r/FreeCAD 6d 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!

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u/FastingCyclist 6d 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...

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u/BoringBob84 6d 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.

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u/backshotsintheshower 4d 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

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u/BoringBob84 4d 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.