The elephant in the room is the modular nature of FreeCAD. Unlike most cloud offerings, one can expand the capabilities with your own toolbox in a standard language like Python.
We actually recommended FreeCad as a core to a small medical device manufacturer looking for a custom solution to dynamically tweak their process. i.e. even a simple workbench plugin that takes a few variables to generate a simple manifold, and CAM to gcode in the same program... was a huge benefit for users now locked out of Autodesk and Solidworks walled ecosystems.
Right. I think if you’re not reliant on a few generalist operations where opencascade is weak —- it is not great at very marginal fillets/chamfers/thicknesses —- then FreeCAD is probably a good way to get programmatic, GUI access to OCC. It’s not the only way, of course, but it’s getting towards being stable.
We actually recommended FreeCad as a core to a small medical device manufacturer looking for a custom solution to dynamically tweak their process. i.e. even a simple workbench plugin that takes a few variables to generate a simple manifold, and CAM to gcode in the same program... was a huge benefit for users now locked out of Autodesk and Solidworks walled ecosystems.
Ideal? No... Practical? You bet...
Best of luck =3