I would not suggest anyone use FreeCAD. The UX is the worst I've seen for any software. Finding any functionality is next to impossible.

Libfive has been superseded long ago by fidget (same author, Rust not C++).

https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/fidget/

https://github.com/mkeeter/fidget

I gave build123d a try about a year ago. I really wanted it to work, but it has a lot of issues, mainly in documentation. I'm going off memory here, and it's been a while, so maybe some of these have been fixed. One of the biggest issues is one of the fundamental classes (I want to say "Part") is not documented at all. And it's essentially the most important class. I tried enumerating all of the methods on the class, but didn't make much progress. Fillets were promising, but it seems once you've got a complex edge from a few operations it quits working, or at least did for my part. You're supposed to be able to do something like b=Box(10,10,10), then access the width as b.width, but all of those properties were always zero.

OpenSCAD supposedly supports Python now (https://pythonscad.org/), but I was not able to get it to work at all. I've fallen back to just OpenSCAD, even though it has limitations, at least I'm familiar with them. I'm mostly just waiting for improvements to anything that'll make it better than OpenSCAD.

They certainly have ambitions – the most recent changelog claims to add "Full PCB design pipeline: schematic capture, routing, DRC, Gerber export, and signal integrity simulation."

It also seems to have a physics engine, a slicer for 3D printing, an embroidery mode, and a entire ecosystem of math crates (https://tang.toys/).

Whether any of that works – or whether it's pure LLM slop – is less clear. I tried to import a trivial STEP file, and it crashed my browser tab [1]. Every commit is co-authored by Claude.

[1] https://github.com/ecto/vcad/issues/7

Got any example results/chat sessions? I've had little luck with LLMs for 3d modeling

that's for PCB design, it's not a 3D CAD tool

3D adaptation of the 1992 Cryo Interactive adventure game.

> If someone knows of a general introduction to 3D CAD which focuses on vendor-neutral descriptions of terminology and concepts, I'd be very interested

I'm not sure there is such a thing. Maybe a drafting book would be a vendor neutral description of spec'ing a 3D manufacturable object on a 2D surface.

Otherwise the way the software accomplishes the task is kinda the point which will necessarily have methodology specific terms in it.

I've had far more success following along video tutorials than written ones. Most written tutorials (as you've pointed out) miss far too much detail. Watching someone do it and copying along teaches all the menu navigation stuff implicitly.

I've successfully learned quite a few EDA and 3D CAD tools that way. It's also effectively the way it's taught in a classroom - the teacher shows you and you copy.

> I don't think it has the ability to select arbitrary edges and apply such features (I could be wrong).

That's actually how it works. Chamfers and fillets are handled by OpenCascade, so they can be applied to arbitrary edges. They only exist on the solid model though, so they are not integrated with the solver.

I'd be curious to see how native chamfers/fillets in solvespace would work, I imagine some amazing things could be done if they'd be part of the solver.

Named parameters will be _huge_ and if it could be considered, I'd dearly love to see a human-oriented input/export format where an individual could edit a text file, import it to get an interactive/graphical representation, then export to the same format for subsequent editing --- if nothing else, a format such as this would allow easy versioned storage of files.

I agree that it is very different from other CAD software, but that is also something I like. When I started using SolveSpace for some easy models, I was a bit lost. But then it clicked, and I really enjoyed the different approach. It is not my main CAD software (build123d is), but I really appreciate the workflow.

I don't think that every oss should try the copy what already exists. The best is when new approaches are tried. The same happened to me when I started using tilling window managers. "Professional" Operating systems don't have that, but I am sure that if more people would try them, many would realize that the workflow fits them better. So, my point is that there is no single best solution in terms of user interface or interaction with a program, and the fact that many people explore and share different approaches with their open source software is something I really appreciate.

Is there a good text (or video) which discusses the basics of 3D CAD and all the attendant terminology and concepts?

Second reply -- if anyone wants to run Dune3D, flatpak or compiled, they must set this flag in advance:

export GDK_DEBUG="gl-prefer-gl"

I discovered this while trying out the compiled version (it's essential for the program to run at all), and for some reason I thought the FlatPak install would have done away with this oddity.

Again, because my students aren't necessarily techies, this kind of hacking shouldn't exist in a program released to mere mortals.

But thanks again for alerting me to this release version.

Thanks -- I missed this. If it pans out, it might get me to shift away from SolveSpace, which has a few perpetually annoying quirks.

Is it a team really? Most commits seem to come from one user "carrotindustries". I am really interested in an Open Source CAD application with good UX, this one looks great. But I don't want to spend too much time on an application maintained mostly by a single developer. The risk of it being abandoned is too high.

I've forced myself to git gud with FreeCAD. It's better. Way better than it used to be. It's also still a very complex and user unfriendly application with a long road ahead of it.

You can make it work. You can also save yourself a lot of headache by using other CAD tools. Personally I value "Freedom" so I will continue to use it despite the difficulties but that may not be the right path for others.

I agree. freeCAD has become a tool that I just use without thinking about it. Earlier versions always made me question my choice and try out other software.

I really, really want that to be true, but my experience trying to adopt it has been really painful.

Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user?

Getting the constraints to behave is like pulling teeth.

It also kind of sucks that you have to have really sparse sketches that only contain one closed figure. I gather you can create a "master sketch" and selectively project geometry into other sketches. But the last few times I've tried the app, I haven't gotten far enough into my sketches before rage quitting to validate the technique.

Right now I am back F360 with their hobby license wanting to escape their regular messing with the terms and conditions.

FWIW, I've been kind of kicking myself for being bamboozled into buying a Plasticity Studio license --- really, really wish I'd instead bought Moment of Inspiration 3D (which is by the lead developer of Rhino 3D).

Curious what folks think of MOI3D (and if there is any other similar CAD tool other than maybe Shapr3D).

Yeah, it's a tough row to hoe --- I've been handling it quite differently in my own project, taking "Design for Manufacturing" to the ultimate conclusion and requiring that the part be designed by actually applying tooling:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Needs a full-on re-write to make the G-code export (and import) work well, but lately I've been focused on exporting to DXFs w/ colour/layer tagging which was just added as an import feature in the CAD tool my side-gig employer does.

G2 fillets are the next frontier. Even Fusion doesn't seem to handle them well. I mean they can be created without much drama, but geometry derived from them is very likely to fail with no real reason.

Hull and Minkowski operations sort of allow one to do this sort of thing, but add to the mathematical complexity in what is probably the worst-possible way....