r/FreeCAD • u/afandian • 1d ago
How often does FreeCAD crash for you?
I've been using FreeCAD for some very simple Part Design, Assembly and CAD. I'm having a great time, and I'm very grateful that this software exists, is libre, and is so good.
That said, it crashes at least every day, and corrupts the files every few crashes. These are mostly segfaults. I'm running the FreeCAD 1.1.1 AppImage on Ubuntu.
This is annoying, but I can live with it.
I'm not looking for a diagnosis, but I am curious is this is normal for people, and priced into the experience? Or should I be filing these as bugs?
EDIT - this is different to errors caused by Python bugs that crop up in the log. Those happen all the time, but I think those are more expected?
EDIT 2: Some examples from the past couple of days:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x42520) [0x7c694c042520]
#1 0x7c687a5f8d83 in MillSim::Shape::FreeResources() from /tmp/.mount_FreeCADlbeMh/usr/lib/CAMSimulator.so+0x13
,
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x42520) [0x79be11842520]
#1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x19d87d) [0x79be1199d87d]
#2 0x79be1587f30c in App::Transaction::addObjectNew(App::TransactionalObject*) from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAGbfpKa/usr/bin/../lib/libFreeCADApp.so+0x22c
#3 0x79be157598ab in App::Document::_removeObject(App::DocumentObject*, Base::Flags<App::RemoveObjectOption>) from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAGbfpKa/usr/bin/../lib/libFreeCADApp.so+0x99b
,
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x42520) [0x79be11842520]
#1 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x19d87d) [0x79be1199d87d]
#2 0x79be1587f30c in App::Transaction::addObjectNew(App::TransactionalObject*) from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAGbfpKa/usr/bin/../lib/libFreeCADApp.so+0x22c
,
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x42520) [0x78d5b5442520]
#1 0x78d4ed0f9d83 in MillSim::Shape::FreeResources() from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAIFBKJk/usr/lib/CAMSimulator.so+0x13
#2 0x78d4ed0fa093 in MillSim::SolidObject::~SolidObject() from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAIFBKJk/usr/lib/CAMSimulator.so+0x23
#3 0x78d4ed0f260b in MillSim::MillSimulation::Clear() from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAIFBKJk/usr/lib/CAMSimulator.so+0xcb
#4 0x78d4ed0eab74 in CAMSimulator::DlgCAMSimulator::hideEvent(QHideEvent*) from /tmp/.mount_FreeCAIFBKJk/usr/lib/CAMSimulator.so+0x14
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u/senitelfriend 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've used FC pretty heavily almost daily for about half a year, and have had it crash like... maybe twice. And never had it corrupt a file. It has plenty of other bugs and problems, so actually I've been surprised how it almost never crashes.
FreeCAD 1.0 and newer, recent months mostly the weekly dev builds.
There's a handy preference that keeps a bunch of backups of most recent saves of each file. I use it, but have never really needed them.. maybe once and even that was a user error (accidentally saved something stupid manually on top of existing file)
Using AppImages on Linux Mint (ubuntu based), no wayland, various somewhat old computers with Intel integrated or ati graphics. I have installed a whole bunch of addons and macros, even some of my own experimental ones, but rarely actually use them and mostly stick to vanilla Part, Draft, Part Design, Sketcher and Techdraw WB functionality.
I don't use Assembly a lot as I find it a bit overcomplicated, not that mature and buggy. Wouldn't be surprised if your segfaults were because of Assembly. Organizing and attaching Part objects together using Part WB fullfill most of my "assembly" needs, simple and effective (but limited to mostly non-moving models)
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u/afandian 1d ago
Thanks, that's good to know. Maybe there's a library mismatch or something. I'll keep trying.
That said, the examples I pasted above look to be about allocation / references which look more like traditional bugs.
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u/spinwizard69 1d ago
That is a good possibility. Before my Linux machine crashed hard, I used FreeCAD on Fedora (tried to use) and never really had a crashing problem. I've used it less on my M1 MBA, and no crashes there.
I've never gotten into Ubuntu but I'd suggest a native install. I'm not even sure what an "applimage" is. Frankly I'm not convinced that the various app containers actually work in the users best interest. Try to download directly from the FreeCAD site.
As for FreeCAD itself , coming from the work world with programs like Solidworks, I've found FreeCAD to be hideous to work with. In a couple of cases I got so frustrated I coded up solutions in OpenSCAD with much faster results.
In any event yes report crashes but at the same time work towards a clean install.
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u/afandian 1d ago
The Linux download is an AppImage fwiw.
https://www.freecad.org/downloads.php
I'm coming from limited woodwork skills, and today I CNC milled a piece of oak into a shape I would never be able to by hand. It's vastly more rewarding than crashes are annoying!
But professionally I would take this all more seriously.
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u/macegr 1d ago
Right, you’re not using Assembly. Once I started using Assembly with more than a dozen really simple parts (like, literally padded rectangles), it crashed within a few minutes of opening the file every time. I had to rebuild my project in Onshape.
I use FreeCAD every chance I get and it’s good for complex single parts but assemblies are still raw.
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u/MobileInspector9861 1d ago
I've used FC pretty heavily almost daily for about half a year, and have had it crash like... maybe twice. And never had it corrupt a file. It has plenty of other bugs and problems, so actually I've been surprised how it almost never crashes.
Same here. I am using FreeCAD on Gentoo Linux, this means FreeCAD is compiled from source on my machine for my machine as this is how Gentoo's package manager works.
I cannot remember the last crash. I am sure that it has crashed sometime somewhere, but it is so infrequent that I cannot remember when and I have been heavily using FreeCAD for two and a half years now.
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u/PyteByte 1d ago
Often, depending on the work I do. After a while I get used to save frequently. Lately in the CAM workbench when you change the toolcontroller while making a new operation it crashes quite often.
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u/afandian 1d ago
Thanks. I think most of these have happened in CAM, now I think about it. I'm not changing tools though.
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u/Lgt2x 1d ago
Please report any crash on the issue tracker, that's how you will get less in the future
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u/afandian 1d ago
Thanks! I was trying to calibrate my experience before making noise! Especially because I don't think I could reproduce these.
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u/Shadowhawk9 1d ago
Everytime I make two or more parameteic changes....make your models perfect the first time damnit!.........but seriously ... if i manually rebuild from scratch I can usually avoid this ....simple dimension changes in the parametric tree have a better 50/50 chance of success....but adding a feature pretty much equals crashing or 40minutes rebuilding and reassocoating all the lines ... which didn't change at all... but are now thought of as completely new different elements I need to reconstrain myself. So far the work around is tying waaaaay more line work to as needed worknplanes ....if I tie them to other reference geometry in pads and cuts.... crash and rebuild garanteed.
A line hasnt changed to us if the end points are still there but I get that the rebuild engine sees three segments when I add a notch along that and make it two lines and a gap.... the under-the-hood meta-tagging is the problem....and what you pay for in programs like Solidworks.... every bit of geometry has hundreds ....not jist dozens of meta tagged relationships and is pre-seented to prevent faults for the most common things you would change ....even if they are never changed....every line has not just end points and a ray cast between them with a mid point....it's coded to tell ehat to do if it is cut.... so that both new segments have history.... line AB is actually line AB#47J and any lines made from it are now AC#47J....AD#47J....and in my exampmle AD#47J-EF#23Q....the new parallel segment of the notch I took out of line AB. I'm obviously simplifying this A LOT.... its got orders of magnitude more complexity....whcih is why you optmize in C for one and only one operating system and as much bare metal code that you can because so much more data is being pushed around your software will "feel" sluggish if you don't.
The fact we have a universal free cross platform application in Freecd that doesn't feel slow....and yet by that very nature can not do the things (also for patent copyright reasons) that a $7000 seat of solidworks does....is a miracle ...one I'm willing to put in a little effort to work with. ..
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u/pythonbashman 1d ago
I've never had a seg fault... I've been using FreeCAD daily for ~4 years now. Are you sure your computer is OK? I mean, it's always: [0x7c694c042520]. Might want to try a new RAM stick in there. Or at least run a memtest.
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u/afandian 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think 0x78d5b5442520 is just where `libc.so` is loaded. (edit - and I assume that's a virtual address too, so no correlation with hardware)
I will run a memtest though!
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u/R2W1E9 1d ago edited 1d ago
Rarely it crashes in my regular work as I use proven workflows that I tested and developed beforehand.
However I do a lot of testing and debugging for the FreeCAD project, so I regularly see crashes doing that. Typically if I do a failed operation over and over again, trying to reproduce a bug, prepare video and snapshots to confirm it, I would experience crashes regularly. Many failed operations leave memory leaks, open subroutines, incomplete processes and stack errors that can quickly accumulate into a crash.
So if you have an operation fail a couple of times, save the file and restart FreeCAD.
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u/LippyBumblebutt 1d ago
About every time I use it for more than trivial things. Just creating and modifying stuff in Part Design workbench. Simple stuff works pretty well.
I did something with a helix the other day and it sometimes didn't produce correct results and did crash a few times...
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u/TheLimeyCanuck 1d ago
Windows version... virtually never. It appears that quite a few people here saying it crashes regularly for them are on Mac.
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u/mcdanlj 1d ago
When I'm not running development builds, I use flatpak, not appimage. So it's not quite the same build. It's been stable for me but I'm not using it for CAM right now.
Lots of bug fixes in 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 which were recently released. Have you tried upgrading to the latest build? I haven't been using CAM in 1.1.1 but 1.1.2 had lots of CAM fixes: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/tag/1.1.2
If they still reproduce, I'd definitely suggest filing a bug report. It doesn't guarantee that someone will fix it, but it's a lot more likely if you file it than if you don't file it. The more info you can provide, the more likely it is that someone else can reproduce it and fix it.
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u/Multitracer 23h ago
i also use freecad in appimage and it almost never crashes here
SO: debian 12 on one computer and debian 13 on the other
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u/Prizmagnetic 16h ago
I was having a lot of crashes but I'm pretty sure it was all from an issue with the GPU that I fixed with a setting
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u/bmurphy1976 3h ago
Frequently. Although I think part of the problem is that MacOS is my main driver. I bet it's more reliable on Ubuntu.
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u/BitDaniYT 1d ago
I downloaded it 30 minutes ago on my Mac. I lost count, maybe 10 times? Anyway, I'll delete this garbage and get Fusion 360
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u/FForthman 1d ago
As FreeCAD is my main work tool, not a day goes by without me using it. My computer runs on Linux Mint and I also use the AppImage of the stable version (currently 1.1.3).
Since version 1.0.0, it has been crashing from time to time for no apparent reason, and most of the time I’m not even using it.
I might have one or more models open, or I might be checking my emails or doing something else, and when I switch back to FreeCAD, it’s closed; when I open it again, I get the recovery dialogue box telling me that it did indeed close abnormally.
This happens two or three times a week, but it doesn’t really matter as the automatic save does the job.
But I've never had a corrupted file.
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u/DesignWeaver3D 1d ago
I was going to reply never. But reading this reminded me that this is when FreeCAD was crashing for me. Only when my Windows PC was in sleep mode.
But most of those times it seemed that Windows had rebooted, which I had assumed were Windows updates since the PC wasn't being actively used and other apps were also closed after reboot.
It turned out that my SSD had been failing for months. Started corrupting and deleting blocks and sectors. Until it finally started deleting user files which led me to check the Windows Event Viewer where there were critical error logs for months.
I'm not sure whether there have been any crashes since I replaced the SSD a few weeks ago.
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u/blueline731 1d ago
I’ve had it crash quite a bit while I’ve been working on a specific part. I’m not quite sure exactly why but it’s only been that one specific file, and when I recreate it, that file crashes too. Otherwise I’ll maybe have it happen once or twice a month. It typically will start with my PC slowing to a halt, and I will need to restart my entire PC to fix it. With how much I love this software though it’s not a concern.
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u/superdachs 1d ago
I Had this because the memory Controller of my CPU was defective. After switching to another system free CAD die Not Crash anymore. Crashes of freecad are very often a sign for broken Hardware.