Back in college, I had a few classes on CAD (mostly for engineering design), and I became decently proficient with CATIA, SolidWorks, and Autodesk Inventor. Now that I’m getting into 3D printing, I’m coming back to CAD and finding my skills pretty rusty.
I plan to use FreeCAD as my main tool. Could anyone please recommend some tutorials that I can complete that would give me a solid working knowledge of FreeCAD and help me brush up on CAD in general?
I am not sure why you consider it an awful commercial software package, but I have found it to be quite nice to use for learning 3D design and improving my CAD skills.
The restrictive license is right out in the open and not hidden, so there is no surprise there. I have been using SolidWorks for 8 or so years, and for designing things for around the house for my use and whatever I put on Thinginverse and Printables it has been a great deal. I don’t use it for commercial work, partly because of the license restrictions but also I am not interested in performing CAD work on the side. I do the CAD work I do at home for my enjoyment instead of watching TV.
And as far as not being able to help OP - on more than one occasion, I have had someone tell me that they were using one of the FOSS CAD programs because they didn’t know about being able to get Solidworks for that price.
Everyone has their preference, and mine is Solidworks for playing around at home, so I let OP know about it.