FreeCAD version 1.0 released

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

After about twenty years of development the long awaited version 1.0 of FreeCAD was released two days ago.

There have been many improvements such as the addition of a built in Assembly workbench, the lack of which has been a sticking point for some. Dimensioning has been made much more intuitive and there are numerous improvements to Part Design.  For more advanced users The path workbench has become the CAM workbench with lots of improvements.

It is installed on your computer whether Windows, MAC, or Linux and all your work is kept on your computer so no problems with not having control of your work and it is really fast, no worries of slow internet.  Once I had installed it on my computer It is up and ready to go 4 seconds after clicking on the icon on the screen.

If you want to have a play with it the download page is https://www.freecad.org/downloads.php

MangJelly Solutions already have a number of Youtube tutorials available for it.

Russell

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks for that Russell …. I must have a look before deciding whether to buy another year of QCAD updates !

MichaelG.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Thanks Russell,  happened fire FreeCAD up yesterday and thought something had mangled my start page.  Worked OK though.  Didn’t notice it was Version 1.0.  Will have to explore!

For those not in the know, version numbers less than 1.0 indicate software is still in development, which FreeCAD has been in since I wore shorts and a school cap, making it annoyingly unstable at times.   Reaching Version 1.0 is an important milestone – production code, should be a step more polished and reliable, hurrah.

Dave

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Thanks for that Russell …. I must have a look before deciding whether to buy another year of QCAD updates !

MichaelG.

Ah! QCAD.  I installed that years ago when i wanted to read some old Autocad DWG files when I had lost access to Autocad.  I didn’t know it was still going.

Russell

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I have this version, running on an M1 Mac Mini

https://qcad.org/en/products/qcad-cam

MichaelG.

[FulmenParticipant @fulmen]

I’m raised on the large commercial software. First Autocad, then Solid Edge, Solidworks, Inventor and now Fusion 360. I remember trying FreeCad in the past and either hating it or not making heads or tails of it, same as with all the free/open alternatives. Will 1.0 change that impression?

I’d really like to go open source but I’m pretty locked into the features and workflow that the big boys generally use.

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