Had to learn FreeCAD last week, and yes, what an embarrassment. For my current work (cnc) you can't really get anywhere without the third-party lib OCL, which they just... fully interface with, but you still have to integrate/install manually? I generally agree with the observation that the developers care too little for quality or usability, considering e.g. the logs constantly throw python errors in your face.

Edit: oh, it was even worse before? I hope they keep going in this direction then

won't solidworks run on wine? i used it for just one semester in a class, but it sparks joy to this day. and even though it's not a cad program, i wish blender had parametric tools

Maybe try OnShape, which is browser based and quite professional?

Seconded, OnShape is my favorite CAD package. I passed it over for a long time because I had poor expectations of a browser-based CAD. Just wish I could justify the commercial license.

The free tier is non-commercial only, and makes anything you design available publicly, so it might not be suitable for some users. It's also pricey, the first paid tier is $1500/year (compared with Fusion which is $680/year).

Give plasticity a shot - not FOSS but pretty decent CAD and works on linux

> The poor quality of FreeCAD is the main reason my 3D printer is collecting dust. As a Linux-only user the proprietary alternatives mostly aren't available to me, and FreeCAD is bad enough that I'd rather not do CAD at all. The Ondsel fork was looking promising for a while, but sadly that died off.

I've only ever used openSCAD, Freecad, and on shape.

And for me, Freecad had increased my use of my 3d printer, originally built in 2016.

Cad has a specific workflow, which is true regardless of the tool. Sticking to the right order of operations goes a long way to having a positive XP as does some basic intro tutorials.

It's not a tool you can bumble around and figure out easily, even with XP in similar tools.

I would think that in this audience OpenSCAD would be an option.

I only do occasional design for some things to print, and I'm always happy to come back to my OpenSCAD text files that I can actually read and understand within minutes, rather than having to try to remember the correct click path through some giant graphical CAD software.

Fully agree that text-based CAD is the obvious path forward. But OpenSCAD won't cut it, it just lacks too many features, starting from basic fillets to more fundamental things like relative object positioning. Check out CadQuery, it's much more ergonomic and future-proof.

I've found that most of my additional feature needs are covered by the BOSL2 library, tbh. It's also a pretty compact core, so being rather limited to me is a good thing. I think I looked at CadQuery a year ago or so, but quickly went back to OpenSCAD.

Just wanted to point out that I started without any cad experience with Freecad this august. I watched/worked through the first third of the mango jelly tutorials on youtube. Since then I designed and 3d printed a lot of projects [1].

It is definitely not a joke. It enabled me to have a very fulfilling hobby.

[1] Examples: a Steam Deck Skadis Dock, all kind of adapters for easy connection of wood parts, magnetic modular mini shelves for everything in the bathroom, a replacement for a broken door handle, a delicate plissé mounting point that is no longer produced, accessories for the microscopes for school …