Another note of praise for FreeCAD: Have been using it for several years now, after having used many other CAD software, including Catia, Autocad, CadKey, TurboCAD, VariCAD (quite nice Linux commercial CAD software), and others. If you're familiar with Catia, FreeCAD has a number of similarities, and is rather easy to switch to.
Here, it's frequently used in conjunction with KiCAD, for designing enclosures that can then be easily prototyped in-house (3D-printed), and/or sent out for production. The .stl files it produces are clean, and it imports them well, also. This makes it easy to work with existing CAD files for off-the-shelf enclosures, components, etc.
FreeCAD models are often imported into Blender, where they can be further tweaked with Blender’s powerful mesh tools, and then photo-quality renders are produced with Blender/LuxRender. Animations are possible, too. FreeCAD actually has some nice mesh tools of it’s own, as well.
FreeCAD is extremely capable, and almost all designs I do in it now are fully parametric, meaning that making changes to a model is simplified and efficient. Parametric modeling is where it’s at for complex designs, and is one of FreeCADs most powerful assets. At this point, I tend to use the built-in spreadsheet facility to hold all dimensions and formulas. For most enclosures done here, if it is required to change dimensions, the changes just get typed in to the spreadsheet, and the entire model updates accordingly. Changing the length, width and height of an enclosure is often as simple as updating just those three dimensions in the spreadsheet. This greatly facilitates the re-use of existing models. Parametric design, when learned and incorporated into the design process well, makes for extremely robust models, and saves a lot of time overall. It’s truly a thing of beauty.
Learning FreeCAD is a great investment of time, because it can never be taken away from you, and the data files you generate with it aren't locked up in some proprietary format. Plus, it’s cross-platform (no dependence on Windows – $$ saved/risks avoided), can be installed on as many workstations as needed, and something that clients love is that they can install it for free as well, to view or even edit designs as desired. Also, it’s extremely scriptable, with powerful hooks built in for Python programming. Of course KiCAD has the same advantages.
As was learned the hard way here, the big corporations all too often don't really care about the little guys, and if you have issues, as we did with the incompetent greedy crooks at Altium, you're completely screwed -- unless you happen to have the resources and time to threaten them with a lawsuit. And, after generating thousands of people-hours of designs, who in their right mind would want to have them all dependent on a single corporation that you’re helpless to defend yourself against should they decide to hike up prices, discontinue support, move to the “cloud”, or even go out of business. It’s much easier to sleep at night knowing that no matter what happens, it will always be possible to have full control over all design files, and that your company has no dependencies on other companies over which you have no control at all.
When Altium shafted us a few years back, we immediately moved everything over to KiCAD and will never even consider doing “business” with Altium again. This is despite the fact that we had been loyal users and proponents of Altium for many years. The use of FreeCAD, KiCAD, and lots of other Open Source software has provided a competitive advantage that eliminates having to deal with evil overlords. The transition wasn’t completely smooth, and there are certainly some features in Altium and other CAD software that are occasionally missed, but there hasn’t been a single show-stopper yet, and the stress level has gone way way down.
Quick reality-check, though: FreeCAD does have some rough edges, can be hard to fully grasp, and doesn’t have a lot of the hand-holding features that the big players have for a variety of functions. The various features and capabilities are sometimes hard to find, and can be quirky. And, it can be a little crashy until you get to know it (mainly if you tend to run the nightly build versions). That said though, I’ve rarely found anything I really needed that FreeCAD was incapable of accomplishing, and once you learn your way around, it’s very robust and it’s possible to be quite efficient at cranking out designs.
Finally, FreeCAD seems to have a lot of active development going on, the forums are filled with experts who are extremely polite and helpful, and I predict it has a very bright future with lots of exciting developments already well in the wings. There are some really smart folks working on several assembly toolsets, and FreeCAD has a myriad of useful modules and plugins that are worth exploring.
And yes, I am VERY biased – especially after the horrid experiences with the big bullies out there that think they can own you...
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