Downloading was easy enough, but the DMG file is not properly signed, so I got alarming warnings. I know how to get around those, but still. Sign your stuff.
Opening showed a nice intro screen as well as a whole lot of icons. Some but not all of these icons are so big they are cut off - or they're designed that way? It seems somewhat random, the magnifying glass is normal size, but next to it is a too-big one with a cursor on it.
Issue #1: Icons are randomly oversized
I loaded the STL object I wanted to adjust and tried adjusting. There's the object, all right, and I can rotate and zoom etc. But I can't seem to do anything to it. I can't select it in any way, and any attempt at using the many function icons bring up a dialog saying 'Need to select a <something>' or similar.
Issue #2: Some of the function icons are greyed out when not available, others bring up dialogs instead. This makes me waste time trying to do functions I can't actually do.
I tried right-clicking to get a context menu. All it showed was 'Navigation styles', as if that's something I want to change so often that I need it in a context menu.
Issue #3: Navigation styles do not belong in a context menu, but in settings. It's something you try out some of, then get used to the one you prefer until it's second nature.
While trying to get the object to do something, anything, I would occasionally select a function that sent me back to the start page. Wut?
Issue #4: Randomly switching between pages when double-clicking model tree entries.
I eventually had to search the internet for how to edit an STL file. Turns out, it's a mesh, not an object, and needs to be converted first. Maybe instead of all the various "You need to select a such-and-such" messages, this could have been prompted somewhere? Unless you know what a small icon means, there's no indication what type of object this is, not even a hovertext on the model tree entry.
Issue #5: No help figuring out what kind of thing I'm poking at. Not even the 'What's this' function will tell me what it is.
Even with a transformed object, things were confusing. I would click the transformed object (I thought) only to have the mesh selected again. Eventually I realised I had hit Space, and the transformed object got hidden while the mesh object stayed there.
Issue #6: The model tree entries have toggles in the context menu but no indication what state they're in, not even in the context menu where there's plenty of space.
Ok, now I have deleted the mesh object, made the transformed object visible and selectable, and selected a few facets. On to filleting! Clicking the Fillet icon switches the left bar to Tasks, with a long list of edges and the options of "All" or "None". Mistakingly thinking this would apply fillet to all selected edges, I clicked all, only to have FreeCAD hang for minutes. This is not a hugely complex object (it's roughly this picker with the threads from this adapter). My machine is just stuck. Now I don't have a super beefy Mac Pro tower machine, just a MacBook Pro, but I've been able to do fairly complex things in OpenSCAD while also using IntelliJ, and having way too many tabs open. Is it trying to do a preview? Is it just broken? Left it for a while in this state while doing other things.
Issue #7: Too easy to accidentally do something that hangs the program.
Force quit it after two hours of spinning beachball of death and 100% CPU usage. Not a good start. Back to the documentation... it's really in a strange order. Why explain the many different mouse models and the settings page before getting to any actual modelling?
All in all, FreeCAD - like so many other open source programs - suffer greatly from the Curse of Knowledge. Most people working to improve it know exactly how it works, can figure out how to work around strange problems, and only spend the time necessary to scratch their personal itches. That adds many interesting features but an overall confusing UI full of missing stairs and just blatantly bad inconsistencies. Fortunately, there are many many alternatives, and I shall take a look at some of them.
LibreCAD: https://librecad.org/ - free 2D-only cad. Might be a good replacement for Inkscape on Mac.
QCAD: https://www.qcad.org/en/ - another free 2D-only CAD program, the Qt version. Not a big fan of Qt.
BricsCAD: https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/ - professional and expensive
Rhinoceros: https://www.rhino3d.com/ - also professional and expensive
NanoCAD: https://www.nanocad.com/ - commercial, less expensive ($180+), maybe has free version?
Onshape: https://www.onshape.com/- commercial, quite expensive
BRL-CAD: https://brlcad.org/ - open-source, seems more graphics-oriented, but could be tried.
IronCAD: https://www.ironcad.com/ - doesn't even list a price
Catia: https://www.3ds.com/products-services/catia - "Contact sales" level of expensive
Shapr3d: https://www.shapr3d.com/ - iPad-only app
Creo Parametric: https://www.ptc.com/en/products/creo/parametric - commercial
KeyCreator: https://www.kubotek3d.com/ - commercial
Not listed on that site:
Sketchup: https://www.sketchup.com/ - tried it early on, really meant for house design, when used for 3D prints it has horrible crack problems (pun intended)
Fusion 360: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview - subscription based
DraftSight: https://www.draftsight.com/ - focused on 2D, subscription based
Solid Edge: https://solidedge.siemens.com/en/ - Windows-only, subscription based
SolidWorks: https://www.solidworks.com/ -
TinkerCAD: https://www.tinkercad.com/ - online-only, basic version is free
Out of all these, only TinkerCAD and BRL-CAD seem worth investigating at the moment, being free and 3D-oriented.
TinkerCAD is very cute, but as far as I can tell mostly allows putting things next to each other. It has a large amount of shapes available, from the most basic ones to continents and gaming pieces. The UI is super nice and intuitive, and it does have subtraction (set a shape to be "Hole"), but not fancy features like fillet. Surprisingly, it has programming of sorts in the Codeblocks feature, a drag-and-drop system. It's essentially a gateway drug for Fusion 360, even using the same Workplane concept.
BRL-CAD is 4 years out of date for Mac, even though it's still being developed. I unfortunately can't run it on my work machine for security reasons.
There's clearly a lot of money in this area, and I can see why. I may have to *gasp* actually read the manual for FreeCAD.
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