Generally speaking, I will recommend software based on the audience’s core competency.

As of FreeCAD 1.0 I can’t in good conscience recommend against trying it, especially anyone that is new and just learning the principles of parametric CAD.

I get that it is still not as easy, and it’s especially hard for old dogs to learn new tricks, but I feel anyone that is willing to learn how to use CAD in the first place can now learn how to use FreeCAD.

I have personally found it very fulfilling to learn FreeCAD in the last year and know I’m no longer tied to any source of enshittification in my 3D printing pipeline. (Shoutouts to MangoJelly and Deltahedran on YouTube btw.)

I also feel that as that audience grows for FreeCAD and its popularity rises, that in turn helps the users of the proprietary software. Healthy competition is important after all!

I just want to say this YouTuber got a sub from me last night. Went into his back catalogue and recent videos were really good and I learned a few nice things.

Regarding fc1.1, I really like the update. These guys are on the gas and making substantial updates. I can’t overstate how .9 whatever was hard to use vs 1.0 and now 1.1 is another leap again. It’s just great to see.

I speak as someone that only started learning any CAD as a hobby in the last 5 years. I’ve toyed with every (free) program short of going the pirate route and I’m really glad to see a FOSS alternative start to step up.

I do still have a laundry list of things I’d like to see them fix/change. But as is, it’s working well enough for my use cases!

I was the same way. I started with OpenSCAD and it made way more sense at first.

But what drove me to FreeCAD was when my parts started getting more and more complicated. I think it was being able to chamfer or fillet all the things that really pushed me.

I am in awe of experts of either program though. I think I still really love how openSCAD is so much easier to understand the steps someone took to get to a finished model when you look at other people’s work. And you can just lift pieces out and reuse them.

…because inventor Samuel Morse was american? Or is this a whoosh moment… I feel like I’m missing something…

Ask politely, show a genuine interest, and don’t try to undermine what they say. Also read the room if it’s going into a topic that someone doesn’t feel comfortable talking about and be ready to learn another day!

Not everyone is an activist though. And even those that are, they need down time sometimes. I get it’s tough for those on the spectrum to understand, but in this context, let people at the table just play the fucking game.

Hi Mudkip, you are totally right! Our posts are getting very sterile. We will try to delve into the reason for this and do a better job going forward.

19 years ago…

/me crumbles to dust

My understanding is many of their changes were merged back into Freecad for the 1.0 release.

Due to the two piece construction here you would have to wrap this whole thing in sealant to keep water out because (to para-quote Dr. Ian Malcolm) “water uhh finds a way”.

Dab of anti-sieze or stainless hardware would be my go to if I wanted to pull this apart after a couple years.

We need to convince the billionaires that this is the cool thing for them to do…

Re: marketing etc comment at the bottom

This is certainly marketing, whether for the product or the service. However, it’s also got an educational component which is why I’ve enjoyed Slant3D’s videos - I have no use for a print farm service but some of the ideas and principles they want to encourage still apply to my hobbyist designs. That said, whenever I talk about 3d printing with friends and family, someone will talk about doing it as a business and I point to a service like this for that.

There is certainly a grey area to balance but I would lump this content in educational and worthy of discussion. And that’s probably the biggest thing to encourage with a post here - where is the discussion going when sharing content. As a community grows in volume of posts, stricter standards and forking off communities for different niches need to happen.

I mean, you can use custom search engines, but the only way to get them on android is to sync them over from a desktop install.

It’s such a strange kludge, especially if you a) don’t use desktop vivaldi or b) don’t use sync. Maybe one day they’ll add in the menu item or whatever. It’s getting better but Android Vivaldi has been getting like one new feature a year it seems like.