FreeCAD 0.13 is now stable

FreeCAD 0.13 is now the latest stable release of FreeCAD. This version has a lot of improvements and  a new Ubuntu PPA for stable releases.

• Release Notes
• Complete changelog
• Ubuntu Stable PPA

FreeCAD is an Open Source Parametric Solid Modeler. It has excellent community support, modular architecture and it's fully programmable via Python.

Happy New Year !!!

Happy New Year to all !!!

Playing with FreeCAD: Airfoils and Blades

FreeCAD is a very interesting tool. One of its advantages is that it can read and use data from various other programs. This feature is very important and can save you a lot of time in various tasks. One of these tasks is airfoil and blade design. There are various tools that can create airfoils and then export them in a format that FreeCAD can use for further editing.

Playing with FreeCAD: Trapezoids and Ribs

FreeCAD is an application  whose development I have been watching closely since I first learned about it. What I like on FreeCAD?

• It is Free and Open Source Software.
• It's a feature-based parametric solid modeler. I actually believe that this kind of modeling is the best way to create complex 3D entities.
• FreeCAD has its own workflow without trying to mimic the way that other similar applications work.

FreeCAD is under active development and currently is on Alpha stage(FreeCAD's development team decided recently to remove the "Alpha" status from FreeCAD).
But despite the missing features it can create complex geometry thanks to its Sketcher which is a very good tool.

Pin FreeCAD development version to the Unity Launcher

When you test the development version of FreeCAD on Ubuntu 11.04 you will probably need to pin it to the Unity Launcher. Unfortunately when you open FreeCAD from Nautilus, the right click--> Keep in Launcher option doesn't work.
The FreeCAD icon will be kept in Launcher,
but you cannot start the program by clicking it.
So how can you start FreeCAD from the Unity Launcher ?
Here is a simple workaround:

LibreCAD adds .dwg support via LibreDWG

".dwg" is a well-known, proprietary CAD file-format. Originally developed by Autodesk and commonly used, it's a headache for other CAD vendors and a big obstacle for the creation of a good Free and Open Source CAD application. CAD vendors have a very good solution called ODA, but the libraries which are provided by ODA are proprietary software so they cannot be used on a Free and Open Source project like LibreCAD.

LibreCAD's partlibrary workaround for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty

After testing Ubuntu 11.04 with the new Unity Shell for some time, I realized that the old way to embed QCAD's partlibrary in LibreCAD via the creation of the .librecad folder inside your home folder doesn't work anymore.
I have found a better way to use partlibrary with LibreCAD which I expect that works in all distros and OSes.

LibreCAD released for the Cloud !!!!

LibreCAD is a 2D Open Source CAD that today made the big step. Just a few minutes ago released a version that runs on the Cloud, so it became the first CAD ever that has an official Cloud version.

Compiling FreeCAD on Ubuntu: The easy way

If you are curious about the progress on FreeCAD's  development you will probably like the idea of installing the latest development release from source. Let's do that step by step on Ubuntu following the instructions of FreeCAD's documentation

FreeCAD 0.11 is almost ready

FreeCAD is an Open Source 3d Solid Modeler based on OpenCASCADE.

Installing GLC_Player on Ubuntu

If you ever wanted to view some Dassault's 3dxml files on Linux probably you already know about GLC_Player
It's a small app that can handle those files and more 3d formats like 3ds,dae etc

Application Review: LibreCAD (Part II)

As I wrote in Part I LibreCAD is primarily focused on occasional and amateur CAD users.
That doesn't mean that you cannot use it for professional purposes.

Application Review: LibreCAD (Part I)

LibreCAD is a fork of QCAD Community Edition. It has a new GUI based on Qt 4x and some new features