About OpenSCAD. OpenSCAD is software for creating solid 3D CAD models. It is free software and available for Linux/UNIX, Windows and Mac OS X. Unlike most free software for creating 3D models (such as Blender) it does not focus on the artistic aspects of 3D modelling but instead on the CAD. Vectorworks is a object oriented CAD software for Mac OS X. The software is specially used for 2D drafting, technical drawing and Powerful 3D modeling. It offer 2D, 3D, production management, and presentation capabilities for all phases of the design process. It also very flexible, so designer have the full freedom to design the way they want.
The Downloads are Win and OSX binary developer builds (no compiling necessary) from the FreeCAD 0.18 development cycle. The Release is created at the beginning of the 0.18 development cycle.
The builds are updated regularly. For the OSX, AppImage, and Windows builds the version number is in the file name and can be compared to the commit count here. Note on Python 3 Please test Python 3 (Conda) builds in your FreeCAD daily routine. AppImage (delta) updates AppImageUpdate (GUI or the command line version). To perform an update.
This release of FreeCAD is dedicated to our friend 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. A word of caution to users of v0.16: there has been tremendous changes to the PartDesign workbench, with the introduction of the Part and Body containers. A Body is now mandatory to create PartDesign features.
When trying to edit a document made in v0.16, you will be prompted to migrate it automatically. If your model was done with a mix of PartDesign features and Part objects, the migration process will most certainly leave your model in a broken state! So if you are not willing to migrate it manually (expect having to delete some stuff and recreate it), it would be best to keep a working version of v0.16 on the side to edit your old documents.
This is the official 0.17 release of FreeCAD for Windows and Mac OS platforms. Linux users are advised to get FreeCAD from their distribution's repository, or from our PPA if using Ubuntu. The AppImage should work on most modern 64 bit Linux distributions.
Download the file and make it executable. It's self contained and should be portable. Note: OS X build supports =10.11 Win x86 supports 7/8/10 Win x64 supports 7/8/10 BACK-UP YOUR 0.16.67xx FILES BEFORE OPENING IN 0.17.xxxxx! MIGRATION TO 0.17.xxxxx MAY CAUSE PROBLEMS. This is the official 0.16 release of FreeCAD for Windows and Mac OS platforms.
Linux users are advised to get FreeCAD from their distribution's repository, or from our if using Ubuntu. There is also a build for Debian Jessie on The.AppImage is new and should work on most modern 64 bit Linux distributions. Download the file and make it executable.
It's self contained and should be portable. As this package is new PLEASE report all bugs, comments, issues, or concerns to the dedicated forum topic Note: OS X build supports =10.9 Win x86 supports XP/Vista/7/8/10 Win x64 supports Vista/7/8/10 AppImage should support most modern 64 bit Linux Distros (Debian Wheezy is known not to work) Included in this release is also the libpack package that contains pre-compiled libraries needed for compiling FreeCAD 0.16.67xx on Windows, with several versions of the Visual Studio compiler. This is NOT needed for installing and running FreeCAD, only if you wish to compile FreeCAD yourself. A-freecad-manual.pdf is Yorik's new FreeCAD 0.16 Manual FreeCAD-0.16.6700QuickReferenceCards.7z contributed by bejant provide a handy aid to FreeCAD's menu commands and keyboard shortcuts FreeCAD.Manual.0.16.pdf is the auto-generated manual from the wiki.
WARNING: FreeCAD has moved! FreeCAD code and release files are now hosted on github at Only older files and code are available here. FreeCAD is a general purpose feature-based, parametric 3D modeler for CAD, MCAD, CAx, CAE and PLM, aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits a wider range of uses in engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties. It is 100% Open Source and extremely modular, allowing for very advanced extension and customization.
FreeCAD is based on OpenCasCade, a powerful geometry kernel, features an Open Inventor-compliant 3D scene representation model provided by the Coin 3D library, and a broad Python API. The interface is built with Qt. FreeCAD runs exactly the same way on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platforms. Features. Rock-solid OpenCasCade-based geometry kernel, allowing complex 3D operations on complex shape types, and supports natively concepts like brep, nurbs, booleans operations or fillets.
Full parametric model allowing any type of parameter-driven custom objects, that can even be fully programmed in python. Complete access from python built-in interpreter, macros or external scripts to almost any part of FreeCAD, being geometry creation and transformation, the 2D or 3D representation of that geometry (scenegraph) or even the FreeCAD interface. People who continue to download and rate FreeCAD here: please look below in the project summary, FREECAD MOVED FROM SOURCEFORGE MORE THAN 2 YEARS AGO!!!!!
FreeCAD v0.17 was released in April 2018 and v0.18 is in active development. Please go to the official FreeCAD website which has an up-to-date download link: freecadweb dot org To those who complain about the unstable nature of FreeCAD: this is not the experience of most FreeCAD users. Did you actually download the latest version? To those who complain about the FreeCAD interface: granted it has a lot of room for improvements, and devs work on it.
But they are all.volunteers. who contribute.in their own free time., please remember that. Plus, anyone who's used parametric CAD software will tell you that without a minimum of training you won't be able to do much of anything. Stop wasting your time here, go to freecadweb.org where all is happening, and register to the FreeCAD forum where people will be happy to help you. In my opinion this software is really promising, but from the usability standpoint, it's a piece of garbage.
I couldn't create a relatively simple model without stumbling upon bugs every few minutes and the software would crash occasionally too. You create a box, try to fillet two edges it and suddenly it teleports 10cm lower. What the heck? I was really hoping to use Linux for CAD modelling, but it looks like I will have to install Windows just for that. Oh, and the user interface - it is a disaster and I think they couldn't make it any less user friendly. This is how regular CAD should work: You draw a thing on a flat plane.
Then you extrude that thing into the 3rd dimension. This is how FreeCAD works: You multiply delta with Avagadro’s number to get the apple pythagorean theorem. Then you use the apple pythagorean theorem to spaghettify delta with a circular eversion and the X value of a random pixel on the screen. That gives you Graham’s number. You hemispherize the Y value of that pixel from Graham’s number to get the square root of delta consumptionizationified. Consume that number to a random point in spacetime, and you get a cube.
Repeat that whole process again to do things to the cube.