Is there no good inexpensive CAD software?
I am not an engineer. I'm not even good at math, and my spatial reasoning skills are nonexistent. With that in mind, here are the CAD programs I've tried.
Blender, Pros: Free, surprisingly comprehensive. Cons: Not parametric, can't precisely measure or constrain models, all the extra stuff you get like rendering has no use in 3D printing.
Onshape: Pros: Easy to use, convenient (I've successfully edited a model on my phone), free*. Cons: Runs on someone else's computer in the cloud, not private, enshittification is sure to come shortly if history is any indication.
Fusion360: Pros: seems to be what everyone else is using. Cons: enshittification is already happening, runs locally with limited saves in the cloud so you don't own your files but also don't get the run anywhere convenience of the cloud.
Plasticity: Pros: buttery smooth workflow, pay once run forever, runs and saves locally. Cons: Not peremetric so hard to go back and adjust things later.
FreeCAD: Pros: free, open source. Cons: workflow as rough as sandpaper, constantly crashes.
Plasticity and Onshape have proven to be the most productive choices for me. If only Plasticity were parametric it would be the perfect software for me personally.
I want to like FreeCAD, I really do, but it's so hard to use. I love Plasticity, but it's meant for making 3D assets for games etc. using hard surface modelling, not so much for manufacturing.
If I may digress for a moment, I work as a network admin. I'm familiar mostly with Cisco at work, but use Ubiquiti at home. Cisco equipment is monstrously expensive from a consumer or prosumer perspective, and the only way to get true hands-on experience is to buy used equipment from ebay which may still be pricey.
Ubiquiti's market strategy seems to be to make the kind of gear that a network admin would want in their home. It's inexpensive relative to the big fish like Cisco, but has a fairly comprehensive feature set. The idea is to entice Joe IT guy to buy Ubiquiti gear for his house, fall in love with it, then push for the company to switch to Ubiquiti the next time they upgrade.
What I want is the Ubiquiti of CAD programs. Easy to use, low barrier to entry but comprehensive enough to use professionally.
Suggestions/comments?
It has a learning curve (like all software), yes. But I cannot confirm the crashes.
The 1.0.x versions have been rock solid for me. I like using it, but that might just be the Stockholm syndrome kicking in.
Yeah 1.0 has been quite stable for me. I especially recommend the weekly releases with features planned for 1.1, like better sketch projection tools and snapping.
I love freecad but even the latest release has some occasional crashes. For instance if you try to use PartDesign_Chamfer or PartDesign_Fillet and then go back and edit any of the sketches those were applied to things start to get wacky.
I agree I have had some chamfer and fillets trouble that even wasn't there before (a not-completely-tangent arc cutout from a square exposes this clearly) and will cause faces to shoot to "random" positions. Things can get wonky also because the Topological Naming Problem isn't 100% gone, but a model getting messed up is not the same as crashing.
Still haven't had a single crash in 1.0.2.
It is getting better, but I still get crashes in 1.0. I feel like there are some specific tools and features that are a lot more prone to crashes and others that are quite solid. I had crashes in particular with the thickness tool and some joins in the assembly workbench.
I've been using freecad with great success for years now and I'd say while I agree freecad is rough in terms of ux, it is highly usable, especially after 1.0 version. I feel like investing time in overcoming its flaws and weaknesses will pay off in the future, as it will enable access to a stable, eternally free and reliable software. Though I also agree it crashes frequently, I set a very frequent auto save and I don't often get screwed now.
FreeCAD is a spectacular second CAD tool to learn. Once you understand the concepts and workflows for one of the industry standard tools, you will know how to translate that to FreeCAD speak as it were.
As a first CAD tool it is atrocious. It crashes while you are exploring new tools and you just don't have the vocabulary (or muscle memory) to actually ask questions or search for answers.
If someone really wants to get into hobbyist CAD (for 3d printing), probably the best flow is to start with TinkerCAD, switch to Fusion 360 (assuming you aren't running linux. Onshape if you are), and once you are comfortable and can build basically whatever you want change to FreeCAD if you want more control over your toolchain.
And if someone wants to do this professionally? Fusion 360 is the endstate. Maybe you'll end up at a firm that uses the other family (which I think Onshape is part of?) but you will basically never find a company that wants FreeCAD formats.
FreeCad was crashing on average every two minutes when I tried using it last month. I really want to like it but crashes need to be toned down...
Edit: everyone is saying stable builds are fine, but I was just using whatever nixos had packaged. I'd assume that's the stable build but may be wrong.
Also, amd system with up to date drivers so that's not my issue. Maybe sketches are just unstable?
I’ve been using it for months now and I had zero crashes. Is this a platform thing or just because I’m mostly only using the parts menu?
Possibly, it mainly crashed dealing with sketches.
No issues with Freecad here and I am on linux + Nvidia!
Are you sure that your system is up to date? are drivers ok?
Yeah I have used Freecad for ages and never had an issue, also use an NVidia GPU. Hopefully you get your issue sorted, because freecad really is good and only getting better every time.
Maybe use a release and not a weekly build?
Well, it definitely isn't suppose to be THAT bad. I can get a crash every half an hour or even longer. Usually for no apparent reason - like when I want to sketch on a face and the app switches from PartDesign workbench to sketcher or wise versa. And then after restart that doesn't happen again. That is annoying, has been happening for ages and would really like it to be fixed. But it's not every few minutes, more like half an hour to an hour.
I have had FreeCAD crash apparently because of something I did. Like it couldn't handle some operation and couldn't fail gracefully.
Install the stable versions not the developer versions. Freecad is seriously good. I'm using both freecad and NX on a project. NX for drawings because freecad still chokes on drawings. But its getting better for drawings. We'll be fully jumping to freecad soon.
That's my take too. Also, while pre 1.0 development was kind of slow, it looks like it's picking up speed. I guess releasing 1.0 may have given it much needed visibility, and probably attracted some developers.
You missed OpenSCAD but that might've been intentional if you're looking for something with low barrier to entry and a purely "visual" workflow. It's the diametric opposite of Blender, basically. Surprisingly non-comprehensive with very limited options of primitives to work with, but laser-focused on building precise, constrained, parametric models out of said primitives. The downside is that you have to code it. Like, in actual code. For the artistically-minded designer, it's probably not the right tool. But for people with the appropriate mental model and skillset, it's an extremely effective tool, and infinitely extensible. If you need to do something particularly complex, chances are someone's already written the functions and libraries to do it, and if you need to know how to do it too, you can just look at their code. Assuming you can read it.
The actual coding language itself is a bit janky and for me, counterintuitive and unpleasant in some ways. It certainly wouldn't be my first choice, but it's workable, and the elegance of the overall idea makes up for it. It's worth the extra investment in learning, and I can't go back to wrestling with what I find are clunky visual workflows anymore. I crave the hard numerical precision of actually and accurately defining the shapes I'm working with.
Yes! This so much.
I am entirely convinced that one of the more underserved niches in software is domain-specific languages for doing traditionally-mousey/clicky/GUI things. I'm so convinced of that that I've written just such a DSL and am actively working on a second one.
About the only really good examples of that that I know of are OpenSCAD and Graphviz. (And I guess the one I wrote.) I've love to know about more. (And, no, libraries that make GUI-sort-of use cases easier in some general purpose language don't count. There's really something about having syntax/builtins/standard library custom made specifically for the use case that I'm quite convinced has major benefits to overall usability.)
About OpenSCAD specifically, I also have some nit-picks about the language. There are cases where I've written code in other languages that outputs OpenSCAD code specifically to get around some limitations. (There's one project I'm working on and haven't Open Sourced yet that just begs so hard for maps/dicts/string-keyed-composite-types. And the ability to use modules as values. (Like, making it more of a "functional" language... or rather a "moduleal" language.)) But like you, none of that detracts enough to make me not love OpenSCAD.
Like, things that take in a text file with programming capabilities describing what to generate? I can think of a couple off the top of my head.
POV-Ray, raytracer
LaTeX, typesetting
Asymptote, MetaPost, vector graphics
abc, music composition
I’ll have to check out both OpenSCAD and Code Comic. Some completely non-CAD DSLs that you might be interested in, since you mentioned GraphViz:
Mermaid.js does something very similar to Graphviz. There are a couple other similar tools like that out there, but Mermaid is supported in a lot of places natively or as an easy to use plugin, like GitHub Markdown (and other git forges like Forgejo), Hedgedoc, Obsidian, SilverBullet, etc..
I’d also argue that LaTeX counts, and to a lesser extent, Markdown - compare using them to using Word.
And reveal.js is an equivalent for slide deck creation that would normally be done with PowerPoint.
I agree. I'm a software developer and absolutely love OpenSCAD.
It would be great if it supported things like fillets and chamfers, otherwise I'm very happy with it.
BOSL is a massive improvement over the barebones OpenSCAD functions, and if you need to do stuff like fillets and chamfers you should check it out. There are probably other libraries that do the same but I know BOSL(2) does, through functions like cuboid() and prismoid() and edge_profile() among many other things.
That is very cool!
Thank you for the suggestion.
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/18/belfry-openscad-library-bosl2-brings-useful-parts-and-tools-aplenty/
CAD without fillets and chamfers is PFU.
There's an entry missing in your list, which many people seem to not know about: Siemens Solid Edge
Like fusion, is free for personal/hobby use. But it's not "cloud based". Also unlike fusion, they aren't constantly scaling back what you can do with the free edition. Probably worth a shot.
Solidworks is probably the Cisco of cad software, and a license for casual home use is only 48/year
I absolutely looove SolidWorks! But I have moved to linux and am hoping to find something like it without resorting to wine or some such.
Solidworks doesn't do Linux. Period. We tried all options. Solidedge does Linux under the very right circumstances.
Fusion does it, but is shit with even more shit after every update.
FreeCAD is sadly also completely unusable for a semiprofessional or professional use and so... Linux and CAD do not mix well at the moment. It's the only reason I still have a dual boot atm.
BricsCAD is pretty good on Linux
That's depressing. Thanks for sharing your knowledge so the rest of us don't have to figure this out the hard way.
I'm intrigued but confused. What's the difference between 3DEXPERIENCE and xDesign? Are they the same thing or different? Do you need both or just one or the other? They're called "packages" so do you need some kind of base install and then choose which package to put on top of it? All of the demonstration videos show it running in a browser but people in this thread are complaining about lack of Linux support
The 3DExperience package is the classic Solidworks, so it’s purely parametric and has a ton of legacy and advanced features some people need. It also really only runs on Windows, and don’t even bother with Wine lmao
xDesign is kind of their cloud-only Fusion competitor. It runs in a browser and has SubD modeling. I haven’t really worked in this one, but I would bet it’s missing features from Desktop Solidworks that would be dealbreakers for a lot of people.
Do you know if you can import and edit STL files with 3d experience?
Unfortunately I have no clue - my wife's the one that uses this, not me haha.
My solution to the same issue was OpenSCAD. But it might not be for the faint of heart. For me, this is a godsend, working 100% in my mindspace.
If they so said have no math or spatial reasoning then OpenSCAD is the last tool for them to try.
As I said, it's right for me, but it might not be for everyone. If I was to invent a CAD system, I'd write something exactly like OpenSCAD...
Maybe I suck at CAD but love OpenScad as its easier for me to understand.
I second this. It was my step after tinkercad and never looked back. But I do love programming so maybe biased.
I've been using progeCAD for the last few years and its basically a clone of AutoCAD for a fraction of the price and you own it unlike autodesk's model they've had since like 2017 or something.
Blender has an add on project called cad sketches in development. It's free to use and is donation supported just like Blender is. I haven't used it myself but it wouldn't hurt looking into it.
https://www.cadsketcher.com/
You can buy add-ons for this to auto-generate standard gear-forms and threads/bolts/holes. It is also parametric.
https://youtu.be/1jNDLUDL0gc
I'm pretty happy with blender. There is also a plugin that makes it more like cad https://www.cadsketcher.com/
Worth highlighting, Cadsketcher is parametric. https://youtu.be/1jNDLUDL0gc
Try freecad as a flatpak maybe ? Doesn't crash for me unless I do something stupid with fillets. It's harder, tougher to use than paid options but you own what you make at the end.
It hasn't crashed for me in a long time
Depending on your system I think, I have been using Sketchup 2017 (whatever the last free version was they released) for years to make 3D models for all kinds of purposes, incl 3D printing. For my brain it has proven to be the most intuitive tool to learn, it’s been a really long time so maybe I have forgotten but I feel like the barrier to entry was pretty small. There is a lot of content out there from people giving tips and tutorials. There are plug-ins still flooding around that have really good functionality. I use it with a Connexion 3D Space Navigator mouse that’s prob 10+ years old. That’s been a godsend and adds so much efficiency and flow to the tool.
I don’t know if you can still download it from Trimble but there are sources for it elsewhere.
Have fun, whatever you choose.
Blender has addons for parametric workflows. Actually, there's plugins to do anything you want.
I would also highly recommend Destructive Extrude for Blender, a plugin that enables the push-pull modeling that made SketchUp an entry level CAD learner's dream (before Google sold it to Trimble who promptly ate it and shat it back out)
I use a free version of sketchup make from 2008. You can still find it out there on the internet for download.
The last free-to-run version of Sketchup is from 2017, and ironically you can download it from the official website, you just have to dig for it. It isn’t immediately available, and they try their best to sell you the latest version.
Sadly, the CAD software I have the most experience with is SolidWorks. It has its quirks, but I like it and I know my way around.
Which is too bad, because it's completely absolutely fucking stupidly expensive for any home use.
Not to mention I've heard stories of people getting caugth through exported models' metadata and getting sued for publishing models made with pirated or student versions or whatnot.
I'm not even a business and whilr I have no moral qualms pirating software, I don't exactly wanna deal with an actively hostile company either.
I've switched to onshape for now, but I know enshittification will eventually butcher it too.
There's a few others I've tried that I either can't get good at, or that simply lack functionality.
I've been meaning to try Alibre CAD, but last I checked, their trial thing required back and forth with a rep and I just never bothered.
I don't even mind paying, yet not $5k yearly or some shit.
If you ever find something, ping me.
I saw a bit ago that blended has an addon or plugin or something that adds parametric functions
I think I got the impression it's less powerful that proper parametric cad or something, but I figured I'd mention it in case that makes it a more viable option for you!
Alibre is the only perpetual affordable license CAD software I’m aware of unless you want to use student/hobbyist versions of other software.
Alibre is quite good. All the features I need, price is OK. If you don't need all the features Alibre Atom3D can be bought for 250€, the full version starts at 1000€. That's really cheap for CAD. The only thing missing is Linux support.
I really don't understand why people have so much trouble with FreeCAD. It does everything the other software does, it just crashes on occasion.
Yeah you see, that's kind of a deal breaker.
FreeCAD is dogshit if you have any other experience with commercial software.
I wouldn't necessarily say it's dogshit as I've been enjoying the beta releases. What I will say though is that the workflow feels different enough compared to every other commercial CAD program I've tried (solidworks, fusion, inventor) that it required me to effectively re-learn the software rather than jump right in. Pretty much every other CAD program didn't have this problem, in part because they're more forgiving when you violate best practices.
FreeCAD is much more rigid in comparison. If you follow its best practices, it works wonderfully, but when I came from another CAD program my previous experience kept making me run into issues.
Yeah, maybe I was a bit harsh. I will admit, I have not tried FreeCAD recently but when I did use it I thought it was terrible. I use Creo for my job but personally like SolidWorks and Fusion for my personal use. FreeCAD just frustrated the hell out of me. I definitely commend the developers for creating a FOSS CAD software though.
Yeah, it's absolutely not at the level of beginner and user-friendliness that you'd expect out of a professional CAD package yet, so it's understandable you had a rough experience. I think we're all hoping that FreeCAD will eventually see a similar level of improvement that Blender and KiCAD got in this area. Both of them were originally much worse in terms of usability, but after enough effort (and investment from major players like CERN in the case of KiCAD and community members), they ended up being really competitive packages.
You can save files in fusion 360 locally. It's just not the main way the program encourages which sucks.
I think you have to like export instead pf save but you do get a .f3d file which is the same as what gets saved to the cloud.
I've been using Solid Edge. Siemens offers a free community edition that works great if you want to create models for 3d printing. I originally used FreeCAD, and while it works, had problems with models breaking when trying to make changes. Solid Edge is much more professional, easy to use, with pretty much all the features available that you could want. The only drawback for me is that it only runs on Windows. Tried going back to FreeCAD since it has the new 1.0 release and will run on Linux, but it felt too awkward. Now I have a dual boot system with Windows solely to run CAD software.
I liked TinkerCAD.
That's not a parametric CAD software though. And it has the same pitfalls as Onshape.
TinkerdCAD is nice to slap together a few shapes or objects (as long as they don't need to be dimensionally accurate), but once you want to chamfer all egdes of a cube you are faster learning an entirely different software and creating the object from scratch.
Onshape would be ubiquity. Easy to use, flash, has all the good bits, ripe to screw the customer at any moment once enough lock in is gained.
I will be blunt. If you are as bad at math and spatial reasoning as you say, then CAD probably isn't for you. You will always find it difficult and unrewarding. Design and engineering require a mindset you might not have.
As far as "cheap and easy and professional" CAD they ALL require effort to learn and money to gain entry for commercial versions. CAD is a skill and skills require effort to acquire. And it sounds as if you have no desire to put in very much effort.
For a CAD program to meet your want of cheap and simple, (professional means a lot of money and takes more than a few minutes of effort), look at TinkerCAD. It's free and simple enough that I teach that to 5th and 6th grade students well enough for them to make simple objects. Ain't nothing wrong with starting there and learning how to think about design and CAD before you might try and step into more demanding software.
Woof.
Hey, horses don't say woof.
Put down your participation trophy for a minute. It's nice you feel the need to ride to the rescue, but sometimes the truth just sucks.
OP openly claims to have poor math skills and lacks spatial awareness. If that's the case, he's not ever going to have an easy time. Those are 2 skills you need to have, at least to some degree, if you even want to start with designing things. And he naively expects,"free, easy, and professional" results NOW! Then lists his reasons on why he doesn't like any of the free versions of OnShape and Fusion and FreeCAD. And I doubt OP would do any better with SolidEdge either.
OP wants something he cannot have-- instant skill without personal effort or aptitude, (again from his OWN words). Life don't work that way Buttercup.
I personally like OpenSCAD (with VSCode not with the built-in editor)
I recently looked into (affordable) Linux-CAD programs and stumbled upon VariCAD, which, checking their presentation, appeared pretty complete. Saying that I would just make a decision after throwing a serious project, multiple parts, workgroups, parameters and technical drawing generation, on it. Maybe someone can comment on it?
I haven’t used it but there is also tinkercad
Fusion is easiest to get going for 'serious' projects as a beginner.
I will use it while I can, or until an equal alternative is available. Nothing lasts forever.
The problem is that Parametric CAD kernels are complicated and expensive. There are some recent open source efforts but they are slow going. Just look at how bad Freecad is after all these years to see how difficult they are.
I'm quite experienced with SolidWorks and have used both Creo and NX as well. I can't stand the likes of Freecad or Fusion because of that. Luckily I have access to the professional ones for my day to day modelling.
One option to look at is Solid Edge, they have a maker version that is free and it's a proper professional package many companies use.
I'm looking for the same thing for electromagnetic FEA. Besides Ansys or Comsol, both of which are unattainable for hobbyists, there're really no options.
There’s a free Linux one called Elmer
If you're okay programming, something like fenics or moose probably does what you need! There are GUI viewers for the results, but the equations and model setup are defined with code (usually python). You would import your mesh/cad generated with another tool
Also tinkercad. It's basic but honestly it works for most stuff I make for things around the house.
Pirated inventor is good. Fully local, used by lots of people. Free when obtained on the high seas
Solidworks has a cheap maker version. You can save locally. It's always been shit, so it can't get enshittified /s.
RS Design Spark?
I haven't used it in a few years but I remember it being alright for hobby stuff.
I use alibre, it’s a one time purchase
I tried using FreeCAD 5 or 10 years ago, and it was painful. I had access to Inventor, so I used that for the limited work I was doing. Later, I heard of some build/pack/whatever that removed a lot of pain from the FreeCAD workflow, but I can't remember what it was called and I wasn't doing CAD work any more. Trying to find that led me to this, though:
Ondsel ES Look
Also, I found a video on YouTube that appears to go through the same steps. Here it is.
I'm not sure it that will solve your problems, but the 20 minute video should answer that question for you.
Freecad 1.0 released not so long ago, you should take a look and be amazed
Just watching that video I linked gave a lot more Inventor vibes than I recall from the last time I looked at it. Last time it still felt like trying to shoehorn a 3D modeler into AutoCAD.
The Ondsel project seems to have died. Their apparent business model was they were going to bolt cloud shit around FreeCAD. Hilariously stupid business model but at least some of the money they wasted went to open source software. They shook out a few of the open source tumors, like the sketcher now has a semi-intelligent dimension tool, I think they tackled the topological naming problem and we've finally got an official Assembly workbench that even sort of works I guess. But it's still FreeCAD and if something can be unintuitive, it will.
Yeah, it explicitly states Ondsel is EOL in the article, as well as the theme they used (maybe?), which is in the video. The repack or whatever I heard about years ago, specifically mentioned in the description that it retooled non-standard workflow in FreeCAD. I keep thinking Tommy's pack or something like that was the name, but it's 5 minutes of my life from years ago when this field was just starting to be less important to me. 🤷♂️
Fusion 360 is free for non commercial use.
I got a 3d printer about a year ago and looked into CAD software and came to the exact same conclusion you just did. I ended up using Plasticity. I thiink I paid $150 for a year of updates. But there are still two major drawbacks: first is it's not parametric, as you said, but more importantly you can't import stls and edit them. You can export stls, but you have to make them from scratch. You can technically import an stl but it's impossible to edit. Oftentimes I find a design online but I want to tweak it to my purposes but I can't do that.
I'd love it if Free CAD had a better UI. It's just so frustrating and hideous to use.
Shapr3D has been pretty decent and for a hobbiest, $300/yr for their pro version has been tolerable
Edit: I see at least a few people don’t like Shapr3D so I’ll add to my description a little bit because I think it’s great for what I do. Shapr3D has a free tier, is cheaper than programs like Fusion360, Solidworks, Sketchup, etc., has apps for the iPad and desktop, recently added parametric features that OP requested, and is faster (on my machines) than Fusion360 and Sketchup. I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m designing complicated parts that move relative to one another (maybe it can’t do that, I don’t know). I usually just recreate single plastic parts that break around the house or designs for something I’m fabricating. It’s been great for those use cases. It’s also free for students with a school email.