Migrating to FreeCAD from SolidWorks
This documentation is a work in progress. Please don't mark it as translatable since it will change in the next hours and days.
Overview
The intention of this page is to serve as a guide for users that are accustomed to the Solidworks CAD/CAM workflow and want to use try or perhaps migrate to FreeCAD.
History
Understanding a little of the history of FreeCAD potentially help users comprehend and orient better to it.
- FreeCAD was initially designed to behave parametrically using the Constructive solid geometry method (see also Part Workbench).
- Later it incorporated the feature editing method within the PartDesign Workbench.
- Solidworks utilizes the latter approach, feature editing.
Tips
Tutorials
List of helpful tutorials
Joko Engineering
There are many video tutorials online. One of the most popular (at the time this was written) is by a Youtuber calling himself Joko Engineering (he also participates on the FreeCAD Forum as Celica_Supra (profile link).
Related
Forum Threads
- Anyone willing to collaborate on writing guides for users coming from other CAD/CAM solutions to FreeCAD?
- Extreme Difficulty coming from Autodesk Inventor 2019.
User documentation
- Getting started
- Installation: Download, Windows, Linux, Mac, Additional components, Docker, AppImage, Ubuntu Snap
- Basics: About FreeCAD, Interface, Mouse navigation, Selection methods, Object name, Preferences, Workbenches, Document structure, Properties, Help FreeCAD, Donate
- Help: Tutorials, Video tutorials
- Workbenches: Std Base, Assembly, BIM, CAM, Draft, FEM, Inspection, Mesh, OpenSCAD, Part, PartDesign, Points, Reverse Engineering, Robot, Sketcher, Spreadsheet, Surface, TechDraw, Test Framework
- Hubs: User hub, Power users hub, Developer hub