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I also like SolveSpace a lot. I use it to design small things all the time. Tiny single file program, very responsive interface. It's also pretty intuitive (if you're already familiar with CAD constraints and parametric modelling concepts). There was a burst of activity 2-3 years ago so I was hopeful we'd get filets and maybe better error messages but it hasn't happened yet.

Ondsel is also increasingly good. They've released a new version recently: https://ondsel.com/blog/ondsel-es-2024-2/

Their website login-wall downloads for whatever reason, so go to github: https://github.com/Ondsel-Development/FreeCAD/releases



For those unfamiliar, Ondsel is just a custom build of FreeCAD, with some different UI/UX and workbench defaults and their cloud oriented plugin/features enabled by default. They also have some features that haven't yet made their way into a stable FreeCAD release, but most likely will eventually.

I've got no qualms with anything Ondsel is doing, except that their "releases" are based off of the dev versions of FreeCAD, which are still in active development where things are rapidly changing and are poorly tested as a whole package. This leads to the situation where, for example, very basic sketches will cause the most recent Ondsel version to puke in odd ways, but it's a problem that's already been fixed in the FreeCAD dev builds.

So certainly give Ondsel a try; there a lot to like, and they're adding some much needed features to FreeCAD, but until their releases are based off FreeCAD stable, treat it like the unstable dev build it is.




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