I really don’t understand FreeCAD. I have used SolidWorks, Inventor, Fusion360 and OnShape for personal use and we use Siemens NX at work. I’m not an expert at any of them, but I get the job done. My colleagues and I often joke how unwieldy, slow and difficult NX is, but it’s nothing compared to FreeCAD. It’s just so different and unintuitive.
Even when applying good design practices when creating your models, everything will collapse into a giant mess once you try and change/remove an earlier feature. Or possibly I am taking a wrong approach since it’s so different.
The FreeCAD devs know this, and criticisms about how it’s so different from other CAD programs isn’t allowed on their forums (I understand their reasoning for this rule though). I really just don’t understand why the devs of the only free open source CAD program feel the need to do everything so different than anything else that’s out there. It’s not even like they need to find their niche to fill, it would be wildly more popular if it was more in line with commercial CAD programs.
I can’t remember ever reading about someone liking the program but I often read people struggling with and complaining about it.