FreeCAD 1.0 Who's using it?

I've played with FreeCAD a little bit, but not much with the new 1.0 ver.
forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxcnc-q...-clearing-hsm#141098

I've not used the new version enough to say how much it is much improved over the old in usability. But I is noticably less buggy, and naming of some of the tools makes more sense.

That said, while very capable, usability is still far from simple with a steap learning curve. You can still run into a lot of "can't get there from here" situations.

Was the topological naming issue solved. That was the reason I stopped using freecad some years back.
apart from that it was quite nice to work with.

I guess a quick google would tell me this but I prefer answers from actual users.

RDA wrote:

Was the topological naming issue solved.

Yes, to a certain point, but mostly better workaround than commercial solutions, from a quick glance.

I've been using the weekly builds for some time. TNP is not entirely solved, but I've slowly learned (after making some models for the third time) to be better at constructing models to avoid TNP issues. Worth the effort to reference things as far up the tree as possible, build reference planes, use parameter sets, etc. Overall I think the CAD is pretty good, once you get used to it. The last couple months leading up to the 1.0 release saw a huge improvement in stability, which is really nice. FAR fewer crashes. My only other real mechanical CAD experience is Rhino, so I can't really compare on that front- just being parametric is such a huge step up.

The CAM workbench in FreeCAD is both amazing and frustrating. It's awesome that it has (eg) adaptive toolpaths that you seemingly can't get in any CAM package under ~$3k USD. The new path/stock simulator is WAY faster/better than it was in older version. Plus, Linux native is great.

A lot of other things are maddeningly close to working well, but need some very specific workarounds to make work. Profiling open contours very notably falls in this category. You can make it work, but have to build a bunch of extra geometry to do so in my experience. It's on my to-look-at-fixing list...

On the up side, my experience fixing things (adaptive toolpaths not using the stock model you provide- pull request pending due to freeze prior to 1.0 release) was that it's shockingly easy. That fix took... a few hours, going into it mostly cold? So if you know Python and/or C++, and see something that seems dumb and annoys you, it might be worth looking into just fixing it.

  For me I don't have enough experience with FreeCAD to tell yet if something is a quirk of the program
or if it's something I didn't do. As I have said before I have used Fusion 360 for years. I don't dare mess
with nightly builds because I don't know enough about coding and I would probably make things worse.
That said I look forward to the day when I can throw Windows out the window. LOL

I spent 20 minutes trying to sketch a simple part to revolve and gave up after the autoconstraint engine completely hosed up the sketch. They really really need to put work into the sketcher and the UIX , it is still god awful to use. Hell I am willing to donated money on a monthly basis to get out of using fusion360 at this point, but there doesn't seem to be any seriousness from freecad developers about working on it fulltime.