FreeCAD

Last updated
Original author(s) Jürgen Riegel, Werner Mayer, Yorik van Havre [1] [lower-alpha 1]
Initial release29 October 2002;
21 years ago (2002-10-29)
Stable release
0.21.2 / November 14, 2023;2 months ago (2023-11-14)
Preview release
0.22.0dev
Repository
Written in C++, Python
Operating system Linux
macOS
Unix
Windows
FreeBSD
Type 3D Modeling, CAD, CAM, BIM, FEM
License LGPL-2.0-or-later
Website freecad.org
Interior of 3D house Freecad screenshot -- Rockn house (in).png
Interior of 3D house
Arduino board imported from Eagle PCB software Freecad screenshot -- Arduino (Eagle import).jpg
Arduino board imported from Eagle PCB software

FreeCAD is a general-purpose parametric 3D computer-aided design (CAD) modeler and a building information modeling (BIM) software application with finite element method (FEM) support. [2] It is intended for mechanical engineering product design but also expands to a wider range of uses around engineering, such as architecture or electrical engineering. FreeCAD is free and open-source, under the LGPL-2.0-or-later license, and available for Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems. Users can extend the functionality of the software using the Python programming language.

Contents

Features

General

FreeCAD features tools similar to CATIA, Creo, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, NX, Inventor, Revit, and therefore also falls into the category of building information modeling (BIM), mechanical computer-aided design (MCAD), PLM, CAx and CAE. It is intended to be a feature-based parametric modeler with a modular software architecture, which makes it easy to provide additional functionality without modifying the core system.

As with many modern 3D CAD modelers, FreeCAD has a 2D component to facilitate 3D-to-2D drawing conversion. Under its current state, direct 2D drawing (like AutoCAD LT) is not the focus for this software, and neither are animation or 3D model manipulation (like Blender, Maya, or Cinema 4D). However, the modular nature of FreeCAD allows the user to adapt its workflow for such environments via the use of plugins.

FreeCAD uses open-source libraries from the field of computing science; among them are Open CASCADE Technology [3] [4] (a CAD kernel), Coin3D (an incarnation of Open Inventor), the Qt GUI framework, and Python, a popular scripting language. FreeCAD itself can also be used as a library by other programs. [5]

There are moves to expand FreeCAD in the architecture, electrical, and construction (AEC) engineering sectors and to add building information modeling (BIM) functionality with the Arch Module. [6]

As of late 2020, 3D Models searcher of CADENAS called 3DfindIT.com is integrated into FreeCAD. [7]

Supported file formats

FreeCAD's own main file format is FreeCAD Standard file format (.FCStd). [8] It is a standard zip file that holds files in a certain structure. [8] The Document.xml file has all geometric and parametric objects definitions. [8] GuiDocument.xml then has visual representation details of objects. [8] Other files include brep-files for objects and thumbnail of drawing. [8]

Besides FreeCAD's own file format, files can be exported and imported in DXF, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), STEP, IGES, STL (STereoLithography), OBJ (Wavefront), DAE (Collada), SCAD (OpenSCAD), IV (Inventor) and IFC. [9]

DWG support

FreeCAD's support for the proprietary DWG file format has been problematic due to software license compatibility problems with the GNU LibreDWG library. The GNU LibreDWG library started as a real free alternative to the source-available OpenDWG library (later Teigha Converter and now ODA File Converter) and is licensed under the GPLv3. As FreeCAD (and also LibreCAD) has dependencies on Open Cascade, which prior to version 6.7.0 was only compatible with GPLv2, [10] it couldn't use the GNU LibreDWG library as GPLv2 and GPLv3 are essentially incompatible. [11] [12] Open CASCADE technology was contacted by Debian team in 2009, and 2012 got a reply that Open CASCADE technology was considering dual-licensing OCCT (the library), however they postponed that move. A request also went to the FSF to relicense GNU LibreDWG as GPLv2 or LGPLv3, which was rejected. [13]

As of 2014 the 0.14 release of FreeCAD, including the new LGPL release of Open Cascade, the BSD-licensed version of Coin3D, and the removal of PyQT, FreeCAD is now completely GPL-free. [14] However, LibreDWG has not been adopted. FreeCAD is able to import and export a limited subset [15] of the DWG format via the ODA File Converter (the former OpenDWG library).[ citation needed ]

Promotions during events

Yorik van Havre presenting FreeCAD at FISL 16 in 2015 FreeCAD - uma plataforma de design hackeavel, com Yorik van Havre - Foto Guilherme Almeida (19605970385).jpg
Yorik van Havre presenting FreeCAD at FISL 16 in 2015

FreeCAD was notably presented at FISL 16 in 2015, in Porto Alegre, [16] as well as at the Libre Graphics Meeting in London in 2016. [17] These two exhibitions can bring together both developers and users. In 2020, it was during FOSDEM in Brussels that two of these developers, Yorik Van Havre and Brad Collette made the presentation. [18]

Release history

VersionRelease dateInformation
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.0.1October 29, 2002Initial release
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.1January 27, 2003
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.2August 9, 2005
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.3October 31, 2005
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.4January 15, 2006
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.5October 5, 2006
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.6February 27, 2007
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.7April 24, 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.8July 10, 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.9January 16, 2010
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.10July 24, 2010
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.11May 3, 2011sketcher, part, 2D and robot modules [19]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.12November 20, 2011architecture Module [20]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.13January 29, 2013ship design module, openscad module, 3D mice support [21]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.14July 1, 2014License changed to LGPLv2+, spreadsheet module, render to LuxRender [15]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.15April 8, 2015 Oculus Rift support, updated ifc importer in Architecture module [22]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.16April 18, 2016FEM workbench, path module [23]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.17April 6, 2018add on manager, surface module, tech draw module [24]
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.18March 12, 2019new start view, extended arch module, many improved modules [25] In 0.18.5 Addon-Manager broken, so 0.18.4 is stable release.
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.19March 20, 2021modules to Python 3 and Qt5 mostly ported, [26] actual 0.19.4
Old version, no longer maintained: 0.20June 14, 2022completely rewritten Addon Manager, more than 30 new tools in TechDraw, persistent section cuts, many improvements of existing tools [27]
Current stable version:0.21August 2, 2023planned as the final release before patches for the topological naming problem introduce performance regressions. Various user interface and workbench improvements. [28] [29]
Future release: 0.22/1.02023development version with weekly builds [30] [31]
Legend:
Old version
Older version, still maintained
Latest version
Latest preview version
Future release

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Jürgen Riegel no longer participates in the active development of FreeCAD since the end of 2015.

Related Research Articles

The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.

DWG is a proprietary binary file format used for storing two- and three- dimensional design data and metadata. It is the native format for several CAD packages including DraftSight, AutoCAD, ZWCAD, IntelliCAD, Caddie and Open Design Alliance compliant applications. In addition, DWG is supported non-natively by many other CAD applications. The .bak, .dws, .dwt and .sv$ files are also DWG files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Cascade Technology</span> Open-source 3D modelling software

Open Cascade Technology (OCCT), formerly called CAS.CADE, is an open-source software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, etc. that is developed and supported by Open Cascade SAS company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhinoceros 3D</span> 3D computer graphics software

Rhinoceros is a commercial 3D computer graphics and computer-aided design (CAD) application software that was developed by TLM, Inc, dba Robert McNeel & Associates, an American, privately held, and employee-owned company that was founded in 1978. Rhinoceros geometry is based on the NURBS mathematical model, which focuses on producing mathematically precise representation of curves and freeform surfaces in computer graphics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archicad</span> Computer-aided design software for architecture

ArchiCAD is an architectural BIM CAD software for Mac and Windows developed by the Hungarian company Graphisoft. ArchiCAD offers computer aided solutions for common aspects of aesthetics and engineering during the design process of the built environment—buildings, interiors, urban areas, etc.

This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating software development kits (SDKs) for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for CAD, BIM, and Mechanical industries including .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk Navisworks, and .ifc files and additional tools for visualization, web development, 3D PDF publishing and modeling.

License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program. Proprietary licenses are generally program-specific and incompatible; authors must negotiate to combine code. Copyleft licenses are commonly deliberately incompatible with proprietary licenses, in order to prevent copyleft software from being re-licensed under a proprietary license, turning it into proprietary software. Many copyleft licenses explicitly allow relicensing under some other copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses are compatible with everything, including proprietary licenses; there is thus no guarantee that all derived works will remain under a permissive license.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">BricsCAD</span> Computer-aided design software

BricsCAD® is a software application for computer-aided design (CAD), developed by Bricsys nv. The company was founded in 2002 by Erik de Keyser, a longtime CAD entrepreneur. In 2011 Bricsys acquired the intellectual property rights from Ledas for constraints-based parametric design tools, permitting the development of applications in the areas of direct modeling and assembly design. Bricsys is headquartered in Ghent, Belgium, and has additional development centers in Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk, Russia; Bucharest, Romania and Singapore. Bricsys is a founding member of the Open Design Alliance, and joined the BuildingSMART International consortium in December 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-software license</span> License allowing software modification and redistribution

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gmsh</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Geometric Kernel</span>

Digital Geometric Kernel, is a software development framework and a set of components for enabling 3D/CAD functionality in Windows applications, developed by DInsight.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SolveSpace</span> Open-source computer-aided design software

SolveSpace is a free and open-source 2D/3D constraint-based parametric computer-aided design (CAD) software that supports basic 2D and 3D constructive solid geometry modeling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LibreCAD</span> Free and open-source 2D CAD software

LibreCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) application for 2D design. It is free and open-source, and available for Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems.

GNU LibreDWG is a software library programmed in C to manage DWG computer files, native proprietary format of computer-aided design software AutoCAD. It aims to be a free software replacement for the OpenDWG libraries. The project is managed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

Software relicensing is applied in open-source software development when software licenses of software modules are incompatible and are required to be compatible for a greater combined work. Licenses applied to software as copyrightable works, in source code as binary form, can contain contradictory clauses. These requirements can make it impossible to combine source code or content of several software works to create a new combined one.

References

  1. ↑ "FreeCAD History". wiki.freecad.org.
  2. ↑ "Testing FEM Workbench of FreeCAD". jolahde.kapsi.fi. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
  3. ↑ "Feature list - FreeCAD Documentation". wiki.freecadweb.org. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  4. ↑ "Open Cascade at FOSDEM 2020". opencascade.com. Archived from the original on 2020-06-19. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  5. ↑ Okoi, Martins (December 1, 2017). "FreeCAD – A 3D Modeling and Design Software for Linux". FOSSMint. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Arch Module". FreeCAD wiki. Retrieved 15 December 2017.
  7. ↑ "3DfindIT.com Directly Integrated into FreeCAD". Digital Engineering. 2020-12-21. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "File Format FCStd - FreeCAD Documentation". freecadweb.org. Retrieved 2015-09-03.
  9. ↑ "Feature list". FreeCAD wiki. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
  10. ↑ Larabel, Michael (2013-01-24). "FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project". Phoronix. Archived from the original on 2016-11-09. Retrieved 2013-08-22.
  11. ↑ Prokoudine, Alexandre (26 January 2012). "What's up with DWG adoption in free software?". libregraphicsworld.org. Archived from the original on 2016-11-09. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  12. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses – Is GPLv3 compatible with GPLv2?". The official site. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
  13. ↑ Prokoudine, Alexandre (2012-12-27). "LibreDWG drama: the end or the new beginning?". libregraphicsworld.org. Archived from the original on 2016-11-09. Retrieved 2013-08-23.
  14. ↑ "License". freecadweb.org. 2014. Archived from the original on 2016-12-04. Retrieved 2015-03-25.
  15. 1 2 "Release notes 0.14 - FreeCAD Documentation".
  16. ↑ van Havre, Yorik (2015). "FreeCAD at FISL16" (PDF). yorik.uncreated.net.
  17. ↑ van Havre, Yorik (2016). "Yorik van Havre at LGM 2016" (PDF). yorik.uncreated.net.
  18. ↑ "Open-source design ecosystems around FreeCAD". archive.fosdem.org. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  19. ↑ "Release notes 0.11 - FreeCAD Documentation".
  20. ↑ "Release notes 0.12 - FreeCAD Documentation".
  21. ↑ "Release notes 0.13 - FreeCAD Documentation".
  22. ↑ "Release notes 0.15" . Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  23. ↑ "Release notes 0.16" . Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  24. ↑ "Release notes 0.17" . Retrieved 19 February 2019.
  25. ↑ "Release notes 0.18" . Retrieved 15 March 2019.
  26. ↑ "Release notes 0.19" . Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  27. ↑ "Release notes 0.20" . Retrieved 17 June 2022.
  28. ↑ "Coming Soon: FreeCAD 0.21". FreeCAD News. 2023-04-28. Retrieved 2023-04-29.
  29. ↑ "Release notes 0.21 - FreeCAD Documentation". wiki.freecad.org. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
  30. ↑ "Release notes 0.22" . Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  31. ↑ "FreeCAD 1.0 Development Cycle".

Further reading

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