I found FreeCAD more difficult to learn than other 3D CAD programs, but the 1.0 release that came out about a year ago has improved things a lot. It also looks like 1.1 (being stabilized for release right now) is going to add a lot of nice features.
It seems like the product is having a bit of a renaissance. I'm not sure how much of that is coasting on the work that Ondsel (now defunct) did over the past few years, and how much is sustainable momentum. Hopefully more the latter.
The boundary representation kernel that FreeCAD uses (OpenCASCADE) has some limitations, and it's unlikely that those will be resolved. They make for a bumpy ride sometimes.
I think FreeCAD is almost becoming usable enough that it's reasonable to try to learn it if you want to use free software, or want to create models that you can use commercially.
If you don't care about commercial use, or you are willing to pay, I think OnShape is more powerful and significantly easier to learn and use. It uses the Parasolid kernel, which is more robust than OpenCASCADE. It's free for non-commercial use with the caveat that your models have to be publicly visible. https://www.onshape.com/en/products/free
If you want to learn FreeCAD, here's what I recommend doing:
Nope, there were no ads at the beginning. It was a big deal when they announced AdWords. And the ads were unobtrusive and often quite useful at the beginning.
Google was quite vocal about clearly marking ads, in contrast to Overture, Yahoo, and others who mixed ads into search results in the late 90s / early 2000s. I think the period when Google lightened, then entirely removed the colored background that made it easy to identify ads was an inflection point in their fall from being a company that genuinely focused on users towards becoming just another megacorp run by profit-maximizing MBAs.
Seconded. I tell people it's several books in one, all of which are brilliantly executed:
- Biographies of the preeminent scientists of the 20th century
- A history of late 19th and early 20th century physics and chemistry. Much more technical than many history books, which is a drawback for some audiences, but probably an attraction for a lot of people here.
- A history of World War I and World War II
- A history of the engineering and operation of the Manhattan Project
Highly, highly recommended for this audience.
One caveat: I tried the audiobook and couldn't stand the narrator. Your mileage may vary, but I recommend reading it.
> Biographies of the preeminent scientists of the 20th century
This was the only parts of the book I skimmed over / skipped. While interesting, many of them go back to their parents and childhood upbringing which, again are interesting, but being more interested in the science/engineering I would skip ahead until their story was more relevant.
- In popular camping/hiking areas, there's just too much of it.
- In dry areas it can take decades to break down.
- In rocky areas it's really hard to bury it deep enough (and so people often don't).
- In some areas (like the deserts of the southwestern U.S.) the ground is really fragile and shouldn't be disturbed. Cryptobiotic soil can take decades or centuries to regrow.
- People often don't move far enough away from camp sites / trails / waterways before they dig a hole.
And even in areas where it's easy to dig, the soil is moist enough to it break down, and it's easy to move far enough from sensitive areas, people are just lazy and often don't dig holes that are deep enough or far enough away.
If people were super conscientious (maybe it works great in Japan?) and/or only did low density camping/hiking, it might not be a problem—and indeed in many areas it isn't really a problem. But I've also been to campsites where if you take 20 steps from the trail you can see 5 or 10 places with TP peeking out from the soil within a small radius—and who knows how many more that you can't see.
And if it does, you should get your wiring checked! If voltage is sagging enough to dim your lights with such a small load, that indicates a lot of resistance somewhere in the wiring, which could lead to fires.
I worked on search at Google around that timeframe, and it definitely used an index. As far as I know, it has from the very beginning.
You can solve the ordered list of words problem in ways that are more efficient than grepping over the entire internet (e.g. bigrams, storing position information in the index).
It seems like the product is having a bit of a renaissance. I'm not sure how much of that is coasting on the work that Ondsel (now defunct) did over the past few years, and how much is sustainable momentum. Hopefully more the latter.
The boundary representation kernel that FreeCAD uses (OpenCASCADE) has some limitations, and it's unlikely that those will be resolved. They make for a bumpy ride sometimes.
I think FreeCAD is almost becoming usable enough that it's reasonable to try to learn it if you want to use free software, or want to create models that you can use commercially.
If you don't care about commercial use, or you are willing to pay, I think OnShape is more powerful and significantly easier to learn and use. It uses the Parasolid kernel, which is more robust than OpenCASCADE. It's free for non-commercial use with the caveat that your models have to be publicly visible. https://www.onshape.com/en/products/free
If you want to learn FreeCAD, here's what I recommend doing:
- Install OpenTheme and OpenPreferences. https://old.reddit.com/r/FreeCAD/comments/1j82svt/i_really_w.... These fix a lot of the sub-optimal defaults that FreeCAD ships with.
- Increase the marker, font, and line sizes in sketcher and display preferences.
- Watch Mango Jelly and Joko Engineering videos on YouTube to learn how to do things. Focus on videos about FreeCAD 1.0.
Good luck!