Products · Product
FreeCAD
Raised as a usability problem by 208 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2015–2026), in 100 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Common workflows have rough edges and require jumping through hoopsUnreviewed
20152026- Its UI and enforced workflow are cumbersome, making the work feel like a slog2026-05-01
- Extremely frustrating workflows and buggy parts that users must work around2025-05-04
- Hard to get working, with quirks and poor UX that normal users struggle through2024-12-16
Many modeling approaches look possible but only two actually workUnreviewed
20152026- Unconventional UX that people dismissed, and a steep learning curve for parametric modeling2026-03-24
- Non-intuitive processes and gotchas, with a suspiciously high learning curve and poor docs2024-05-22
- Models break after hours of work, and steep learning curve makes tricks hard to remember2023-03-08
Slow operations freeze the UI for up to a minute with cryptic errorsUnreviewed
20152026- Program locks up for seconds on complex operations, running on one core2026-02-20
- Long operations lock the whole UI and cannot be aborted, so mistakes can't be corrected2025-02-24
- Slow operations freeze the UI for up to a minute and errors are cryptic2020-07-12
Cannot tell which workbench to use among many similar choicesUnreviewed
20152026- Can't find needed tools in menu; often ends up in wrong workbench2025-06-11
- Must open the separate Draft workbench for simple tasks, which is frustrating2024-05-21
- Can't tell which workbench to use among many similar choices2024-04-23
Switching back and forth between poorly organised workbenches to finish tasksUnreviewed
20152026- Fractured user experience from each workbench being managed separately2024-11-18
- Too much switching back and forth between poorly organised workbenches to finish tasks2023-03-08
- Features spread across many workbenches, so tasks crossing modules create friction2022-03-28
Moving a hole after creating it is extremely frustratingUnreviewed
20152026- Moving a hole in a design after creating it is extremely frustrating2025-01-02
- Assembling parts with plugins takes too many steps to mate holes2023-02-05
- Hard to change a model; moving a hole means rebuilding the whole box2020-09-18
Top-level undo behaves unexpectedly after recent Sketcher changesUnreviewed
20152026- Top-level undo behaves unexpectedly after recent Sketcher changes2025-11-24
- Design revisions break because edge references fail when sketch geometry changes2019-01-01
- Undo partially reverts properties and also reverts geometry; toggling snapping crashes2017-06-05
Knowing what to do but unable to find the featureUnreviewed
20152026- Finding any functionality is next to impossible2026-03-24
- Knowing what to do but being unable to find the feature2024-06-19
- Features are hard to discover, so people think they don't exist2021-06-07
Hard to find tools whose names don't match what they doUnreviewed
20152026- Interface and tool naming are obscure, so the tool is hard to figure out2024-03-09
- Uses nonstandard names for common tools, so users must search for equivalents2022-03-10
- Hard to find tools whose names don't match what they do2020-09-18
Two sketching modes make dimension and constraint system confusingUnreviewed
20152026- Constraints are hard to get right and sketches need awkward workarounds2024-09-13
- Doesn't indicate which degrees of freedom remain unconstrained in a sketch2019-01-02
- Two different sketching modes make the dimension and constraint system confusing2017-05-24
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Poor UI and advanced tools like loft fall short, frustrating users who need them2026-10-13
- Docs often describe older interface versions, so they don't match the app's current UI2026-10-11
- Interface is considered terrible and hard to use by commenter2026-10-11
- Parametric design workflow is unintuitive, requiring tutorials to figure out2026-10-11
- UI is still a little confusing for users2026-07-11
- Couldn't figure out how to use FreeCAD or LibreCAD after repeated tries2026-07-06
- CAD tools have horrible unintuitive interfaces that are frustrating to use2026-06-09
- Turning a paper sketch into a 3D model is super tedious and time-consuming2026-05-18
- Loft lacks guide curves, so lofts easily twist and connect wrong vertices2026-05-01
- Its UI and enforced workflow are cumbersome, making the work feel like a slog2026-05-01
- UI is convoluted and hard to learn2026-03-31
- User experience didn't make sense to the commenter; UI stays the same for long-time users2026-03-26
- Dialog goes unresponsive after one edit, forcing reopening to change another variable2026-03-25
- Cluttered five-stacked toolbars and oversized panel make it harder to navigate2026-03-25
- Unconventional UX that people dismissed, and a steep learning curve for parametric modeling2026-03-24
- Finding any functionality is next to impossible2026-03-24
- Hard to remember how to use it after infrequent use2026-03-23
- Commenter remembers hating the interface on their last try2026-03-03
- Can't figure out how to rotate the 3D view, panning also hard to learn2026-03-03
- Without a middle-button mouse, the CAD program is very difficult to use2026-03-03
- Sketcher lags on every click because it redraws dimensions while dragging2026-02-25
- Crashes frequently for no clear reason during use2026-02-22
- Opaque error gives no hint to reduce radius or fix the value2026-02-21
- Program locks up for seconds on complex operations, running on one core2026-02-20
- Interface is hard to use and documentation and tutorials are a mess2026-02-20
- Too sprawling and complex, with little thought paid to UI/UX2026-02-20
- Basic extrusions and distance constraints produced non-perpendicular geometry unexpectedly2026-02-20
- Frustrating to work with on complex models due to bugs and crashes2026-02-20
- Usability promised for future releases but never delivered; experience consistently bizarre2026-02-20
- Interface layout frustrates learners, unlike familiar commercial CAD tools2026-02-20
- UI paradigm makes the simplest modeling tasks unreasonably hard2026-02-20
- Interface is clunky and frustrating to use at times2026-02-20
- Naming of functions is confusing; hard to find commands like in other CAD tools2026-02-20
- Too many preferences and some defaults are poor, hard to sort through2026-02-20
- User experience is noticeably weaker than SolidWorks for mechanical CAD work2026-02-20
- Off-putting UI with many gotchas; new users must dig out settings themselves2026-02-20
- Beginners can't find commands by name, forcing constant searching before every click2026-02-20
- Constraint solver sometimes misbehaves, needing undo and a second attempt to add a constraint2026-02-20
- Took a long time to discover rollback is set via right-click menu2026-02-20
- Refuses to chamfer or bevel edges with no apparent reason2026-02-20
- Software is counter-intuitive, so the user keeps abandoning it after years of attempts2026-02-20
- Trivial designs randomly break for no clear reason, and users must work around known footguns2026-01-30
- Interface is a lot to take in at first glance for infrequent users2026-01-29
- FreeCAD's interface is described as having a really bad user experience2025-12-27
- Heavily modal CAD interface feels awkward with pen and touch input2025-12-21
- Requires a multi-button mouse, unusable with trackpad or stylus2025-12-21
- The commenter finds FreeCAD's UI layout very confusing and hard to understand2025-12-21
- UI feels opaque, hard to figure out how to use it2025-12-20
- Some functions are still very unintuitive for the user2025-12-13
- Top-level undo behaves unexpectedly after recent Sketcher changes2025-11-24