FreeCAD

About

FreeCAD

FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D CAD modeler intended for real-life engineering design, mechanical product development, and architecture. The project began in 2002 under the leadership of Jürgen Riegel, Werner Mayer, and Yorik van Havre, and is released under the LGPL license. FreeCAD runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and provides a workbench-based interface covering sketching, part design, assemblies, drafting, BIM, and finite-element analysis.

FreeCAD began in 2002 as an open-source parametric CAD project led by German engineer Jürgen Riegel, who continues to work on the codebase alongside Werner Mayer, Yorik van Havre, and a global community of contributors. The project passed its long-awaited 1.0 release in November 2024 after more than two decades of pre-1.0 development, and the current 1.1.x branch has continued to stabilise the topological naming problem, expand the assembly workbench, and modernise the underlying rendering. FreeCAD is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License, which permits it to be used for personal, educational, and commercial work with no fee. The application is built around a workbench model. The Sketcher workbench applies geometric constraints and dimensions to two-dimensional profiles, Part Design turns those sketches into solid features through a stored construction history, and the Assembly workbench places components into constrained relationships that mirror real-world mechanical products. Additional workbenches cover technical drawings, architectural and BIM modeling, path and CAM generation for CNC and 3D printing, finite-element analysis for structural and thermal simulation, ship-hull design, and other niches added by the community. STEP, IGES, BREP, STL, OBJ, DXF, and DWG import and export make FreeCAD interoperable with commercial engineering tools such as SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, Fusion, and Rhino. Python is a first-class citizen of the FreeCAD environment. Every operator is exposed through the Python API, and users can automate repeated model generation, script custom workbenches, or embed FreeCAD in larger toolchains. Development coordination happens on GitHub at github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD with a public issue tracker, and the project maintains a large community forum, an official Twitter presence at FreeCADNews, a Mastodon account on fosstodon.org, and a YouTube channel that documents workbench-specific tutorials. FreeCAD is packaged for every major Linux distribution and available through Flathub and the Snap store, giving hobbyists, makerspace users, students, and small engineering teams a permanent free option that does not require an account or an internet connection to remain licensed.