7 ms·

FreeCAD 0.17 “Roland” released

177 points by kwk1 9y ago

mrreelmo 9y ago
I really like this effort of creating an open 3D CAD environment. See here the release notes: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17 https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17
app4soft 9y ago
> This release of FreeCAD is dedicated to our friend Roland Frank[0] who left us in 2017. He was an active and well-appreciated member of the FreeCAD forum, and his video tutorials on the Learn FreeCAD and BPLFRE Youtube channels helped many people get started with FreeCAD. R.I.P. [0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25673 https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25673
- app4soft 9y ago
  Thank You, Roland, for your AWESOME video tutorials on Learn FreeCAD[1] and BPLFRE[2] YouTube channels! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEvhclR4-o&list=PL6fZ68Cq3L8k0JhxnIVjZQN26cn9idJrj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEvhclR4-o&list=PL6fZ68Cq3L... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m49z0weonog&list=PLsrwVwvqYb8G4Ri0iz1JIebsOXkgoytAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m49z0weonog&list=PLsrwVwvqYb...
newnewpdro 9y ago
The last time I tried designing something in FreeCAD it kept crashing at random inopportune moments, but was so damn close to being good enough. This was version 0.16 from Debian, I'm looking forward to trying again with 0.17.
- xevb3k 9y ago
  I last tried it maybe 3 years back. It was buggy then too, but the main issue was that when I sent a part out to fab they couldn’t get the files to import/render correctly (missing faces). There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up. More recently, I’ve been using Onshape. My understanding is that was designed by many of the Solidworks team. It works reasonably well and I’ve not had issues getting parts made. Ideally I think I’d like something that was both cloud based and open source. But I should give freecad or Solvespace another chance perhaps.
  - kwk1 9y ago
    > There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up. Ack, that sounds rough--there can definitely be some pain on the bleeding edge (of open-source CAD.) As far as cloud-based, do you just mean in terms of having that available as a storage/sharing option? Or are you wanting a browser-based client? I've been interested in looking at options for the former for FreeCAD, possibly using either Nextcloud or Mediagoblin servers as backend. (Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good FOSS product lifecycle management software.)
    - xevb3k 9y ago
      Cloud based, as in browser-based. I find it handy as it lets me easily move between workstations. Can also pull up and edit designs on my phone in a pinch.
    - justinclift 9y ago
      As a thought, I've put time and effort into a potential solution for this, for a different (non-CAD) project though. Emailed you the details in case it's of interest. Might need to check your spam folder as gmail sometimes puts things from my domain in there (mail config issue on our end, but can't be solved easily).
- kwk1 9y ago
  Hopefully it's a little more pleasant for you this time around. Besides ~6800 commits of improvements in 0.17, we also upgraded our geometry/topology kernel OpenCASCADE from 6.8.0 -> 7.2.0 and this has resulted in a lot of improvements in terms of geometry operation crashiness, as well as adding new features like hidden line removal which is behind a lot of the improvements in making technical drawings with the TechDraw workbench. (Also, the people behind the LulzBot 3D printers contributed financially to the development of that workbench, so big kudos to them!)
chuggalo 9y ago
I encourage anybody to try FreeCAD. 0.17 is the first release I could actually recommend. The geometric kernel is still quite buggy and still cannot compete even with the cheapest commercial offerings, but it provides a massive feature set and some very interesting/unique features. I use FreeCAD in combination with OpenSCAD and cadquery for my 3d-printed projects and CNC milling. It's actually good enough for most hobbyist projects (anything in the range of <5k$). The ability to model with CSG with OpenSCAD and BREP in a single package (thanks to the openscad plugin) allows the best of both worlds. The python scriptability with cadquery allows to generate complex parametric geometries that would be painful to even approach with a regular CAD package. With constraint references and indirect formula references you can setup pretty robust parametric models that can be reused quite effectively. FreeCAD has enormous potential.
- donquichotte 9y ago
  I applaud the FreeCAD team for their efforts and hope it will become to 3D mechanical CAD what KiCAD has become for PCB design and schematic capture. That said, I can get Fusion360 for free, and while I hate the fact that it's not open-source and that my files are hidden and locked away ond Autodesk's servers and that they can cancel my free "hobbyist" subscription on a whim, Fusion360 is so much easier and faster to use for my small weekend projects that I just cannot bring myself to go through the pain of learning how to avoid the random crashes of FreeCAD. EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in.
  - kwk1 9y ago
    > EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in. There isn't a single donation page. One of the main developers, Yorik van Havre, has a Patreon [1], and there's a Liberapay [2]. I also just decided to make a Patreon [3] (I'm the sysadmin for the project as well as a developer.) 1. https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre 2. https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD/ https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD/ 3. https://www.patreon.com/kkremitzki https://www.patreon.com/kkremitzki
  - StavrosK 9y ago
twarge 9y ago
Those of you coming from Solodworks beware. There isn’t first class Assembly support. However Realthunder’s Assembly3 work is incredibly promising. https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3 https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3
- kwk1 9y ago
  Indeed, now that the Part Design overhaul is complete, Assembly improvements will be one of the main targets for the 0.18 dev cycle.
  - opencl 9y ago
    Is there any estimated timeline for 0.18? 0.16 to 0.17 seems to have taken about 2 years. There's a roadmap page but it lists 0.18 as "Scheduled For Release 2017-11-03".
    - kwk1 9y ago
      It'll almost surely take less time, part of the reason 0.17 took so long was because the Part Design Workbench had compatibility-breaking changes with a whole new workflow. It's probably overly optimistic but some of us are pushing to have this development cycle last roughly until the end of the year before we begin the release process again. At the earliest, that'll probably mean another release this time next year.
    - jononor 9y ago
      Estimates are hard enough in the professional world where one pays X developers to do Y. In a volunteer-ran open source its nearly meaningless... Start to use it today, use extensions like Assembly2/3 to compensate for missing features and do your best to help out if that is not enough. Or have patience :)
      - opencl 9y ago
        Oh yes, I'm well aware of this. I wouldn't still be using GIMP after 10 years if I wasn't a patient person. :) Though I fiddled with an example file for ~5 minutes and it crashed twice in that timespan. Exactly like the last time I tried FreeCAD a few years ago. But I would really like to move on from F360 so I will try to give it more of a chance this time, and hopefully I'll find the time to contribute something.
MichailP 9y ago
Are there some news about jupyter-notebook integration? That would be massive...
- kwk1 9y ago
  There was a potential Google Summer of Code project to work on this last year[1], but it doesn't look like there were any mentors or applicants this year. 1. https://freecadweb.org/wiki/IPython_notebook_integration https://freecadweb.org/wiki/IPython_notebook_integration
eggy 9y ago
I have been using FreeCAD for a while for real projects where I would have used Inventor. My assemblies and parts are not huge, and being able to write things in python is awesome. You can even use FreeCAD without the gui from python. I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential. [1] http://www.freedyn.at/
- kwk1 9y ago
  > I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential. That would be really cool! I know there is a lot of interest in e.g. a kinematics workbench.
- JamesCoyne 9y ago
  How do you handle assemblies efficiently? I found the assembly workbench to be a major weakness of FreeCad when compared to Solidworks or Inventor.
  - eggy 9y ago
    Typically I am not working on assemblies of more than 10 to 20 parts. You're right though, Inventor and Solidworks do handle them better, but with a lot of complexity that scales better when you are working on assemblies and subassemblies of over 100 parts or more. I used to work on machinery with more parts, but now I work on sub assemblies with fewer parts. The assembly workbench will improve when people who have a need for it improve it in FreeCAD. I used to do assemblies with CSG over 15 years ago, and it was complicated, but I was very frustrated in the early days of Inventor when you went down a path, and then found yourself painted in a corner by the history or constraint tree. Changing one thing, and watching it all blow up was my first letdown after jumping on the parametric/history modeling bandwagon (I also used SolidWorks and IDEAS). FreeCAD has come a long way, and I use it more often than before. Quick startup times and fast working with a great Python API (I used to program AutoLISP for comparison).
wildchild 9y ago
Monkey business.
leoedin 9y ago
For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application. It's really useful, really fast and very stable - all in a tiny executable. Definitely worth a try if you're coming from a CAD background - it's the first open source 3D CAD application I've used which could replace Solidworks for quick, painless part modelling. http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- kwk1 9y ago
  There's also some effort in the FreeCAD forums to adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD.
  - app4soft 9y ago
    > adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD This project has name - FreeCAD Assembly3[0], and test builds already available too[1], so soon it could be merged in main FreeCAD branch. Read details on this project wiki[2] ;-) [0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=19111 https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=19111 [1] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases [2] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-Instruction https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-...
- app4soft 9y ago
  > For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application. Yeah, it's cool project, and I'm one of contributors to SolveSpace development ;-) (mostly, tester and idea generator). SolveSpace not only 3D CAD - it is 2D/3D CAD and CAE too. I like to make stress tests for SolveSpace and already know many tricks, so if need some help with SolveSpace - ask me! (I often answer on SolveSpace Forum too). One of most active users of SolveSpace is Eric Buijs[0], that has many videos on his YouTube channel[1] about SolveSpace usage for solving tasks from different CAD challenges and competitions[2], such as "/r/CAD/ Challenge" (I has own archive[3] of those tasks), etc. > It's really useful, really fast Agree, it useful for daily work & small 3D printing tasks. But sadly it's not very useful for very big construction that consists of many sub-models yet... > and very stable Not so stable. Be careful - while SolveSpace often work like a charm, if you create redundant constrains it could freeze your PC very fast! Just need be careful with constrains and complex models design in SolveSpace. [0] https://eribuijs.blogspot.com/2016/09/switching-from-freecad-to-solvespace.html https://eribuijs.blogspot.com/2016/09/switching-from-freecad... [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwwPIXHMZYcVyJ2SuRJjuA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwwPIXHMZYcVyJ2SuRJjuA [2] https://github.com/m2n037/awesome-mecheng#competitions https://github.com/m2n037/awesome-mecheng#competitions [3] https://github.com/symbian9/reddit_cad_challenge https://github.com/symbian9/reddit_cad_challenge
grondilu 9y ago
Is there any effort towards a webassembly port?
- jononor 9y ago
  Would need Python and Qt5 and OpenCascade. Huge undertaking. And for what gain? It's available on all common desktop platforms already. And one can export 3d-model viewers that can be embedded in HTML. On web side of things what I think would be desirable is a webUI for parametric designs, ala Thingiverse Customizer
progval 9y ago
> Linux users are advised to get FreeCAD from their distribution's repository Wow, it has been a long time since I last saw a big piece of software recommending distribution repositories instead of a custom repo, a standalone package, or a curl|bash.
- opencl 9y ago
  They do have a standalone AppImage. Which somehow managed to hang my entire GNOME session the first time I ran it, but worked after logging out and back in.
jononor 9y ago
According to github I've used FreeCAD for 249 designs over the last 3 years. These parts have been 3d-printed, lasercut and CNC milled. Since 0.16 came out I've been quite happy with the software, but looking forward to switching to this release. Especially improvements in Part Design workflow and the integrated CAM should make my usage much nicer. Major thanks to all the contributors!
gntech 9y ago
Some highlights in video form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLOaL9z59k&t=11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLOaL9z59k&t=11s

177 points by kwk1 9y ago

I really like this effort of creating an open 3D CAD environment. See here the release notes: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17 https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17

app4soft 9y ago

> This release of FreeCAD is dedicated to our friend Roland Frank[0] who left us in 2017. He was an active and well-appreciated member of the FreeCAD forum, and his video tutorials on the Learn FreeCAD and BPLFRE Youtube channels helped many people get started with FreeCAD. R.I.P. [0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25673 https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25673

app4soft 9y ago
Thank You, Roland, for your AWESOME video tutorials on Learn FreeCAD[1] and BPLFRE[2] YouTube channels! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEvhclR4-o&list=PL6fZ68Cq3L8k0JhxnIVjZQN26cn9idJrj https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEvhclR4-o&list=PL6fZ68Cq3L... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m49z0weonog&list=PLsrwVwvqYb8G4Ri0iz1JIebsOXkgoytAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m49z0weonog&list=PLsrwVwvqYb...

newnewpdro 9y ago

The last time I tried designing something in FreeCAD it kept crashing at random inopportune moments, but was so damn close to being good enough. This was version 0.16 from Debian, I'm looking forward to trying again with 0.17.

xevb3k 9y ago
I last tried it maybe 3 years back. It was buggy then too, but the main issue was that when I sent a part out to fab they couldn’t get the files to import/render correctly (missing faces). There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up. More recently, I’ve been using Onshape. My understanding is that was designed by many of the Solidworks team. It works reasonably well and I’ve not had issues getting parts made. Ideally I think I’d like something that was both cloud based and open source. But I should give freecad or Solvespace another chance perhaps.
- kwk1 9y ago
  > There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up. Ack, that sounds rough--there can definitely be some pain on the bleeding edge (of open-source CAD.) As far as cloud-based, do you just mean in terms of having that available as a storage/sharing option? Or are you wanting a browser-based client? I've been interested in looking at options for the former for FreeCAD, possibly using either Nextcloud or Mediagoblin servers as backend. (Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good FOSS product lifecycle management software.)
  - xevb3k 9y ago
    Cloud based, as in browser-based. I find it handy as it lets me easily move between workstations. Can also pull up and edit designs on my phone in a pinch.
  - justinclift 9y ago
    As a thought, I've put time and effort into a potential solution for this, for a different (non-CAD) project though. Emailed you the details in case it's of interest. Might need to check your spam folder as gmail sometimes puts things from my domain in there (mail config issue on our end, but can't be solved easily).
kwk1 9y ago
Hopefully it's a little more pleasant for you this time around. Besides ~6800 commits of improvements in 0.17, we also upgraded our geometry/topology kernel OpenCASCADE from 6.8.0 -> 7.2.0 and this has resulted in a lot of improvements in terms of geometry operation crashiness, as well as adding new features like hidden line removal which is behind a lot of the improvements in making technical drawings with the TechDraw workbench. (Also, the people behind the LulzBot 3D printers contributed financially to the development of that workbench, so big kudos to them!)

chuggalo 9y ago

I encourage anybody to try FreeCAD. 0.17 is the first release I could actually recommend. The geometric kernel is still quite buggy and still cannot compete even with the cheapest commercial offerings, but it provides a massive feature set and some very interesting/unique features. I use FreeCAD in combination with OpenSCAD and cadquery for my 3d-printed projects and CNC milling. It's actually good enough for most hobbyist projects (anything in the range of <5k$). The ability to model with CSG with OpenSCAD and BREP in a single package (thanks to the openscad plugin) allows the best of both worlds. The python scriptability with cadquery allows to generate complex parametric geometries that would be painful to even approach with a regular CAD package. With constraint references and indirect formula references you can setup pretty robust parametric models that can be reused quite effectively. FreeCAD has enormous potential.

donquichotte 9y ago
I applaud the FreeCAD team for their efforts and hope it will become to 3D mechanical CAD what KiCAD has become for PCB design and schematic capture. That said, I can get Fusion360 for free, and while I hate the fact that it's not open-source and that my files are hidden and locked away ond Autodesk's servers and that they can cancel my free "hobbyist" subscription on a whim, Fusion360 is so much easier and faster to use for my small weekend projects that I just cannot bring myself to go through the pain of learning how to avoid the random crashes of FreeCAD. EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in.
- kwk1 9y ago
  > EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in. There isn't a single donation page. One of the main developers, Yorik van Havre, has a Patreon [1], and there's a Liberapay [2]. I also just decided to make a Patreon [3] (I'm the sysadmin for the project as well as a developer.) 1. https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre 2. https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD/ https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD/ 3. https://www.patreon.com/kkremitzki https://www.patreon.com/kkremitzki
- StavrosK 9y ago

twarge 9y ago

Those of you coming from Solodworks beware. There isn’t first class Assembly support. However Realthunder’s Assembly3 work is incredibly promising. https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3 https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3

kwk1 9y ago
Indeed, now that the Part Design overhaul is complete, Assembly improvements will be one of the main targets for the 0.18 dev cycle.
- opencl 9y ago
  Is there any estimated timeline for 0.18? 0.16 to 0.17 seems to have taken about 2 years. There's a roadmap page but it lists 0.18 as "Scheduled For Release 2017-11-03".
  - kwk1 9y ago
    It'll almost surely take less time, part of the reason 0.17 took so long was because the Part Design Workbench had compatibility-breaking changes with a whole new workflow. It's probably overly optimistic but some of us are pushing to have this development cycle last roughly until the end of the year before we begin the release process again. At the earliest, that'll probably mean another release this time next year.
  - jononor 9y ago
    Estimates are hard enough in the professional world where one pays X developers to do Y. In a volunteer-ran open source its nearly meaningless... Start to use it today, use extensions like Assembly2/3 to compensate for missing features and do your best to help out if that is not enough. Or have patience :)
    - opencl 9y ago
      Oh yes, I'm well aware of this. I wouldn't still be using GIMP after 10 years if I wasn't a patient person. :) Though I fiddled with an example file for ~5 minutes and it crashed twice in that timespan. Exactly like the last time I tried FreeCAD a few years ago. But I would really like to move on from F360 so I will try to give it more of a chance this time, and hopefully I'll find the time to contribute something.

MichailP 9y ago

Are there some news about jupyter-notebook integration? That would be massive...

kwk1 9y ago
There was a potential Google Summer of Code project to work on this last year[1], but it doesn't look like there were any mentors or applicants this year. 1. https://freecadweb.org/wiki/IPython_notebook_integration https://freecadweb.org/wiki/IPython_notebook_integration

eggy 9y ago

I have been using FreeCAD for a while for real projects where I would have used Inventor. My assemblies and parts are not huge, and being able to write things in python is awesome. You can even use FreeCAD without the gui from python. I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential. [1] http://www.freedyn.at/

kwk1 9y ago
> I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential. That would be really cool! I know there is a lot of interest in e.g. a kinematics workbench.
JamesCoyne 9y ago
How do you handle assemblies efficiently? I found the assembly workbench to be a major weakness of FreeCad when compared to Solidworks or Inventor.
- eggy 9y ago
  Typically I am not working on assemblies of more than 10 to 20 parts. You're right though, Inventor and Solidworks do handle them better, but with a lot of complexity that scales better when you are working on assemblies and subassemblies of over 100 parts or more. I used to work on machinery with more parts, but now I work on sub assemblies with fewer parts. The assembly workbench will improve when people who have a need for it improve it in FreeCAD. I used to do assemblies with CSG over 15 years ago, and it was complicated, but I was very frustrated in the early days of Inventor when you went down a path, and then found yourself painted in a corner by the history or constraint tree. Changing one thing, and watching it all blow up was my first letdown after jumping on the parametric/history modeling bandwagon (I also used SolidWorks and IDEAS). FreeCAD has come a long way, and I use it more often than before. Quick startup times and fast working with a great Python API (I used to program AutoLISP for comparison).

wildchild 9y ago

Monkey business.

leoedin 9y ago

For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application. It's really useful, really fast and very stable - all in a tiny executable. Definitely worth a try if you're coming from a CAD background - it's the first open source 3D CAD application I've used which could replace Solidworks for quick, painless part modelling. http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl

kwk1 9y ago
There's also some effort in the FreeCAD forums to adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD.
- app4soft 9y ago
  > adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD This project has name - FreeCAD Assembly3[0], and test builds already available too[1], so soon it could be merged in main FreeCAD branch. Read details on this project wiki[2] ;-) [0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=19111 https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=19111 [1] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases [2] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-Instruction https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-...
app4soft 9y ago
> For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application. Yeah, it's cool project, and I'm one of contributors to SolveSpace development ;-) (mostly, tester and idea generator). SolveSpace not only 3D CAD - it is 2D/3D CAD and CAE too. I like to make stress tests for SolveSpace and already know many tricks, so if need some help with SolveSpace - ask me! (I often answer on SolveSpace Forum too). One of most active users of SolveSpace is Eric Buijs[0], that has many videos on his YouTube channel[1] about SolveSpace usage for solving tasks from different CAD challenges and competitions[2], such as "/r/CAD/ Challenge" (I has own archive[3] of those tasks), etc. > It's really useful, really fast Agree, it useful for daily work & small 3D printing tasks. But sadly it's not very useful for very big construction that consists of many sub-models yet... > and very stable Not so stable. Be careful - while SolveSpace often work like a charm, if you create redundant constrains it could freeze your PC very fast! Just need be careful with constrains and complex models design in SolveSpace. [0] https://eribuijs.blogspot.com/2016/09/switching-from-freecad-to-solvespace.html https://eribuijs.blogspot.com/2016/09/switching-from-freecad... [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwwPIXHMZYcVyJ2SuRJjuA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwwPIXHMZYcVyJ2SuRJjuA [2] https://github.com/m2n037/awesome-mecheng#competitions https://github.com/m2n037/awesome-mecheng#competitions [3] https://github.com/symbian9/reddit_cad_challenge https://github.com/symbian9/reddit_cad_challenge

grondilu 9y ago

Is there any effort towards a webassembly port?

jononor 9y ago
Would need Python and Qt5 and OpenCascade. Huge undertaking. And for what gain? It's available on all common desktop platforms already. And one can export 3d-model viewers that can be embedded in HTML. On web side of things what I think would be desirable is a webUI for parametric designs, ala Thingiverse Customizer

progval 9y ago

> Linux users are advised to get FreeCAD from their distribution's repository Wow, it has been a long time since I last saw a big piece of software recommending distribution repositories instead of a custom repo, a standalone package, or a curl|bash.

opencl 9y ago
They do have a standalone AppImage. Which somehow managed to hang my entire GNOME session the first time I ran it, but worked after logging out and back in.

jononor 9y ago

According to github I've used FreeCAD for 249 designs over the last 3 years. These parts have been 3d-printed, lasercut and CNC milled. Since 0.16 came out I've been quite happy with the software, but looking forward to switching to this release. Especially improvements in Part Design workflow and the integrated CAM should make my usage much nicer. Major thanks to all the contributors!

gntech 9y ago

Some highlights in video form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLOaL9z59k&t=11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLOaL9z59k&t=11s