I think that's a little unfair. The bigger issue IMO is that FreeCAD doesn't quite share the same workflow as other (proprierary) CAD packages, so someone coming from proprietary CAD also needs to unlearn habits that were previously fine but now potentially harmful. For example, adding chamfers and fillets in FreeCAD pretty much should only be done at the end to avoid toponaming issues, which is less of an issue in other packages.

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

No it's not. Unlearning old habits and thought processes is always the first step in learning new things. But to be fair, it's also the most difficult part.

While other CAD packages do have a better failure path to follow, they still can fail at the same points as FreeCAD. And you still really should be following best practices for ANY CAD package to avoid failures. But people are nothing if not lazy. And fillets and chamfers just suck in any CAD package. It's always been my practice to never add them until I was done with the modeling. And if major changes where needed, I would remove them if I suspected they could even remotely cause an issue during a change to a model.

[–] KingRandomGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

I do think the point about all CAD packages having failure paths is a little overblown. Yes, you can definitely get proprietary CAD to break but in my experience (at least with Solidworks and Fusion), it usually requires much more complex parts than FreeCAD parts. Post 1.0 the situation is definitely better though.

You're right that users should try following best practices from day one, but realistically most users are not going to learn everything correctly automatically. They might use an out of date tutorial, or might have just learned by tinkering themselves.

The point I was trying to make was that because FreeCAD operates differently than other CAD programs do to one another and because it's generally a bit more brittle and demanding of the user, I can't say I blame anyone for not wanting to switch to it if they already have a CAD program they're proficient with. You could call it being lazy, but from a practical standpoint there isn't necessarily a ton to gain for a relatively large amount of time investment required to be capable of using it.

I really hope FreeCAD improves enough one day in the new user experience department. I love the software and have been using it as my tool of choice for years now, but evidently not everyone thinks it's worth the time investment.