FreeCAD has released its first release candidate (RC1) for version 1.0, marking a significant milestone for the open-source project that began over twenty years ago.
This open-source parametric 3D modeler, forever in development,aims at a broad audience of hobbyists, designers, and perhaps even engineers—anyone for whom paying for solid modeling is an impediment.
FreeCAD is not the first or only free CAD program. Onshape has a free version. DraftSight and Fusion have had free versions, but corporations tend to gravitate towards monetize programs once meant to be given away.
A major deterrent to free MCAD software is the geometry kernel, which a CAD developer must pay for. Thus, giving away MCAD programs is a money-losing proposition.
FreeCAD avoids the cash bleeding a commercial geometry engine would cause by using the Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) as its geometry kernel, an open-source geometry kernel. OCCT appears to offer all the necessary parametric 3D surface and solid modeling, Boolean operations, visualization,and data exchange needed for professional product design.
According to its developers, the RC1 release is a call to action for the FreeCAD community to test and provide feedback. Users are encouraged to try the software on real projects and report any bugs to FreeCAD’s issue tracker. The development team expects that this release will help identify the final “release blockers” preventing a public release.
“We are currently down to just 7 release blockers,” says FreeCAD’s Aleksandr Prokudin in Hackster.io, “but we expect that the release candidates will bump that number up a tad, and that’s a good thing. While we desperately want 1.0 out, delivering a stable release is a big deal for us.”
RC1 has made several fixes over beta versions. One of the most notable fixes is the mitigation of the topological naming problem, along-standing issue in parametric modeling. This enhancement was made possible through the efforts of several developers and the integration of Real thunder’s algorithm. Additionally, the user interface has seen various improvements,including the addition of a rotation center indicator and the introduction of selection filters for easier manipulation of vertices, edges, and faces. The task panel has been redesigned as a standalone, dockable widget, and the appearance of the Transform tool has been enhanced for better user experience.Other UI updates include a new logo and the option to configure a tab-based workbench selector.
Developers interested in contributing to this effort can participate by fixing issues and submitting pull requests. FreeCAD has weekly merge meetings to review these contributions, making it an excellent opportunity for those wanting to get involved in open-source CAD development.This release candidate also aims to gather feedback from a demographic that typically avoids unstable software but is open to testing software that is nearly complete.
Still, the release of FreeCAD 1.0 RC1 is a major step towards the final release.
