Let's Critique !!

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Dushyant007

Let's Critique !!

Post by Dushyant007 »

Let's Critique from an eyes of Professional CAD Engineer and their perspective. It is understandable that, if CAD engineers write a piece of code to make Software and Developers do 3D modeling on a CAD software is like, ONCE IN A BLUE MOON. Although I really appreciate the effort which developers made this software OPEN for community.

So First thing first, when I was first encountered with FreeCAD and LibreCAD through Google and its website, At first, I thought it would be great alternative to other known CAD packages, which is indeed but only for
(1) Hobbyist
(2) CAD enthusiast
(3) Small scale industries where mass production is not concern
(4) Job-work oriented proprietorship

As I, myself, an open-source enthusiast, I have seen Blender, Inkscape, GIMP etc. are 65% out of 100% close to their 'commercial' alternatives. After that I have seen FreeCAD and LibreCAD. The very first few days of glance and trying to try out the potential of software, was not expected as I have encountered with Inkscape, GIMP, LibreOffice, which satisfy the basic to intermediate performance of their alternatives.

What I mean is that it is not even meet the basic technical tools behavior and its functionality. For example, have a look below images which follow its sequence behavior and how hard to configure at first for new user.
PAD.png
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PAD001.png
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MIRRORED.png
MIRRORED.png (102.48 KiB) Viewed 2676 times
WHY ON EARTH.png
WHY ON EARTH.png (91.16 KiB) Viewed 2676 times
If this very basic function are this much messed then who would go further (except hobbyist) to test another tools in any workbench.

If one can see, what is wrong when I did Boolean to Merge those RIBS (Green colored) with PAD, the POCKET is Filled ??? Why there is a relation between POCKET and PAD at the same time even though it is exempted while choosing it from Tree view.
Coming to Modeling workbench, I am surprised why Part & Part design has separated whereas it is actually a combined concepts and should be together under one umbrella.

In conclusion, open-source CAD software such as FreeCAD and LibreCAD can never be used professionally as compare to other open-source software. For instance, if I choose Blender with Hard Surface plug-in can satisfy product design and 3D modeling, except parametric modeling and tree view. On the other hand, if Inkscape and Scribus combined, they can be used professionally, WHICH IS THE BEAUTY OF OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE.

So for me it is better to QUIT to learn and try this software further until it has been improved as 'actual alternative' as same as INKSCAPE, BLENDER, LIBREOFFICE, KRITA and so on.

I hope that developers of this software or the community won't take my comment as negative critiques, but as feedback or suggestion and I am sure one day FreeCAD will be the strongest alternative in open-source CAD software.
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POCKET01-02.png
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openBrain
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by openBrain »

Dushyant007 wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 5:44 pm If one can see, what is wrong when I did Boolean to Merge those RIBS (Green colored) with PAD, the POCKET is Filled ??? Why there is a relation between POCKET and PAD at the same time even though it is exempted while choosing it from Tree view.
Coming to Modeling workbench, I am surprised why Part & Part design has separated whereas it is actually a combined concepts and should be together under one umbrella.
This tends to prove that either you're not a so good engineer, or you didn't understand the workflow basis (or maybe both). :)
Why do you want to fuse 2 features that already are in the same body ? Feature editing modeling concept is that stacked operations are already 'fused'. When you use $$$ software (let's say SolidWorks), are you adding a boolean union for each pair of sketches you padded ?
As a sidenote, we see many professionals here that think they are good at modeling. Actually they are good at modeling with a defined software, that generally is quite permissive. FreeCAD is definitely less permissive but is as efficient as others when following a strict clean workflow.
Learning FreeCAD is IMO a good way to also increase its own skills about basic modeling concepts.
And no, you'll probably never learn FreeCAD in a 1-week course paid by your company.
In conclusion, open-source CAD software such as FreeCAD and LibreCAD can never be used professionally as compare to other open-source software. For instance, if I choose Blender with Hard Surface plug-in can satisfy product design and 3D modeling, except parametric modeling and tree view. On the other hand, if Inkscape and Scribus combined, they can be used professionally, WHICH IS THE BEAUTY OF OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE.
:lol: I like this. I you ask to a professional user of Photoshop, she/he'll tell that GIMP (or Inkscape) is a mess but that FreeCAD is a good software that may use professionally. :lol: Looks to me like being a professional user makes people stubborn about alternatives that aren't exactly a copy of their tools.
Also there are people here that makes professional use of FreeCAD. ;)
So for me it is better to QUIT to learn and try this software further until it has been improved as 'actual alternative' as same as INKSCAPE, BLENDER, LIBREOFFICE, KRITA and so on.
Open source software isn't only volunteer developers. It mainly relies on user testing and needs feedback and improvement suggestions.
Quit & try later mentality is definitely not the right one (or you should have never open this topic and just silently wait...).
I hope that developers of this software or the community won't take my comment as negative critiques, but as feedback or suggestion and I am sure one day FreeCAD will be the strongest alternative in open-source CAD software.
:o Could you tell us what is the current strongest alternative in open source CAD software (focusing on parametric modeling) ?
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by hyarion »

Dushyant007, I agree that there are a lot in freecad that can be improved but if you take in concidiration how few developers that are actively working on it and compare that to how many people are working (and gets payed salary) at Autodesk or Dassault, then freecad is not that bad at all. And on top of that, it’s still just version 0.18 for a reason. ;)

Sure it forces you to do things a bit different and yes there still are some bugs that annoyes me too but you can still use it as a parametric cad software. And for the price and the freedom you get, priceless!

It’s alread better in the dev version (which will become 0.19) and I can’t wait to see what will end up in 0.20!

If you really want to help freecad (I hope that was the reason you posted in the first place), learn how to use it the freecad-way and then give feedback on what you think can be improved and give suggestions on how, instead of just bashing on it before you’ve given it a fair chance.
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PrzemoF
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by PrzemoF »

For every post in this thread please submit at least one bug report. Otherwise it's just rant :twisted:
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by drmacro »

PrzemoF wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 6:58 pm For every post in this thread please submit at least one bug report. Otherwise it's just rant :twisted:
I don't know...seems more whiny than ranty to me. :roll: ;) :lol:
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kkremitzki
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by kkremitzki »

I hope that developers of this software or the community won't take my comment as negative critiques, but as feedback or suggestion and I am sure one day FreeCAD will be the strongest alternative in open-source CAD software.
I really wish we could do better than constantly piling on every time someone offers criticism of FreeCAD, picking apart words of people who are often not native English speakers and being borderline insulting. When people go to the effort of coming here and giving feedback in a good-faith effort that shouldn't just be dismissed.

The points being raised here are:

* the interface does new users no favors in terms of guiding them towards a happy path
* workbench choice can be confusing, as in the case of Part vs Part Design
If this very basic function are this much messed then who would go further (except hobbyist) to test another tools in any workbench.
New users who by definition don't know any better can metaphorically get dropped off in the middle of the jungle with a machete, and while that may be sufficient to build shelter and survive for some, that doesn't mean it's in any way sensible or nice to do.

That brings me to the most likely response to this post, which is that people often complain about this, that it's a volunteer project and done when it's done and so forth.

Maybe the right solution here is to acknowledge the issues above, provide links to ongoing efforts to address them or previous discussions, and engage new people in the project instead of pushing them away!!! Even if the original poster doesn't, consider the silent audience who might be reading and agreeing with them, wanting but not knowing how to help.
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by drmacro »

kkremitzki wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:37 pm ...

instead of pushing them away...
In general I agree with your sentiments.

And, I've been known to be less than cordial. :oops:

But:

- these things have been acknowledged and instruction have been provided in his 6 or so posts...in the last 2 days.
- he said himself he was going
- he joined the forum 2 days ago
- he says he's a big advocate of open source software...as long as it's perfect, in his opinion, and he has to make little effort to learn it.

:roll:
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by Kunda1 »

kkremitzki wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 7:37 pm Maybe the right solution here is to acknowledge the issues above, provide links to ongoing efforts to address them or previous discussions, and engage new people in the project instead of pushing them away!!! Even if the original poster doesn't, consider the silent audience who might be reading and agreeing with them, wanting but not knowing how to help.
This stirred me up enough to chime in...so if I take a step back or as they say an 'eagle eye perspective' here, it's possible to comprehend everyone's response (to this archetypal thread that keeps occurring on this forum) to a certain degree. I've had my share of encounters with this 'type' of thread and I'd like to think I kept a cool head more times than losing my patience responding to it (although the forum history would most accurately show this).

We know the issues, right? The bottlenecks.... the paradigm-collisions, the rage against the audacity to not emulate proprietary solutions/habits/methods etc... in short the things that users 'kvetch' about.

FreeCAD continues to evolve nevertheless slowly, this is really the unique and wonderful thing here that is playing out.

So maybe there is a way, a captivating portal (if you will) that we can send people through (perhaps within FreeCAD itself? An FC 'clippy'?!? :twisted:) that can distill these time-tested complaints in to 'A-HA' moments?

This portal would have a section for power-users coming from different proprietary CAD/CAM solutions to help them orient better to FreeCAD (just as a quick example, Joko has been trying to do this with Solidworks).

It would have a section for beginners who know nothing about CAD and nothing about the difference between CSG and Feature editing. Where to start and what not to do (as openBrain described above).

It would have a section for skeptics and critics who complain about the Topological naming problem and the Qt GUI UI/UX. Explain the challenges with OCC and coin/pivy (and the workarounds).

Most importantly it would hopefully educate (daresay, even inspire) users to grok that FreeCAD is being built by their constructive feedback along with their invaluable participation. And if they are interested in being onboarded to help make those changes that they want a reality (of course through consensus or whatever it is we're calling it).

There is a heck of a lot more to write and fill in but I'll conclude here for now. This would be a monumental effort to put together. We have priorities to get our documentation up to par and properly generate the FC API and blah blah blah....many things to tackle. But maybe this is something we can add to the list perhaps?
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by chrisb »

Dushyant007, I can understand your first 3 images, but it escapes me what you intend to do then. We all know that there is much room for improvement, but if you create a messy model, you cannot blame the tool, if the tool provides the possibility of a clean model.
Please note, that good 3D modeling is nothing which can be learned on the fly. And it is inherently much more difficult than 2D modeling.
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Re: Let's Critique !!

Post by wandererfan »

Kunda1 wrote: Fri Jun 26, 2020 9:07 pm An FC 'clippy'?!? :twisted:) that can distill these time-tested complaints in to 'A-HA' moments?
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