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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racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

thomas-neemann wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:32 am
racemaniac wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:27 am ...
I don't think it's appropriate to complain about open source software. If someone wants it different, anyone can change it or hire someone to have it changed
Then we'll have to disagree on that. If he went personal and said "the developers must suck since this tool is barely usable", yeah, that would be an issue. There are a lot of people who put their personal time into this, and i'm sure he respects that. But the assessment of the current state of FreeCAD is fair, and should help the developers in getting the current pain points users encounter, and help them focus their efforts on what matters most. I can't fathom why that would be bad. You just want to work in a void and have people always be positive, and then to keep wondering why only a small core group of users uses FreeCAD, and people rather still pay for better tools rather than come to your free tool?
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thomas-neemann
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by thomas-neemann »

racemaniac wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:02 am ...
I think the programmers are more likely to listen to friendly wishes than to such videos
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

https://www.youtube.com/@thomasneemann5 ... ry=freecad
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adrianinsaval
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by adrianinsaval »

racemaniac wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:27 am It seemed to still generate a lot of interest into FreeCAD, since the forum apparently had issues right after that video due to a lot of people having a look here.
highly unlikely to be the cause... in another thread admins mentioned we where victims of a DDoS attack.
But the many deflections i read here make me fear this will forever remain this open source tool by and for the elite who don't mind struggling with lots of half working tools and hard to understand UI.
it will always be open source, and there isn't any elite. This is a false perception from people that get hurt too easily when they are told they need to put in the effort to learn the software. The UI/UX is being worked on a lot lately, this trend is likely to continue and grow. The UI/UX deficiencies are widely known and accepted to be a problem so your fears are unfounded.
And most of us do mind the bad UX or problematic tools, but rather than sh*t on it we try to help make it better and help people learn to use it.
thomas-neemann wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:32 am I don't think it's appropriate to complain about open source software. If someone wants it different, anyone can change it or hire someone to have it changed
It highly depends on your intent, if your intent is to just sh*t on people's hard work then it is never appropriate (FOSS or not). If your intent is to provide useful feedback to help improve the way you can I think it's fair game and I personally welcome it. Of course, the wording should match the intent, "I meant to help" is not an excuse after you insulted everyone.
thomas-neemann wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:17 am I think the programmers are more likely to listen to friendly wishes than to such videos
This is generally true for all people (not just FOSS devs), but I don't really see this video as that confrontational. Like I said before it is an echo of what we see in the forum almost daily from new users.
racemaniac wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:02 am You just want to work in a void and have people always be positive, and then to keep wondering why only a small core group of users uses FreeCAD, and people rather still pay for better tools rather than come to your free tool?
this is not what is being said and at this point you are just projecting negative assumptions about devs for no reason, this is the type of attitude that will make people not listen to you. It is not unfair to demand basic civility from users in exchange of all the work that is being put into FreeCAD.
To be honest at this point it feels like you are just shitting on devs for no reason, have you checked what is going on in development lately? Lots of UI/UX work going on, devs always asking for user feedback on those changes too. Finally the toponaming stuff is being merged little by little, with proper tests and better organization of the code. What more do you want? We can't redo FreeCAD overnight, the changes take time.
racemaniac
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Re: FreeCAD on the web

Post by racemaniac »

adrianinsaval wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:54 pm
racemaniac wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:02 am You just want to work in a void and have people always be positive, and then to keep wondering why only a small core group of users uses FreeCAD, and people rather still pay for better tools rather than come to your free tool?
this is not what is being said and at this point you are just projecting negative assumptions about devs for no reason, this is the type of attitude that will make people not listen to you. It is not unfair to demand basic civility from users in exchange of all the work that is being put into FreeCAD.
To be honest at this point it feels like you are just shitting on devs for no reason, have you checked what is going on in development lately? Lots of UI/UX work going on, devs always asking for user feedback on those changes too. Finally the toponaming stuff is being merged little by little, with proper tests and better organization of the code. What more do you want? We can't redo FreeCAD overnight, the changes take time.
That is not what most people are saying, but it feels exactly like what thomas neemann was saying. I guess that's why you also responded to him and disagreed with his statement.

That particular response was to his statements that boil down to 'you can criticize open source software in any way'. But i mostly agree with what you said, and i'm happy to see some very good discussion happening as the result of this youtube video :).
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by thomas-neemann »

I would find the title "wish list for freecad" more appropriate than reviewing FreeCAD. In my opinion, freecad passed the functional test
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

https://www.youtube.com/@thomasneemann5 ... ry=freecad
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easyw-fc
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by easyw-fc »

thomas-neemann wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:16 pm ... In my opinion, freecad passed the functional test
+1
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MisterMaker
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by MisterMaker »

A review like this is a bit nonsense. The only "competition" to Freecad is OpenScad and CAD sketcher with Blender and maybe some others I don't know.
What is the point to comparing it with cloud CAD that costs infinite amount of money if you want to keep using your models and the skills you learned.
Or pay for Solidworks €7000 with added bugs and lack of functionality outside normal CAD. Solid-works is build to annoy users and push them to upgrade. It's all rigged. (I am a long term professional SW user.....)

For one side I am happy Thomas brought some attention to Freecad, on the other hand he could helped the project a bit more like he is promoting his sponsors.
That he says Fusion360 or any other expensive CAD program is an alternative, yeah maybe if you don't mind pirating or are a YouTuber who gets it all sponsored for free. But for the average Joe it surely is not.

His feedback is moslty correct and yeah we could do something with it but is a bit of an open goal and we al know these issues we just don't have the solutions. (or big corp budget to fix them faster)

Image
From his website: https://toms3d.org/2023/03/23/free-cad/
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MisterMaker
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by MisterMaker »

Just listened to their podcast where they speak a bit more about the issue of not having enough funding to hire full-time devs. Which is in my opinion the cause of the issue.
https://youtu.be/rNc4UMQuB_A?t=1564
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by thomas-neemann »

MisterMaker wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 7:49 pm ...
If Thomas Sanladerer would talk to company bosses, he would know where the shoe pins
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

https://www.youtube.com/@thomasneemann5 ... ry=freecad
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jimmihenry
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Re: Review of FreeCAD

Post by jimmihenry »

Sorry i overseen the link....
MisterMaker wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 7:49 pm Just listened to their podcast where they speak a bit more about the issue of not having enough funding to hire full-time devs. Which is in my opinion the cause of the issue.
https://youtu.be/rNc4UMQuB_A?t=1564

Thomas Sanladerer "Thomas Sanladerer" 441K subscribers: https://www.youtube.com/@MadeWithLayers
Stefan Hermann "CNC Kitchen" 467K subscribers: https://www.youtube.com/@CNCKitchen/videos

Have a podcast about 3D printers and FreeCAD, might be interesting. It is called "The Meltzone" like melting plastic...

Grab the popcorn and enjoy the ride @26:04 minutes. And be sure to leave a thumb up :lol:. Just kidding, do what you wont...
phpBB [video]


Make FreeCAD as good as F to show those gentleman, the best laugh is the last one!
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