3dd6a67804
Continues the work of the material subsystem improvements. This merge covers the continued development of the material editor. The primary improvements are the addition of new data types, a new appearance preview UI, and changes in the array data types. New data types were added to support more advanced workflows, such as the Render Workbench.The Image datatype allows the material to embed the image in the card instead of pointing to an image in an external file. Multi-buyte strings span multiple lines as the name implies. It preserves formatting accross those lines. Also several list types are now supported, with the primary difference being the editors. List is a list of strings, FileList is a list of file path names, and ImageList is a list of embedded images. For the appearance preview, the UI now uses the same Coin library as is used in the documents, meaning the preview will look exactly the same as the material will be shown in the documents. The array data types are now more complete. The default value wasn't being used as originially envisioned and was tehrefore removed. For 3D arrays, the Python API was implemented. There were a lot of code clean ups. This involved removing logging statements used for debugging during development, reduction of lint warnings, and code refactoring. The editor can automatically convert from previous format files to the current format. This has been extended to material files generated by the Render WB. Old format files are displayed in the editor with a warning icon. Selecting one will require saving the file in the new format before it can be used.
Your own 3D parametric modeler
Website • Documentation • Forum • Bug tracker • Git repository • Blog
Overview
-
Freedom to build what you want FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size. Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history to change its parameters.
-
Create 3D from 2D and back FreeCAD lets you to sketch geometry constrained 2D shapes and use them as a base to build other objects. It contains many components to adjust dimensions or extract design details from 3D models to create high quality production-ready drawings.
-
Designed for your needs FreeCAD is designed to fit a wide range of uses including product design, mechanical engineering and architecture, whether you are a hobbyist, programmer, experienced CAD user, student or teacher.
-
Cross platform FreeCAD runs on Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems.
-
Underlying technology
- OpenCASCADE A powerful geometry kernel, the most important component of FreeCAD
- Coin3D library Open Inventor-compliant 3D scene representation model
- Python FreeCAD offers a broad Python API
- Qt Graphical user interface built with Qt
Installing
Precompiled packages for stable releases are available for Windows, macOS and Linux on the Releases page.
On most Linux distributions, FreeCAD is also directly installable from the software center application.
For development releases check the weekly-builds page.
Other options are described at the wiki Download page.
Compiling
Compiling FreeCAD requires installation of several libraries and their development files such as OCCT (Open Cascade), Coin and Qt, listed in the pages below. Once this is done, FreeCAD can be compiled with CMake. On Windows, these libraries are bundled and offered by the FreeCAD team in a convenient package. On Linux, they are usually found in your distribution's repositories, and on macOS and other platforms, you will usually have to compile them yourself.
The pages below contain up-to-date build instructions:
Reporting Issues
To report an issue please:
- First post to forum to verify the issue;
- Link forum thread to bug tracker ticket and vice-a-versa;
- Use the most updated stable or development versions of FreeCAD;
- Post version info from eg.
Help > About FreeCAD > Copy to clipboard; - Post a Step-By-Step explanation on how to recreate the issue;
- Upload an example file to demonstrate problem.
For more detail see:
The FPA offers developers the opportunity to apply for a grant to work on projects of their choosing. Check jobs and funding to know more.
Usage & Getting help
The FreeCAD wiki contains documentation on general FreeCAD usage, Python scripting, and development. These pages might help you get started:
The FreeCAD forum is also a great place to find help and solve specific problems you might encounter when learning to use FreeCAD.
This project receives generous infrastructure support from
and KiCad Services Corp.