FreeCAD Legacy Migration
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Introduction
This page is meant to document the motivation of why OSE should migrate away from FreeCAD 16 or FreeCAD Legacy.
Motivation
The is motivation for migrating away from FreeCAD Legacy.
FreeCAD 17 Features
- Addon Manager - Vastly simplifies installing additional workbenches and macros
- Part: Attachment - Links, or attaches objects parameterically which means that if the attached-to object's placement changes, then the attached object will update it's position automatically.
FreeCAD 18 Features
- Part: Explode Compound - Explode a compound into it's individual parts
- New Style Workbenches - Multiple reasons, but the big one is integration with The Python Package Index (PyPi) and pip
FreeCAD 19 Features
- Link - Finally can make assemblies a reality
Python 3 Features
- Type Hints - Greatly increases the quality of our code and generated documentation
Costs of Not Using the Latest FreeCAD Version
- You'll copy and paste snippets from Googling help online and they won't work for you because they're only available in a later version of FreeCAD
- Real Example:
firstVertexandlastVertexmethods don't exist in FreeCAD 16. Had to use alternative. See the following thread for details
- Real Example:
- Less help on the FreeCAD forums
- According to the FreeCAD Forum Rules, you must "Make sure your FreeCAD version is up to date" before posting.
- I was told on my first post for help on the forums that my versions were "obsolete" and I should be using the latest. See the following post and reply.
- Additional overhead of writing Python 2 and Python 3 compatible code
- Unable to contribute meaningfully code to FreeCAD
- Why contribute new features or bug-fixes if we aren't able to get those new features or bug-fixes since those will only be included in the latest released version of FreeCAD instead of being back-ported to FreeCAD Legacy
Python 2 Is No Longer Supported!!!
Python 2 was sun-setted on January 1, 2020. That means the Python Software Foundation will not improve it anymore after that day, even if someone finds a security problem in it. You should upgrade to Python 3 as soon as you can.