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A comment on FreeCAD 0.19. Parent comment

Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by justinclift on Sunday March 21, 2021 @08:39PM (#26535511)
> ... or simply pirate Solidworks.

Solidworks has a Community Edition now, that's free for Hobbyists:

https://www.solidworks.com/support/community-download#no-bac...

That edition seems to have the stuff that most Hobbyists would be after. :)

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by IshKebab on Monday March 22, 2021 @09:37AM (#26540572)
Oh wow I've been looking for something like that for ages! Not surprising I didn't find it given that that page seems to be literally the only place they mention it.

Also, unfortunately it seems to already require a licence key of some kind to download. How do you even get one of those?

There's a reddit thread about it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SolidWorks/comments/iv3ocg/solidwor...

Someone posted a key, but I don't feel like stealing theirs (may as well pirate it if I'm already stealing license keys).

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by justinclift on Monday March 22, 2021 @11:49PM (#26550878)
Oh, you're right. Just tried it again now, and it's clearly not working properly.

I've just emailed their customer support people to find out what's going on.

Hopefully they haven't changed their mind about giving people access to Solidworks for free. A decent alternative to Autodesk's Fusion 360 is kind of needed. ;)

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by justinclift on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @05:56AM (#26565279)
Asked the Solidworks Customer Service people about this, and they said to use "XSEK12" as the serial number when filling out that form.

You may need to choose "Maker" in the user type drop down too (unsure).

When trying it quickly after receiving the email, it seemed to work fine. :)

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by IshKebab on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:02AM (#26621681)
Strange because they told me that that version is only for "SWUG Leaders" (SolidWorks User Group), and they are planning a separate version for makers that costs $99/year and also seems to be some shitty cloud-based version (it's exact nature is shrouded in marketing nonsense):

https://discover.solidworks.com/3dexperience-solidworks-make...

:/

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by justinclift on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:03AM (#26632841)
Yeah. I gave them a throw-away email address for that "Makers" sign up page a few weeks ago when they announced it.

They immediately began spamming it. Ugh.

Lost all interest in it at that point. They really don't seem to understand their audience.

Since we're on the subject of free "Community Edition" CAD software, Siemens Solid Edge seems decent (but no CAM):

https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/plmapp/education/soli...

Should be completely fine for 3D printing. :)

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Re:FreeCAD 0.19 by JasonFruit on Sunday March 21, 2021 @10:04PM (#26536077)
Or join the Experimental Aviation Association, which is super cheap and comes with free Solidworks.
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