Review of FreeCAD

Have some feature requests, feedback, cool stuff to share, or want to know where FreeCAD is going? This is the place.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by thomas-neemann »

adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:30 pm ...
I haven't had any problems with occt or tnp or flipping in my fast workflow. (about 10 000 freecad hours)
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

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adrianinsaval
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

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thomas-neemann wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:36 pm I haven't had any problems with occt or tnp or flipping in my fast workflow. (about 10 000 freecad hours)
please stop advertising yourself here, honestly this is approaching the level where I would consider it spam...
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thomas-neemann
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by thomas-neemann »

adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:42 pm ...
i'm just trying to balance the negative comments about freecad
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racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:30 pm the problem is that some of those issues have nothing to do with user experience, the thickness tool not working is a problem in occt, no matter how good you make the FreeCAD interface that won't change, we need people working on improving occt too.
Then maybe FreeCAD shouldn't offer functionality that occt can't properly handle.

But in the end, for the end user, the distinction between FreeCAD and occt doesn't matter. Maybe it makes you happy that you can blame someone else, but at the end of the day it doesn't change the fact that FreeCAD has serious usability problems. And if some of its major issues are outside of the projects control, then that's maybe even worse, since then it may never get solved?
racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

thomas-neemann wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:36 pm
adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:30 pm ...
I haven't had any problems with occt or tnp or flipping in my fast workflow. (about 10 000 freecad hours)
And how many hours did you need to find the subset of FreeCAD that forms a good workflow to work with? In the end that's the issue. Like what Thomas tried in the video, it offers you multiple tools to create a shell, but if you dare to use them, good luck.
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adrianinsaval
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by adrianinsaval »

racemaniac wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:56 pm Then maybe FreeCAD shouldn't offer functionality that occt can't properly handle.
there are situations where it works so it's available
the distinction between FreeCAD and occt makes you happy that you can blame someone else
I'm not blaming anyone or happy about the situation, I'm pointing out facts so that you have proper understanding of the situation and the root problems and therefore realistic expectations.
but at the end of the day it doesn't change the fact that FreeCAD has serious usability problems.
I have not denied this and I am one of those trying to help any way I can on this and generally support this being improved. But making freecad fancy looking is not the end of it, there is more work to do and people should be aware of that.
And if some of its major issues are outside of the projects control, then that's maybe even worse, since then it may never get solved?
hard to solve and not solvable are not the same thing, personally I hope that as funding increases the FPA can sponsor development of OCCT whether through that company or in a fork.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by thomas-neemann »

racemaniac wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:59 pm ....

it took a long time because most of the recommendations are partdesign / sketcher. to make it easier for interested people, i report here about my experiences and offer freecad training
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

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racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

thomas-neemann wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:20 pm
racemaniac wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:59 pm ....

it took a long time because most of the recommendations are partdesign / sketcher. to make it easier for interested people, i report here about my experiences and offer freecad training
Is your workflow documented somewhere. And ideally, if your workflow is so reliable, FreeCAD should start altering its interface to promote your workflow, so we don't need thousands of hours of experience, or special training to discover it, but then that's just how FreeCAD works :).

I think that's the point of Thomas' video. FreeCAD is clearly a powerful tool, but figuring out how to leverage it is way harder than it should be.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by thomas-neemann »

racemaniac wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:44 pm ...
Is your workflow documented somewhere....
no, but there are many youtube videos about it. nothing needs to be changed on freecad for this
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racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

adrianinsaval wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 5:08 pm
racemaniac wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 4:56 pm Then maybe FreeCAD shouldn't offer functionality that occt can't properly handle.
there are situations where it works so it's available
I think that's a really interesting discussion to have. You make it sound so obvious, but is a feature with a pretty low reliability (let's say anything below 90% reliable, it fails in at least 1 in 10 cases in real world usage) really worth anything? You could of course say that in those 9 out of 10 cases it works. But after a while you've worked towards using it, and then it fails, again, and you start wondering "is it really worth having this in my toolset?".

Things like this are the prime example of what drives new users away from software, and that greatly annoys many experienced users too. Yet it works sometimes so we keep it in?
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