The FreeCAD developers team recently enhanced the initial AI policy introduced a few months back. The updated policy is now a separate document. It puts people first, covers the concerns over the use of AI, and sets the expectations for code submissions created with the help of LLMs. In particular, the dev team expects contributors […]

FreeCAD is switching to the CalVer scheme for versioning releases and a new development cycle that introduces time-based releases. Here is a quick explainer on why the team is doing that and how this will affect users. Why the switch? There are multiple issues with the current development cycle, such as an unpredictable, irregular release […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Draft Sketcher Part and PartDesign TechDraw CAM FEM marioalexis84 added support for 2D geometries to the Transform constraint and Cylindrical transform support for shell elements (PR#30946). He also added an electrostatic spark gap example (PR#30928), set pipeline filters as visible by default (PR#30936), and introduced a few more quick improvements […]

Two active FreeCAD contributors, Louis Gombert (Lgt2x) and Thomas Duchesne (pierreporte), recently attended the Journées du Logiciel Libre conference in Lyon to give a talk about FreeCAD. This is their report. On May 30th and 31st, the Journées du Logiciel Libre (Free Software Days) or JdLL, one of France’s longest-running Free and Open Source Software […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher TechDraw CAM BIM Other changes Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by Bojan9597, Lokestrom, PaddleStroke, tritao, ypsvlq, and zhyifei. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 41 pull requests have been merged, and […]

The author of this blog is quite interested in designing and building open source machines and tools. Recently a, designed in FreeCAD, 4 axis CNC hot wire foam cutter has been a great project. It’s fabulous that not only can we design such a machine in FreeCAD, but also FreeCAD, via the FoamCut workbench, provides […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Draft maxwxyz added input hints to the statusbar for the Edit tool and modification tools (PR#30436 and PR#30437). Sketcher Part and PartDesign Assembly PaddleStroke made the Insert Part command respect the active selection (PR#30041). He also fixed several bugs: CAM The big news here is the patch by sliptonic to […]

We are excited to announce that the 2026 North American FreeCAD Meetup will be happening August the 7th through 9th in Knoxville Tennessee. Hosted by Knox Makers™ this informal gathering will include ad hoc presentations, discussion, tutorials and more. We hope to see a range of the FreeCAD community there, from developers and maintainers, to […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher Part and PartDesign CAM BIM Other changes Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by alopes0905, chennes, eolder, greg19, ipatch, Lgt2x, Lokestrom, maxwxyz, and pieterhijma. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 56 pull […]

There are lots of ways to adjust the view of objects in the preview window but a simple one, that is often overlooked, is the Clipping View tool. We’ve just made a simple object, a fusion of two cylinders and a cube on the part workbench, to explore the clipping view functions. Note that the […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher CAM Other changes Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by andershol, awgrover, Lgt2x, maxwxyz, PaddleStroke, rehan-ahmed-aix, Roy_043, and semhustej. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 31 pull requests have been merged, and […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Draft Sketcher Part and PartDesign Assembly TechDraw CAM BIM Other changes Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by alecGraves, andershol, awgrover, Bojan9597, chennes, davidosterberg, drwho495, ElementW, ItSaulGoodMan, kadet1090, Lgt2x, maxwxyz, mosfet80, pjcreath, tarman3, and tritao. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you…

Since version 1.0 FreeCAD has had the Measure tool, a persistent tool available across all workbenches. Let’s take a quick look through it in use using version 1.1.1. We’ve got a project that is a small flat part with fillets in the corners and a collection of holes and slots, but you can play with […]

This week in FreeCAD development: Part and PartDesign CAM Other changes Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by 3x380V, alfrix, andershol, boomskats, chennes, coldtobi, danieljimol, ElementW, ItSaulGoodMan, Maik-0000FF, maxwxyz, rehan-ahmed-aix, Roy_043, tarman3, tritao, wwmayer, and z0r0. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats…

This week in FreeCAD development: Draft Roy_043 fixed a regression where clones would not receive the correct Diffuse color (PR#29725), added statusbar hints for annotation tools (PR#29649), and fixed a bug where the XYZ would be overridden by the cursor position when creating a shapestring (PR#29762). Sketcher Part and PartDesign TechDraw CAM FEM BIM Measurement […]

We don’t always write individual blog posts about single new features that have been merged into the weekly development versions of FreeCAD, but this one, deserves a special mention. Lot’s of people have been eagerly and patiently waiting the arrival of cosmetic threads in fact the arrival of this closes an issue that was raised […]

Maintainers have been backporting some of the fixes to the v1.1 branch where possible — 19 backports in the past 7 days. The list of changes in this recap applies to the main development branch (future v1.2). This week in FreeCAD development: Draft: Sketcher: Part and PartDesign: Assembly: PaddleStroke contributed multiple fixes and improvements: TechDraw: […]

The FreeCAD Project Association has renewed the bug bounty program it launched last year. The budget is once again €5,000. The rules are simple: fix 5 confirmed issues from the FreeCAD GitHub issue tracker and receive a reward of €250. For a quick guide on finding the issues and claiming the reward after getting the […]

It looks like the original post didn’t show up on Wed/Thu here on the blog, but was posted on the forum. Not sure what the glitch was, but here is the post in its entirety on the blog as well, backdated for accuracy. Now that FreeCAD 1.1 is out, maintainers will keep backporting some changes […]

Let’s talk about the 2025 FPA grant program: what projects were voted for, what projects weren’t, and what we think needs to change for this year’s program. 2025 grants Last year, we got 46 grant applications. We voted ‘yes’ on 31 of them and ‘no’ on 15. Here is a quick explainer: # Grant Title […]

Maintainers have been backporting some of the fixes to the v1.1 branch where possible — 12 backports in the past 7 days. The list of changes in this recap applies to the main development branch (future v1.2). This week in FreeCAD development: Draft: Sketcher: Part and PartDesign: Assembly: CAM: BIM/Arch: Other changes: Krrish777, kkocdko, skelliam, […]

Maintainers have been backporting some of the fixes to the v1.1 branch where possible — 14 backports in the past 7 days. The list of changes in this recap applies to the main development branch (future v1.2). This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher: Part and PartDesign: BIM/Arch: FEM: TechDraw: CAM: Measurement: Other changes: PhoneDroid, 3x380V, […]

On the 30th January 2026 we once again held our pre FOSDEM fringe meet up event FreeCAD Day. Once again we met at the fabulous Les Ateliers des Tanneurs venue, where, fuelled with plenty of coffee and tea, we had an excellent day of talks and discussions. We kicked of the morning with talks from […]

Big and small free/open-source projects have been facing an avalanche of AI-generated patches lately. Some patches are more or less OK, others have convoluted, badly designed code. The net effect is that code review becomes more difficult, to the point where numerous projects give up and introduce some form of protection against AI slop. The […]

The FreeCAD Project Association is now accepting grant applications for the first quarter of 2026. If you are interested in participating, please submit your application by March 10. We will announce the results by March 31. Please note that we’ve changed the program rules in several ways: The rest of the program rules still apply. […]

The FPA members have voted for Q1 2026 grants. The following work will be paid for once completed: The total non-Ondsel allocated funding is EUR 10,721 against a budget of EUR 10,000. However, the “CAM/BIM: 2D Nesting Tool for FreeCAD” grant has been recently cancelled due to the developer’s inactivity, which freed up EUR 1,650, […]

Maintainers have been backporting some of the fixes to the v1.1 branch where possible — 3 backports in the past 7 days. The list of changes in this recap applies to the main development branch (future v1.2). This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher: Part and PartDesign: Assembly: BIM/Arch: FEM: CAM: Other changes: 3x380V, wwmayer, chennes, […]

It’s incredible that we have free and open source CAD, then even more amazing we have the capability to create complex assemblies. On top of this, tools like Finite Element Methods and analysis make FreeCAD hugely capable. Therefore the sight of the above video from MbDFEM where they are combining and applying Finite Element Methods […]

After an enormous amount of work and dedication from FreeCAD contributors we are delighted to announce that FreeCAD Version 1.1 is now released and available for download. There are significant amounts of improvements and new features. These include; transparent Part Design previews, interactive draggers added to tools like Fillet and Chamfer, 3 point lighting, a […]

One of the most fantastic things about FreeCAD is the constant flow of people making brilliant add on collections of tools. One work in progress that has caught our eye is the FreeCAD DFM Workbench. The Design For Manufacture (DFM) workbench aims to perform analysis of your FreeCAD models against user configurable sets of rules […]