FreeCAD 3D CAD/CAM software in development
Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 2:05 am
Here's a promising little CAD start-up I found some time ago and kept in tabs with the development:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/
The software is still in 0.10, not even in a beta stage. However, it's showing (IMO) great promise, and from the 0.07 to the 0.10 the development has been pretty good, with solid improvements. However, it's still a long way from being a really usable software, so anyone wanting just load it and start engineering stuff will be disappointed.
The geometry export doesn't seem to work too well yet, even though it loads a wide bunch of different files, it doesn't seem to output them too well; also, manipulating the objects is pretty difficult. However, once those little issues are dealt with, it would make a good kluge for the STEP <--> VRML conversion problem going on with KICAD. (The real solution by KICAD team would be adherence to ISO 10303 standard - STEP among friends. Unfortunately ISO wants a lot of money for the copies of those papers.)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/
The software is still in 0.10, not even in a beta stage. However, it's showing (IMO) great promise, and from the 0.07 to the 0.10 the development has been pretty good, with solid improvements. However, it's still a long way from being a really usable software, so anyone wanting just load it and start engineering stuff will be disappointed.
The geometry export doesn't seem to work too well yet, even though it loads a wide bunch of different files, it doesn't seem to output them too well; also, manipulating the objects is pretty difficult. However, once those little issues are dealt with, it would make a good kluge for the STEP <--> VRML conversion problem going on with KICAD. (The real solution by KICAD team would be adherence to ISO 10303 standard - STEP among friends. Unfortunately ISO wants a lot of money for the copies of those papers.)