FreeCAD

screenshot of FreeCAD showing a cylinder intersecting a cube and the Boolean operation window visible
Cylinder intersecting a cube

Hack A Day has a great article introducing FreeCAD.

FreeCAD is a parametric 3D modeler. Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history and changing its parameters. FreeCAD is open source (LGPL license) and completely modular, allowing for very advanced extension and customization.

There are several great things about this.

  1. It’s free as in beer
  2. It’s free as in libre
  3. It’s available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X
  4. It’s scriptable in python
  5. you can draw things using constructive solid geometry (CSG)
  6. you can create objects by extruding 2D drawings similarly to Solidworks

If this article is of interest to you, see my other list of OpenSCAD alternatives, and my other posts about free CAD packages.


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2 responses to “FreeCAD”

  1. Lukas Avatar

    There’s also a small haskell library named mecha (it lacks a graphical interface though)
    http://hackage.haskell.org/package/mecha

    1. Lukas Avatar

      And there’s the miniSageCAD experiment.
      http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40210

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