[bobby_the_whal]

FreeCAD suffers from the same issues that much open-source software suffers from: it has bugs. Bugs erode user confidence.

Apparently, there are now > 500 bugs open.

When commercial software has bugs, you don't even know they exist often. Sure, but there are also ways to make bug free software, but hardly any open-source software exists that uses those development techniques.

[echoangle]

You think professional software is bug-free? I have some experience with NX and I can tell you it’s not exactly bug-free either. It’s very likely better than FreeCAD, but requiring zero bugs is just unrealistic.

[iancmceachern]

This is true, but for customers of nx, solidworks, etc it's someone's job to fix the bugs for you

[alpaca128]

Which doesn't necessarily mean that job will ever get done.

[iancmceachern]

In my experience it always has, every single time.

[Gracana]

How do you get Solidworks bugs fixed, and on what timescale? We have ~20 solidworks premium seats, plus a handful of licenses for other dassault products. We've complained loudly about various issues, submitted and voted on feature requests, talked to our VAR at length and in many on-site meetings, and nothing seems to happen as a direct result. At best, a bug is incidentally fixed in a later release.

It's still better than FreeCAD, though.

[iancmceachern]

You submit a ticket with your VAR, and then keep following up with it.

I've never once run into something that they didn't have a workaround for, and then eventually fix. Sometimes it takes a service pack or two.

They out out 4 or 5 service packs every year along with the major yearly releases, those service packs are basically entirely bug fixes.

You may want to look into switching VARs if your not happy with your support.

[alpaca128]

I've heard some VFX professionals mention that they got told certain bugs can't be fixed because the codebase is too old and complicated, and they are used to the software crashing randomly on a regular basis.

If people have no alternative in their field or the alternative requires discarding years of experience, the incentive to fix bugs isn't as high as it could be. That's how you get problems like Excel invalidating data with automatic formatting for decades.

[delfinom]

Sadly a lot of people think that way.

Particularly younger engineers have their mind blown over the concept of not immediately upgrading all your software just because there's a new version.

In the physical engineering spaces, it's more valuable to keep using the same software version you started a project with, rather than have hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages because of a dickhead bug.

[jonathankoren]

It’s not just that. It’s also ugly and awkward to use. I tried to use it after learning Fusion360, and it’s just lacking. I wasn’t even trying to do anything particularly complicated, and it just kinda sucked.

You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, and they decided to have all images in a single window.

Still can’t do smart background erase.

Inkscape kinda works, but it always seems like attachment points for easily alignment, and a non sucky text editor are forever out of reach.

I’m sorry. I know software is hard, but it’s been literally decades of stagnation.

[prokoudine]

> Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years. Apparently the only thing that has changed is they no longer compile against Gtk 1.0, and they decided to have all images in a single window.

Off the top of my head:

- Full color management

- Non-destructive filters

- 32-bit per channel precision

- Late binding CMYK support

- Unified transform tool

- Vastly better selection and cropping tools

- Vastly better text tool

Should I go on? :)

[jonathankoren]

You’ve proven my point. A bunch of data loading crap, but nothing substantial on the usability.

This is a simple tutorial task. Is it this easy in Gimp? No. It’s not. But hey, we have the same crappy ScriptFu plugins from a quarter century ago. Anyway, you have the source! Shut up and be grateful you insensitive clod!

https://youtu.be/K25F9RPrP9Q

[bee_rider]

The last 3 seem like usability upgrades. Substantial, I dunno.

[jonathankoren]

Two and a half decades for a text tool, when the rest of the functionality is stuck in 1996?

Seems fair

[prokoudine]

> You’ve proven my point.

No, not really. You did say 'feature set'.

> A bunch of data loading crap,

Sure, if you like editing with color fidelity loss.

> but nothing substantial on the usability.

Except non-destructive editing is a major UX improvement.

Except unified transform tool is a major UX improvement.

Except... Well, you get the idea. And I barely got started.

It's almost like you just hate the project and won't accept any changes they do.

I too have my fair share of frustrations with the project — enough to quit it as a team member a couple of years ago. But somehow I don't go around pretending big changes aren't big bc I'm feeling petty all of a sudden.

[jonathankoren]

You can keep assert these things, but do you really think this is acceptable progress of two and a half decades? Look around. It’s not.

I gave a concrete example of a task that is trivial in 2024, and it just does not work nearly as well or as easily. It’s the same functionality of 30 years ago.

Instead, you’re sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming, “it is progress!” Yeah, well maybe technically correct, but the gap has widened. As a project it should be shutdown. It’s zombieware.

[prokoudine]

Sounds like you are mad at the world and I got in the middle of it. Sorry, I'll see myself out.

[phkahler]

>> You see the same problems with a lot of “flagship” oss ware. Gimp seems to have the same awkward feature set for 25 years.

I think Kritta is the new flagship OSS image editing software. I don't use either, but that's my impression.

[PetitPrince]

Very recently (well: yesterday and today), I made the same non trivial shape for an electronics project, and I tried Fusion360, OnShape and FreeCad.

I basically want to extend the base of an Ikea lantern (Enrum); this require creating an (irregular) octagonal shape, and then creating a slot so that the lantern base can sit on it.

I had some distant memories of modeling stuff in Solidworks for a project back in university, so I'm not starting from zero.

I was able to finish my design in Fusion and redid it in one evening in Onshape. As for Freecad... I still don't know how to do it. Or rather: I could probably do it, but only with so much more googling on how to do basic stuff that it is discouraging to even thing about it.

I think the main issue is that Freecad generally expects you to know exactly what to do, and has very poor affordance.

Let's take the very few steps for instance. In order to create my lantern "shoe", I first need to recreate its base. It's some sort of octagon, so the plan is to draw an octagon, extrude it and then probably repeat the operation with several other octagon to carve a slot for the lamp.

So the very first thing is to create a sketch on the xy place. In both OnShape In both Fusion and OnShape, the very first menu item in the toolbar is the "create new sketch" one [1][2]. So you can immediately click on it, then chose you plane, then start to draw.

[1] https://ibb.co/4YMtDnD

[2] https://ibb.co/ZMCf1Yy

In Freecad though, the first thing in the toolbar are.. the camera controls (which are somehow redundant with the interactive cube view of the main area). In fact, you cannot even create a sketch from the default toolbar; at best you can create a Part.

[3] https://ibb.co/ww791Bd

In order to create a new sketch, you need to go to the dropdown menu. This menu is ordered alphabetically. So the first item is "Arc", then "Draft", then "FEM", ... If you do not know the jargon and/or is just starting out, good luck finding where to next ("what's the difference between Draft and Sketch ?" they would say). And even select Sketcher from the combobox, the first controls you see are still the camera ones. Worse: the "create parts" button from earlier is still there ! [3] And so the "new sketch" button is hidden on the right side of while it's probably the very first thing you want to do.

[3] https://ibb.co/xXrTd6t

And for the very short time I spend trying Freecad, issues like were constant.

There's seems to be some open issues related to this in the Github issues viewer, but no tangible commitment as far as I know.

[prokoudine]

Much of that has been improved for the next release.

[Suppafly]

>Much of that has been improved for the next release.

Isn't that what OSS project always say?

[prokoudine]

It's also what FOSS projects do

[rcxdude]

It has that in common with CAD software which has 5 figure annual subscriptions. Find me a CAD user who doesn't notice bugs in the software they're using and I'll show you someone who has <1 hour of experience.

[iancmceachern]

This is true, but when I encounter a bug in Solidworks there is someone who's job it is to fix it,and they do.

[rcxdude]

That would be novel in my experience, they seem far more interested in cramming in features (with more associated bugs).

[iancmceachern]

I, for one, love those new features. Often they save me hours a day.

About 10 years ago they released a new feature, slot sketch tool, so instead of drawing 2 circles, two lines, trimming, now it's one click.

If you use the new feature to save significant time, like me, it's wonderful.

[imtringued]

And here I thought it is cripplingly obvious UI problems.

The attachment editor is horrible, for instance. If you want to attach a sketch to a datum plane, it will be attached at a random orientation. There is no preview for this, since datum planes are just planes, except you know, the part where it actually is an LCS with a default attachment orientation internally. So now you have to go into the sketch and draw an arrow pointing up and then rotate the sketch into place so that it actually points up. You will have to do this for every single sketch. It is so painful and an every day occurrence that surely someone should have come up with the idea of fixing it years ago, right?

There is usually no preview for additive parts unless it successfully creates the final model. The idea of displaying a transparent preview of just the operation itself never occurred to them. Also, there are hardly any interactable UI features such as draggable arrows in the 3D editor, you mostly enter numbers in the left panel.

I haven't had much trouble with "bugs". The attachment editor thing is considered a feature by the way.

[virtualritz]

I can only talk about professional visual effects (VFX) software like Maya and Nuke.

Let's just say I've seen their (internal) bug trackers.

TLDR; you couldn't be more wrong.

When OSS software has bugs, at least someone with an interest in the issue and the skills can do something about it.

For closed source software nobody can. Even the people working at the resp. company who are developers rarely or never decide about priorities.

And as an added hurdle, adding features always has higher priority as it drives sales.