FreeCAD vs SolveSpace

When you are ready to design real things, you’ll find simple CAD programs can be pretty limiting. Serious modern designs tend to use parametric modeling where you don’t necessarily set dimensions and positions of everything but instead constrain the design by describing the relationship between different elements. For example, you can create a vertical line and constrain other lines to be parallel, perpendicular, or form a given angle with that line. There are many tools that can do that, including FreeCAD and SolveSpace, two programs that [Joko Engineeringhelp] uses to create a complex compressor blade and it really shows the differences and similarities between the two tools.

You probably don’t need this particular design, but watching over someone’s shoulder while they do a complex design can be very valuable. Being able to see the differences between the two tools might convince you to learn one or the other or maybe even switch.

Our choice? We often use FreeCAD although we like how SolveSpace handles certain things. We haven’t used it as much, though, and FreeCAD integrates nicely with OpenSCAD which we use a lot, too. So, generally, we reach for FreeCAD but it is mostly because of habit. Both tools have a lot of great features.

We’ve looked at SolveSpace before. And we’ve talked a lot about FreeCAD, too. What’s your pick?