Software Alternatives & Reviews

Altium Designer VS FreeCAD

Compare Altium Designer VS FreeCAD and see what are their differences

Altium Designer logo Altium Designer

PCB Design Software

FreeCAD logo FreeCAD

An open-source parametric 3D modeler
  • Altium Designer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-11
  • FreeCAD Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

Altium Designer videos

Introduction to Altium Designer

More videos:

  • Review - Design Review - Altium Designer + Altium 365

FreeCAD videos

Is FreeCAD any good?

More videos:

  • Review - FreeCAD vs Fusion360 - What is the Best FREE CAD Program?
  • Review - FREECAD review | the best free cad software to download for free ! | mechanical modeling program

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Altium Designer and FreeCAD)
Simulation
100 100%
0% 0
3D
0 0%
100% 100
Electronics
100 100%
0% 0
Architecture
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Altium Designer and FreeCAD. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Altium Designer and FreeCAD

Altium Designer Reviews

Comparing the Top 5 CAD Software for Electronics Design Development
Altium Designer gain its popularity in the design community and it is used by professional electronics engineers for creating complex and complicated PCB designs. It is mostly appreciated by engineers who work on IoT and industrial solutions.
Source: hackernoon.com
Our Top 10 printed circuit design software programmes
Some people still use Protel, the former version of Altium Designer. The reasons vary from one user to the other and, as seen above, software assessments can be very subjective:

FreeCAD Reviews

15 Best Sketchup Alternatives 2022
From the description “FreeCAD” you can decipher that this software is free to use. Hence, you can use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux amongst other operating systems.
9 Free CAD Software to Download
Although it is open source and free, FreeCAD is on par with other popular CAD programs due to its capability in creating real 3D solids, support for meshes, 2D drafting, right hand coordinate system plus many more features.
10 Free AutoCAD Alternatives
Its tools and concepts are quite similar to those of AutoCAD. So those who are already familiar with CAD will feel very comfortable using it. The FreeCAD source code can be downloaded, used and transformed as the user wants, because it is free. One of its most striking features is that by having a free source code, FreeCAD users have constantly changing software available...
Source: solidface.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, FreeCAD should be more popular than Altium Designer. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Altium Designer mentions (1)

  • Biden invokes Defense Production Act for printed circuit board production
    Check out Altium’s website (altium.com. A lot of free resources that might help. They also have a YouTube channel. Good luck. Source: about 1 year ago

FreeCAD mentions (2)

  • SOLIDWORKS for Linux
    Important note[0] from author: > With the help of my script, You get a way to install Solidworks on your Linux system. > Certain packages and programs that are required will be set up for You, but it's important to know, that my script only helps You to get the program to run and nothing more! Personally I may recommend try & use SolveSpace[1,2] and FreeCAD[3] — free & open-source 2D/3D... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • STL to Gcode for CNC Router?
    Also FreeCAD has a gcode workbench for full 3D. I've used it a little and would describe it as "usable once you work out the quirks". Https://freecadweb.org/. Source: about 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Altium Designer and FreeCAD, you can also consider the following products

KiCad - A Cross Platform and Open Source Electronics Design Automation Suite

SketchUp - 3D for Everyone

Autodesk EAGLE - Autodesk EAGLE is an electronic design automation (EDA) software.

LibreCAD - An open source 2D CAD application for Windows, Apple and Linux.

EasyEDA - EasyEDA - Web-based EDA suite; runs in browser.

Blender - Blender is the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.