Hint: FreeCAD is open source Computer Aided Design (CAD) software that OSE uses on a regular basis to produce 3D designs, fabrication drawings, exploded part diagrams, and other assets indispensable to the design of physical objects

Basics

A FLOSS CAD software
It is currently (as of 2020) OSE's official CAD software
It is also a part of OSE Linux v1.0 (using FreeCAD 0.16) in OSE's custom Linux distribution

Most Recent Versions

"The latest bug fix release 0.18. 4 (16146) "

See 3/7/16 update on OSE FreeCAD Workbenches -

FreeCAD Downloads

Hint: The OSE Linux distribution is a complete distribution which includes all development software for OSE, and FreeCAD is a staple of that stack

See http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Download to choose the correct build for your Operating System.

FreeCAD 0.16 AppImage

The AppImage is available to download on the FreeCAD GitHub page for the 0.16 release.
Alternatively, click the below link to download the AppImage directly from the FreeCAD repo:
- FreeCAD-0.16.6712.glibc2.17-x86_64.AppImage

FreeCAD 0.16 Appimage Notes

Hi Marcin, I just tested my workbench with an Appimage. https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases/download/0.18.4/FreeCAD_0.18-16146-Linux-Conda_Py3Qt5_glibc2.12-x86_64.AppImage and the recent version https://github.com/rkrenzler/ose-piping-workbench. The workbench works. I assume that PyQt5 could be a reason for the problem. When I started to develop ose-piping-workbench I used the old Version of PyQT then I ported the workbench to the new version. Maybe this is the reason why it worked before but it does not work anymore. Best regards, Ruslan

Learning FreeCAD

Hint: The official OSE tutorials Page on this wiki is OSE FreeCAD Tutorials

OSE-Developed Workbenches

Other Workbenches

Exploded Part Animation

Original Specification

See FreeCAD Specification
FreeCAD is based on the Open Cascade Technology CAD kernel

FreeCAD Review

See FreeCAD Assessment

OSE FreeCAD Needs

See FreeCAD Scripts for the list of top 10 instructionals that are needed.

Action Plan

Recruit software developer to analyze FreeCAD and build with/upon their work. Short-term Objective: Get Assembly Module Working.
Document FreeCAD source code in github repository.
Document FreeCAD's code structure. (some preliminary work available at https://github.com/qingfengxia/FreeCAD_Mod_Dev_Guide)

Process for Developing FreeCAD Instructionals

FreeCAD Architecture Tutorials

Arch Workbench

How to design this structure in FreeCAD is here - [1] -

Drawing Building Panels

Overview

More Basics of FreeCAD from Yorik

3D Printing Tutorial for FreeCAD

Architecture in FreeCAD

Producing Build Instructionals with FreeCAD

Import from Proprietary Formats

AutoCAD dwg - import appears to be available - [2]

FreeCAD Instructionals

See FreeCAD Instructionals

OSE FreeCAD Documentation

I (Mark Norton) have created a very simply, introductory guide to FreeCAD. It only covers the very basics at this point, but we can expand on it as needed. - User:Mjn

File:FreeCAD-3.pdf

This document covers the following topics:

Views
Workshops
Sizing a Primitive Part
Positioning a Part
Making a Cut
Combining Parts
Rotating a Part
Extrusion

See also, FreeCAD Documentation and Tutorials [3].

OSE FreeCAD Requirements

For OSE to use FreeCAD for all of its design needs, these are the functions required. Do these exist? Please comment.

Freehand drawing of shapes and extrusion (like Sketchup).
Adding parameters to all of the shapes, so they can be modified.
Modifying all parameters in 3D parametrically (typing in lengths)
Modifying all parameters in 3D with the mouse (such as dragging corners, edges, and faces)

Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "This is not possible and will not be in the future. This kind of behavior needs quite advanced back-end functionality which is not provided by our geometric modeling kernel"

Adding parameters in 3D parametrically (boolean operations)?
Adding parameters in 3D by drawing them and extruding (mouse-based boolean operations)
Adding parameters to shapes in 3D parametrically (such as drawing in new objects parametrically)?
Adding parameters to shapes in 3D manually (such as drawing in new objects with a mounse)?
For multiple objects, moving them with the mouse to arrange, mate, align them.

Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "That is not yet possible. The assembly workbench is in a very early design phase and still needs quite some time. That is true for basic functionality and integration into freecad workflows."

Grouping and ungrouping objects into assemblies?

Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "not yet but will be possible with upcoming assembly workbench"

Maintaining parametric nature of grouped objects?

Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "not yet, but will be possible with the upcoming assembly workbench"

Now for interoperability with other CAD packages:

Importing multiple new objects into a drawing - one at a time?

Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: 'currently you can only import whole files, not individual objects from a file'

Importing multiple objects into a model - all at one time?
Importing new objects while passing the parametric values into FreeCAD, such as with a STEP file?

Tutorials

2015

Obijuan - good set of 34 lessons, but in Spanish.

Bram De Vries, 2012

Tutorials 1-8:

Path WorkBench

Created by sliptonic (FreeCAD Path Workbench developer)

Assembly Workbench

Tutorial: http://freecad-tutorial.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-to-test-assembly-module.html

Example

Contributors and Users

From Kostas:

Jürgen Riegel is the project founder, working for Daimler Chrysler, his free time is probably limited https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=User:Jriegel Update: Jurgen has not been active on the project for many years now. Kunda (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Werner Mayer is the most active developer in terms of commits, he is just awesome, I don't know what he does professionally but if some funding can get him to increase the time of his participation, this would definitely be a great investment of financial resources.
Yorik is our architect: http://yorik.uncreated.net and he is already dedicating a lot of hours in the development of FreeCAD, since he is a free lancer he is probably quite flexible with time, so maybe he could implement special feature requests for FreeCAD even on a paid basis. FYI Yorik van Havre has a Patreon account.
j-dowset, joined FreeCAD recently and has done a great work on improving blueprints creation in FreeCAD. A very appropriate task for him would be to implement a correct dimensioning system for blueprints. I believe he has the capabilities to implement any kind of feature with relatively short running in time and high quality. Update: User is dormant Kunda (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

*mrlukeparry is quite experienced with Qt and Coin3D so he can do a lot of GUI work. Being a student his free time is probably also limited except school vacations. Update: he left and returned but hasn't been active at all in the code or community Kunda (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Ickby has worked on a prototype for applying assembly constraints between parts. A special task for him would be to accelerate the implementation of the Assembly module after jriegel has finished with the basic framework/structure/design. Update: Ickby has not been very low key for some time. He participates in the forums but has not contributed to the code in a long time, at least not publically. This may change. Kunda (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
tanderson69 is very good in OpenCascade, so he can work on difficult tasks that have to do with the CAD geometry kernel. Update: Participates on the forum and very sporadically on the code. I believe he is involved in another project.
Daniel Falck is the person to contact for CAM integration.
Kostas - sketcher module.

Yorik van Havre, Daniel Falck, and Brad Collette - Path Workbench
Ian Rees - crowdfunded individual working on Drawing Workbench
gCAD3D appears to be viable for CAD/CAM - [4]
Przemo Firszt, Bernd Hahnebach - CAE workbench
Sebastian Hoogen - OpenSCAD workbench
FEA, macros - psicofil, Lucio Gomez - [5]
Cad1919 - Extreme User - is doing some of the most high level work in FreeCAD - cad1919 on YouTube - [6]
61quick - 3D printing complete toolchain within FreeCAD - [7]
Lars G. - IGES files to house cross sections in architecture - [8]
Kwasny - macro example of how to create an Icon in the workbench that allows you to draw a piston ring by clicking on the icon. This way, the macro (a set of commands) was actually turned into a tool - [9]
Dan's Open Source Design Tools, with motto to be free from black-box CAx toolchains - [10]

Uses of FreeCAD

There are various cases of real-life usage of FreeCAD in commercial, research and educational contexts. Add as necessary:

Main Needs

Documentation [11]
Packagers for Releases and Development version (Windows, Linux and MacOSX) + AppImages
Packagers for 3rd party libraries: OpenCascade, VTK, Netgen, Eigen3, Calculix
Helping to create a buildbot framework for testing and releases
'Doxygen'ating the source code
Participating in the FreeCAD Forums
Bug testing tickets on the FreeCAD Bugtracker
Creating FreeCAD-community-approved tutorials

FreeCAD Development

FreeCAD Bugtracker/Issue Queue

<rss>http://www.freecadweb.org/tracker/issues_rss.php?project_id=0</rss>

Support FreeCAD

Yorik van Havre has a Patreon account. The more people donate the more possible for him to spend time on FreeCAD.
Kurt Kremitzki (AKA @kkremitzki) is a dev ops guy + engineer. He has been part of FreeCAD Google Summer of Code 2 years in a row. Hes has a Patreon account.
@realthunder is building Assembly3 (an expermental attempt at the next generation FreeCAD assembly workbench) and has contributed a lot to the Path Workbench. He has a donation link on his GH repo.
@sliptonic is a Path workbench core-dev. He has been improving and advocating Path for some years now. He has a Flattr account.
Login to Github and 'Star' the FreeCAD repo.

Latest FreeCAD Feature Announcements

Feature Announcements thread in the FreeCAD forums.

Latest FreeCAD Pull Requests

Pull requests are no longer announced via the forum, instead visit their GitHub repository pull request section

Multilingual FreeCAD forums

Ask FreeCAD questions in your preferred language

Comments

FreeCAD