FreeCAD 1.0.0
FreeCAD is a 3D CAD modeler and drawing tool. It directly targets the fields of mechanical engineering and product design. FreeCAD is a general purpose feature based on CAD, MCAD, CAx, CAE, and PLM. It is aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but is also suitable for a wider range of uses in engineering. Such as architecture or other engineering disciplines.
It is 100% open source and highly modular, allowing for highly advanced extension and customization. The program can already import DXF, OCA/GCAD, SVG, STP, STEP, IGS, IGES and other formats. You can also create a new document from scratch.
FreeCAD supports 2D objects such as lines, rectangles, arcs, or circles. Plus many 3D elemental elements (box, sphere, cylinder, cone, and ring), each of which can then be manipulated in different ways (translation, rotation, reflection, scaling, displacement, and more).
Behind all this lies Python code. Everything you do inside the interface will issue some Python commands, which you can inspect. Enter Python commands yourself freely if you need more flexibility. Or even create macros by recording any particularly useful Python language to play back later.
FreeCAD is based on OpenCasCade. This is a powerful engineering core, featuring a 3D scene representation model compatible with Open Inventor. It is provided by the Coin 3D library and an extensive Python API. The interface is built with Qt. FreeCAD works exactly the same on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
Features clues:
- A complete geometry kernel based on Open CASCADE technology that allows complex 3D operations on complex shape types. With original support for concepts such as brep and nurbs curves and surfaces. Large selection of engineering entities, logical operations, slices, and built-in support for STEP and IGES formats
- Full parametric model. All FreeCAD objects are original parametric. This means that their shape can depend on properties or even depend on other objects. All changes are recalculated on demand, and logged by the undo/redo stack.
- A modular architecture that allows extensions (modules) to add functionality to the core application.
- Import and export to standard formats. Such as STEP, IGES, OBJ, STL, DXF, SVG, STL, DAE, IFC or OFF, NASTRAN, VRML. In addition to FreeCAD's native Fcstd file format.
- Sketcher is a constraint solver, allowing you to draw geometrically constrained 2D shapes. Sketcher currently allows you to build several types of constrained geomerty. You can also use it as a base for building other objects throughout FreeCAD.
- A robot simulator that allows the study of robot movements. The bot module already has an extended graphical interface that allows only GUI workflows.
- Drawing Sheets module that allows placing 2D renderings of your 3D models on a sheet of paper. These modules then produce SVG or PDF sheets ready for export. Unity is still sparse but really features powerful Python functionality.
- A rendering unit that can export 3D objects for display using external display devices. Currently only povray and LuxRender are supported, but it will be expanded to other renderers in the future.
- An architectural module that allows for a BIM-like workflow, with IFC compatibility.
Download FreeCAD 1.0.0