FreeCAD is probably the single most frustrating and unintuitive pieces of software I have ever used. I almost drafted hate mail to the devs after 15 minutes of crash coursing fusion360 got me further than 2 days of trying to use FreeCAD.

It seems like it has lots of capability but still "punch your monitor" levels of difficulty just trying to do the most basic stuff.

I use FreeCAD and it's pretty good. But I think it's impossible to learn by trial and error.

MangoJelly has done an amazing job in churning out high quality tutorials for FreeCAD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_yh_S31R9g&list=PLWuyJLVUNt...

(this is just one playlist, there's a lot more on his channel).

While it's a pain to learn and requires some plugins (addons) for basic ergonomics, FreeCAD absolutely works for parametric CAD modeling. YMMV depending on the project and complexity, it does the trick for laser cutting, bending and 3D printing.

Deltahedra is a great YouTube channel for getting the basics.

It suffers from too many "workbenches," some of which appear to be redundant or dated. You never know whether structures created by one are "compatible" with the M.O. of another (like "Part" vs. "Part Design").

And it presents nonsensical problems, like offering to create a sketch on the face of an object and then complaining that the sketch doesn't belong to any object. So you have to manually drag it under the object in the treeview. So gallingly DUMB.

Despite all that, I will wrestle with its ineptitude before giving Autodesk a penny. I get stuff done with it and respect those who give their time to develop it.

how long ago did you try? the recent advances have turned me into a believer as a hobbyist compared to the first time i checked it out.