(I seem to be cast in the role of FreeCAD advocate on HN these days, but here goes!)
For years I agreed with you - I tried FreeCAD multiple times, different versions, always sucked.
Then I watched this video [0] and discovered that v1.1 is different - and that it's good enough for solid reliable hobby usage. It's still a touch frustrating in a few areas (text, for example) but I've now switched over to it completely.
I've forced myself to git gud with FreeCAD. It's better. Way better than it used to be. It's also still a very complex and user unfriendly application with a long road ahead of it.
You can make it work. You can also save yourself a lot of headache by using other CAD tools. Personally I value "Freedom" so I will continue to use it despite the difficulties but that may not be the right path for others.
I agree. freeCAD has become a tool that I just use without thinking about it. Earlier versions always made me question my choice and try out other software.
I really, really want that to be true, but my experience trying to adopt it has been really painful.
Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user?
Getting the constraints to behave is like pulling teeth.
It also kind of sucks that you have to have really sparse sketches that only contain one closed figure. I gather you can create a "master sketch" and selectively project geometry into other sketches. But the last few times I've tried the app, I haven't gotten far enough into my sketches before rage quitting to validate the technique.
Right now I am back F360 with their hobby license wanting to escape their regular messing with the terms and conditions.
> Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user?
Agree - selection isn’t broken, but it’s definitely sometimes frustrating and as it’s such a common function, absolutely should be as close to perfect as possible. I think it’s partly that the visual indication of what you’re hovering over and would be selected is too subtle, and also I’ve found (on Mac; I’ve not confirmed on other OSs) that it’s not selecting what’s at the exact tip of the pointer, but is rather selecting a couple of pixels away.
> Getting the constraints to behave is like pulling teeth.
Huh, once I’ve actually selected correctly, I find the constraints are fine - say, 95% as good as Solidworks.
> It also kind of sucks that you have to have really sparse sketches that only contain one closed figure.
Can you explain what you mean by this? Do you mean you can’t have a sketch with (to take a very simple example) a circle inside a circle, or two unrelated circles, or something else?
There are situations I can think of where selection does seem broken by design. It's fairly easy to get into a situation in the 3d view where you want to select a vertex but because of the draw order it's very hard to find an orientation of the model that lets you put it "in front". So you spend ages selecting the lines around it, spinning the model, trying again from all sorts of angles. Heaven help you if you're trying to select a bunch of points that have this problem, it's frustrating as hell. The second is in sketches, where the constraint icons aren't selectable when they're grouped but will block the selection of a component underneath them anyway. That's just obnoxious. I think in both cases the UI is working as designed, but it makes for an unusable outcome.
Oh, and if the selection point isn't at the pointer point? That's just a bug, and needs to be fixed. I can't see any defending that.
I’ve tried FreeCAD multiple times, but I’m just too used to Rhino 3D. Unfortunately, it’s rather expensive. Anyone need a slightly used, low-mileage, one owner soul?
FWIW, I've been kind of kicking myself for being bamboozled into buying a Plasticity Studio license --- really, really wish I'd instead bought Moment of Inspiration 3D (which is by the lead developer of Rhino 3D).
Curious what folks think of MOI3D (and if there is any other similar CAD tool other than maybe Shapr3D).
To echo others' comments: FreeCAD has improved significantly since v1.0, so I'm hoping this attracts quality & stability-minded develeopers, and a frequent release cadence.
Weed is great for my anger and sleep. I’ve never found as good of a sleep medicine for someone who wakes up too early.
I also had debilitating anger in my teens and weed really helped calm that down. I’ve been off it for years at a time and I still can’t get past my anger without it.
I found it used to disrupt my ability to fall asleep, and I didn't dream, or at least didn't remember doing so. It also impacted my memory when awake, which makes sense if it was messing with my sleep cycles.
However, I was able to fix all of those problems by consistently ceasing use 4 hours prior to going to sleep.
Emphasizing this for anyone that reads it. Ceasing use 4 hours prior to going to sleep really helps - and yes, you can “use it for sleep” that many hours before and still be in a more sleep ready State than otherwise.
Anyone reading this far looking to optimize sleep, don't forget the basics of consistent schedules/meals and regular exercise. Personally, I can't exercise or eat too close to bed, as it keeps me awake. If you have the flexibility to wake without an alarm, that can be good as well to prevent sleep cycle intrusion. Stay away from blue wavelengths of light as bedtime approaches (use redshift/f.lux/etc on screens).
Agree. For different reasons, I cut THC a week ago after taking it before bed for years. This whole week my sleep was horrible. I’d fall asleep fine but wake up around 4 and not able to fall back asleep. Until someone recommended tart cherry juice. After two days of having it, I’m falling back asleep fine and having a great quality sleep. Try it out. YMMV.
It has at times worked well for sleep. One thing I've noticed though is that nothing works consistently for me. While weed and/or melatonin helps me get good sleep, both can leave me groggy/hungover during the day. What's weird is that I don't mean it varies night-to-night, but like for a period of, say, 9 months I'll sleep better on melatonin then it starts to leave me hungover so I'll switch it up and try weed and maybe it works fine for a few months then I get daytime sleepy/sluggish.
Recently I just quit everything yet again and now I sleep well for 6.5 hours, wake up refreshed, and have a lot more alertness and motivation during the day. My past experience says this will last for a while until I yet again find I need weed or melatonin to get more than 4 hours. I don't get it.. probably other factors in my life affecting my sleep.
We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense.
My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested.
Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.
Yes there is a cost to things like a bunch of congestion, decrease of natural spaces and generally soulessness. To paint this as only good is an insane position
Note to the mods, /s is Reddit for sarcasm and this post is a good example of the psychology that leads to people support policies that increase housing costs even though they are designed to decrease housing costs.
> now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested
The first bit is a taste thing; obviously lots of people view modern sprawl as "soulless" too.
But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED.
What you're imagining is some kind of fantasy hometown, which never increased in population and whose economy never developed. I mean, it's true. Forgotten ghost towns have very little traffic and quirky soulful architecture, c.f. Detroit. Everyone agrees that's a bad thing, though.
>But the latter point is just plain wrong. Dense housing IMPROVES traffic congestion and shortens commutes, always, everywhere, markedly. And it's for a bleedingly obvious reason: pack people in closer together and they don't have to travel as far to get where they're going. QED.
You are conflating things, adding more people to an area increases congestion, period. Having dense housing vs not dense housing is better for congestion IF the people are already there.
>What you're imagining is some kind of fantasy hometown, which never increased in population and whose economy never developed. I mean, it's true. Forgotten ghost towns have very little traffic and quirky soulful architecture,
It is a highly desirable area, there is no issue with the economy, it will continue to be desirable if we don't destroy it. The "growth always good" crowd is pretty nuts in their views
> adding more people to an area increases congestion, period
Yes, but so what? That's tautological. "Adding more people" isn't an independent variable, it's the economic ground truth over which we're trying to optimize.
The point is that if you need to build N units of housing to match your M added economic activity, building them denser leads to less congestion.
I mean, duh. This really isn't a complicated idea.
Again, you're imagining a single community divorced from inconvenient ideas like "population growth" or "economic development" (and even going so far as to conflate those with "destruction").
Well, sorry. It's desirable because it's developing. You don't get to change the minds of all the people that want to live there, all you can do is help them decide where to live.
>Well, sorry. It's desirable because it's developing
no.... it's not... what an incredibly naive take. Why don't you just leave out every nice small town in a beautiful location. "Who cares about keeping thing beautiful amiright??"
If you want soul move to New Orleans. Meanwhile people need comfortable places to live that don't make them indentured servants for the rest of their lives. I'll take a neighborhood with walkability and density over an old drafty brick building with no grocery stores any day.
Is this supposed to be a reply to me? Who are you quoting?
No one ever said "no downsides", no one said "infinite growth" and the comment I replied to was just talking about standard apartments being "souless".
I got Codex to whip me up a Chrome extension that autoswaps back to Pro whenever I reload the page. It's made Gemini significantly less irritating to use.
Every big company I’ve worked for has an immense about of bloat. Whole departments that exist just because someone wanted it to exist at some point in time.
The health of an organization is often linked in their ability to fire people.
Only if what you want to do fits neatly within the walled garden. I personally like my freedom to tinker, and get great performance, functionality, and stability with Linux.
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