I used SolidWorks professionally in 2008. FreeCAD in 2026 is nowhere near as good as SolidWorks was in 2008. But for what I use it for today, it’s plenty good enough. And it has three things SolidWorks doesn’t have:
It’s free as in libre
It’s free as in beer
It’s not a fucking cloud app
That makes putting up with FreeCAD’s idiosyncrasies totally worth it to me.
You can create fairly complex parts. Hell, I designed the 3D-printed glasses I wear and accessories in FreeCAD 🙂
What it’s really not terribly good at is assemblies. If you need assemblies and simulating moving several parts together seamlessly, look elsewhere.
Another CAD solution you may want to look at is OpenSCAD: it’s really nice if you like the programmer approach - i.e. you design the part by typing the parametric sequence to create it in a text file. It’s great for parts that need to be configured with parameters. But it’s all kinds of awful for anything curvy, and it doesn’t do assemblies.
![[Sway] My Void linux daily driver](https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.world%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F97b42b85-ccb6-4b20-bc77-a1e7750efd90.png){kind=link}
How is FreeCAD to use compared to SolidWorks?
I used SolidWorks professionally in 2008. FreeCAD in 2026 is nowhere near as good as SolidWorks was in 2008. But for what I use it for today, it’s plenty good enough. And it has three things SolidWorks doesn’t have:
That makes putting up with FreeCAD’s idiosyncrasies totally worth it to me.
I really want something reliable for Linux. I only do mechanical stuff; I don’t need all the complicated electronics and flow evaluation.
You can create fairly complex parts. Hell, I designed the 3D-printed glasses I wear and accessories in FreeCAD 🙂
What it’s really not terribly good at is assemblies. If you need assemblies and simulating moving several parts together seamlessly, look elsewhere.
Another CAD solution you may want to look at is OpenSCAD: it’s really nice if you like the programmer approach - i.e. you design the part by typing the parametric sequence to create it in a text file. It’s great for parts that need to be configured with parameters. But it’s all kinds of awful for anything curvy, and it doesn’t do assemblies.