FreeCAD

FreeCAD is a pretty feature-complete OSS CAD application that has a few idiosyncrasies and quite possibly the worse UX of every single CAD program I’ve ever tried (and I used AutoCAD in DOS).

Re-Docking Palette Windows in GNOME

Type a variation of this in the console:

from PySide import QtGui
Gui.getMainWindow().findChild(QtGui.QDockWidget, 'Combo View').setFloating(False)

And yes, this was still present in 2022, with earlier mentions harking back at least 5 years.

Resources

Category Date Link Notes
Alternatives 2025 Dune3D

a simpler, but more focused alternative that can handle STEP files

2023 Solvespace

a less burdensome parametric CAD program that, alas, does not support fillets/chamfers

Plugins 2024 Modern UI

a ribbon-like UI for FreeCAD that greatly simplifies finding commands

2022 Nodes Workbench

a visual scripting workbench using node editing

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