but would probably be my first choice if I were to start again.

https://www.protocase.com/price/protocase-designer.php
Also, here is a link to some FOSS programs - 11 Best CAD Software for Linux

 

[Bo Deadly]

Sketchup is probably the more friendly but I will not go to it now as the free version get lots of limits (and only online web editor now).

Mmm, I didn't notice that Sketchup Free is web-only now. That stinks.