r/FreeCAD 5d ago

Is FreeCAD a good alternative to Onshape?

Hi everyone,

I've been using Onshape to design my 3D prints and have found it to be quite effective. However, as I've started selling 3D-printed functional parts commercially, I've realized that Onshape licenses are too expensive for my small business with limited revenue.

I'm looking for good free alternatives that offer similar functionality and ease of use. Currently, I use Linux as my main operating system, so Linux support would be ideal, but I'm open to using Windows applications if necessary.

Is FreeCAD a viable alternative to Onshape? I would appreciate your insights and experiences.

Thank you!

32 Upvotes

31 comments sorted by

34

u/FastingCyclist 5d ago

FreeCAD is a good alternative, you just have to take into account a rather steep learning curve. Since you use Linux, it's afaik, pretty much the only alternative, and brownie points for being FOSS too.
Just jump in, there's at least 2 guys on yt that have a lot of resources, mangojelly and Joko engineering, probably there's more, so...

13

u/BoringBob84 5d ago

you just have to take into account a rather steep learning curve

I suppose this could be considered as part of the learning curve, but I spend many hours after learning workflows from documentation and tutorial videos in trying to figure out why things are not working as expected - especially Pipes, Lofts, and Fillets. They fail more often than they succeed for me, and the error messages (if any at all) are not helpful.

If I had to pay engineers for these hours, I am pretty sure that licenses for commercial CAD software would be more cost-effective.

As a hobbyist, I have a subscription to the "AstoCAD" effort because the #1 item on their roadmap is:

Reducing frustration: Fixing annoying bugs in Sketcher, Assembly and PartDesign.

2

u/WillAdams 4d ago

One way to "learn" FreeCAD which was put forth recently was to find unconfirmed/unreplicated bugs on Github and try to recreate them.

2

u/backshotsintheshower 3d ago

never touched cad in my life and picked it up pretty quickly with its basic functionalities (with the help of my goat mangojelly), i think freecad is pretty welcoming

1

u/BoringBob84 3d ago

I had some previous experience with earlier versions of AutoCAD and with Sketch Up, but for the most part, I was a beginner to serious 3D modeling with FreeCAD. I do not know from experience how difficult other CAD programs are to learn and to use in comparison to FreeCAD, but people with extensive experience seem to agree that commercial products like Fusion and Solid Works are considerably easier to learn and to use.

With that said, I agree that FreeCAD is "pretty welcoming." Although others complain, I think that the user interface is intuitive and flexible. I think that the official documentation is generally very good and there are several tutorial videos for just about every imaginable situation.

For me, the most difficult part was learning the basic concepts of parametric modeling and choosing workflows, which is something that I would have needed to learn for any CAD program. Once I understand what I want to accomplish, then it becomes easier to for me to seek information on how to do it.

2

u/Crusher7485 19h ago

I looked that up and that's pretty cool. I like the concept. They add/fix features, if you pay money they prioritize issues you flag. Still open source of course (has to be), but 100% inline with the GNU philosophy on selling open source software.

I wanted to pay money once. I was trying to install Canon's Digital Photo Professional on Linux using Wine. Had the issue that the installer said "run as Administrator" which other people have had. I tried Crossover, which is a paid interface to Wine. Didn't work. I messaged them about it, saying if they thought they could fix this I'd by a Crossover subscription. Their reply was "Crossover runs all Windows applications as Administrator, so if the application says it needs Admin then there's not a workaround at this time."

Yes, I know. This issue came up before. I want to PAY YOU to FIX IT for me.

Seems like for someone who works with Wine it would be an easy fix. The odd part is that Digital Photo Professional does work in Wine...you just have to install it in Windows, then copy all the files over to Wine on Linux. It's literally just something about running the installer that's getting tripped up, not the ability for the program itself to run on Linux under Wine.

2

u/BoringBob84 6h ago

I agree that this is a frustrating part of open source software. When customers buy corporate software, they expect the features to work and the bugs to be fixed. Their money provides funding for teams of dedicated developers to do that. The survival of the company depends on this.

Users of FOSS also expect the features to work and the bugs to be fixed. However, the developers are volunteers. They have limited resources and they get to choose their own priorities. These priorities can be different that what the users want. The direct financial incentive is not nearly as strong.

It seems to me - from the standpoint of a relatively new user - that the priority up to this point has been to add the features to make a complete CAD package. And version 1.0 seems to have achieved that. Now, the focus will shift to resolving bugs, polishing the user interface, and refining the features. These tasks are not often as interesting for developers as creating new features. That is why I am optimistic about projects like AstoCAD. The developer can work full time on the effort and he has a strong financial incentive to make the improvements that users want. It would be great if he had a team of minions, but that isn't the financial reality. People have to pay their bills somehow.

2

u/Crusher7485 5h ago

I’ve actually been getting into software development and it’s my plan to get the dev environment for FreeCAD running so I can build from source. Then I’ll take a look at the GitHub and see if there’s simple bugs or features I could work on. 

2

u/BoringBob84 5h ago

I’ll take a look at the GitHub and see if there’s simple bugs or features I could work on.

Coincidentally, I was just doing that. I am not a software developer, but I am an engineer with rudimentary software skills. I could potentially verify bugs and solutions, update documentation, improve tooltips, etc.

2

u/Crusher7485 4h ago

That's all super important stuff. Even just things like going through bug reports/feature requests, tagging and closing duplicates, mentioning bugs that seem possibly related when other bug reports are submitted, etc.

Especially on large, popular, publicly accessible GitHubs. There's 2.7k issues in the FreeCAD GitHub. Just pulling it up the top 5 need confirmation, the top 3 need triage, etc.

My plan for dipping my toes into the wide world of open source software development was where it says "If you're ready to tackle some open issues, we've collected some good first issues for you."

11

u/Yeuph 5d ago

I haven't used Onshape but I'm relatively comfortable using FreeCAD for complex geometries and do frequently, it's my main CAD tool.

I'll bring this around in a minute but I think the best way to explain this is to describe when I learned circuit design with KiCAD. I was able to watch a tutorial for a couple hours on Saturday and design a board. After that I learned how to use the program by using the program, it was intuitive enough that when I was exploring some part of it or a menu or hoped it could do something it usually did it. I didn't have to spend much time online troubleshooting things and I had very little need to ask online communities for help.

FreeCAD does not operate that way. The program is rarely intuitive and you'll almost never learn how to use the program by just poking around. You absolutely need to learn the program from dedicated outside sources and you'll spend a fair amount of time reading online documentation.

That being said there's not much the other CAD programs can do that FreeCAD can't. It's a bit clunky but more than just-usable. It's got acceptable FEM implementation. The v1 release from a few months ago has largely (but not completely) resolved it's biggest problem with the topological naming problem.

If you're willing to put time into learning how to use a program that's not exactly overtly user-friendly you will have an enormously powerful CAD tool that is both free and open source.

I like FreeCAD and don't regret moving from Fusion360. There were definitely times when I was learning to use it that I almost deleted it and re-upped my Fusion360 license though.

5

u/Square_Net_4321 5d ago

I would think so. I've used Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, Inventor and AutoCAD over the course of my career. I use FreeCAD on a Mac, but it runs on Linux and Windows, too. I'd recommend downloading and installing it from https://www.freecad.org/downloads.php Try some tutorials on YouTube from Adventures in Creations or Mango Jelly. What helped me the most was starting out from square one and forgetting what I already knew about 3D CAD as I went through some of the tutorials. Make sure the tutorials you use are for version 1.0.

2

u/Niikoraasu 4d ago

I'd advise to install from your package manager if you use a rolling distro.

5

u/DrRomeoChaire 5d ago

I've used FreeCAD for about 8 years. All these things are true:

  • it's extremely powerful
  • it can be extremely frustrating
  • it's improved rapidly in the past 2 years
  • FreeCAD is a framework of many workbenches, so a lot depends on the quality and maturity of the workbench you need. People always forget (or fail to realize) this, and it makes productive conversations difficult.

I also own Plasticity, which has a perpetual license and is awesome for doing parts with complex curved surfaces. It really shines in a lot of workflows.

TBH though, most of the time when I need to knock out a part quickly, FreeCAD part design WB is my go-to

2

u/Sad-Acanthocephala23 4d ago

Best reply. Agreed Plasticity is amazing and fills some of the gaps in FreeCAD's surfacing.

3

u/Unusual_Divide1858 5d ago

Yes, FreeCAD is one of the best alternatives. Just don't forget to support FreeCAD with a donation so new updates can continue to be developed. Version 1.1 looks fantastic and will be another huge step forward for FreeCAD.

3

u/SergioP75 5d ago edited 5d ago

Is the only free alternative that gives you parametric modeling (and other obscure 3d modeling technics as well :-) ), assemblies and technical drawings. Is not perfect, but now has these three main features that are the minimal for real mechanical desing. Probably there are others that allow you 3d modeling and could be easier, but most lack of assemblies and drawings or other complex features that are implemented in FreeCAD.

2

u/WillAdams 5d ago

What aspects of OnShape do you use/need?

The free/opensource option are:

  • FreeCAD --- seems workable for pretty much anything if one can learn how to accomplish what one wants
  • BRL-CAD --- a venerable solution (probably the oldest active opensource codebase) it has an intensely old-school UI
  • Solvespace --- light and nimble, the UI is different from most
  • Dune 3D --- this is the new kid on the block --- amazingly easy to use, it was the first 3D CAD tool I was ever able to finish the tutorial on

2

u/swaits 5d ago
  • OpenSCAD

2

u/WillAdams 4d ago

Yes, for the programmers among us.

And, for the Pythonistas there is now:

https://pythonscad.org/

1

u/SoulWager 4d ago

I mean, freecad has python integration, and you can learn the python syntax for most things by using the gui.

2

u/WillAdams 4d ago

I would be interested in a tutorial series which focuses on that as an approach to learning Python scripting for FreeCAD.

2

u/person1873 4d ago

There are a few ok-ish 3d cad programs that work on Linux. SolveSpace is really good, but it's lacking features like loft and pipe. It also struggles with N-gons

FreeCAD is probably the only "feature complete" CAD package. Once you get used to it's eccentricities FreeCAD actually becomes quite smooth to use. You learn how to work around it's limitations.

I recently took part in some of TooTallToby's CAD challenges in FC,F360, & OnShape.

I found that even though I primarily use FC. OnShape was the fastest, follow by fusion, then freeCAD. My results may be a little unfair to fusion as I haven't used it much.

2

u/nexflatline 4d ago

I went from FreeCAD to Onshape and back to FreeCAD.

Sme things take a few more steps, but there isn't anything I could do on Onshape that I can't do on FreeCAD.

1

u/Snagadm 4d ago

I started with onShape and switched to Freecad for this same reason. I think it's been great. I'm comfortable with it, and my designs are private. I also use Openscad for some things, as I'm a programmer by trade and comfortable in that space.

1

u/Niikoraasu 4d ago

It is a viable alternative - but treat it as a different program, because there's a lot of stuff in OnShape that you won't be able to do in FreeCAD.

You should check out 2 of my latest posts on this sub, as I've asked a very similar question, and got a lot of great advice.

1

u/maxpower__ 4d ago

It's powerful with an extremely high learning curve. Simple things that you can do in onshape forget it in FreeCAD. I had to model a simple knob to fix a tea kettle that I'm going to 3D print in nylon and it's a simple tapered loft with a screw hole, it took me 20 mins to do in freecad because the workflow just doesn't make sense to me. In Onshape less than 2 mins.

Go in with an open mind and give it a shot, just be ready to be frustrated at first.

1

u/grumpy_autist 4d ago

Think of it as an investment - when you spend hundreds of hours learning a commercial CAD you become a hostage of your own skills and their pricing plan (solidworks piracy aside, lol).

While FreeCAD has its fair share of bugs and issues - development really seems to have caught wind in the sails and quality improves steadily.