What's a fun piece of free software I should learn to use this week?

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I need to quench my thirst for knowledge and learn something new just for the sake of it.

I’ve already learned:

  • Equations and pivot tables in Excel

  • Vector graphics in Inkscape

  • Music mixing in rekordbox

  • Personal VPN on a raspberry pi 4 with OpenVPN

  • LAMP stack web hosting

  • Streaming & video capture with OBS

  • Manual & automatic backups with FreeFileSync

Things I’m open to:

  • FOSS (even beta) or free-as-in-beer software

  • A high or low learning curve

  • Tools for niche fields that I’d otherwise have no reason to learn

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How does this compare to FreeCAD or CAD in general?

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It’s very unique in the CAD space. It’s almost more akin to a hardware definition language like VHDL than it is a traditional CAD solution.

You don’t ever do any direct manipulation of your model through visual tools. There is a visualizer so that you can see your model, but all changes are done via plaintext editing of the model’s definition file.

This has a lot of advantages, not the least of which is being able to version control your 3D models.

It has some disadvantages as well, in that some transforms that are easy in a traditional CAD software are a little more manual in OpenSCAD. I’ve definitely had to dust off my highschool trigonometry once or twice to get something the way I wanted it.

Specifically with regards to FreeCAD. I found FreeCAD to be a little inaccessible. It’s unintuitive at best, and I found it unpleasant to work with, as it was exceptionally fiddly. OpenSCAD feels far more intuitive to me, but I also have a software engineering background. I think OpenSCAD may be trickier for someone without that, but it’s hard to say.

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Thank you for the thoughtful explanation!

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It’s quite different. I’m a programmer and find it substantially better suited to my mental model than FreeCAD. Don’t get me wrong, I respect FreeCAD – even envy it a bit and all the features – but I need to imagine my shapes and describe how they fit together. I spend so much of my free time thinking of equations that product shapes (yay game dev) that it comes pretty naturally.

If you don’t program or prefer a more visual, arguably professional, workflow, you probably won’t like OpenSCAD.

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