Documentation and support

When you hit a roadblock, it’s important that you can find a way through.

The FreeCAD website has documentation that covers every part of the program, and it includes a full manual. As it’s such a large piece of software, there are many areas that an individual user might never visit, and for this reason, the rest of the documentation is highly sectional. For example, there are masses of detailed information for people who want to get into Python scripting within FreeCAD. There is a forum that is highly active and an IRC channel for chat-based discussions. All in all, help is never far away as FreeCAD is extremely well documented in every area and it’s backed by an extensive community.

The OpenSCAD website has a full manual that is split into two parts. The first part covers the user interface, and the second half is the language reference, quite appropriate for something that is based around a programming language.

Salome’s website contains a basic manual that covers every part of the program. In the area that we were interested in, the Shaper module, every feature seems to have an entry, often with an illustration. There is a Salome user forum that has occasional traffic and it looks as though you could expect an answer if you posted there.

CADQuery is equally well documented, and it has an active Discord chat server. There is a forum that has a small amount of regular traffic, but importantly, every query posted seems to get a reply.

Lastly, the SolveSpace website has a manual that briefly covers all features of the software with occasional images. There is a simple forum that is marginally active.