FreeCAD 0.17 “Roland” released | Hacker News Reader

FreeCAD 0.17 “Roland” released

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> This release of FreeCAD is dedicated to our friend Roland Frank[0] who left us in 2017. He was an active and well-appreciated member of the FreeCAD forum, and his video tutorials on the Learn FreeCAD and BPLFRE Youtube channels helped many people get started with FreeCAD.

R.I.P.

[0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25673

Thank You, Roland, for your AWESOME video tutorials on Learn FreeCAD[1] and BPLFRE[2] YouTube channels!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HEvhclR4-o&list=PL6fZ68Cq3L...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m49z0weonog&list=PLsrwVwvqYb...

I encourage anybody to try FreeCAD. 0.17 is the first release I could actually recommend. The geometric kernel is still quite buggy and still cannot compete even with the cheapest commercial offerings, but it provides a massive feature set and some very interesting/unique features.

I use FreeCAD in combination with OpenSCAD and cadquery for my 3d-printed projects and CNC milling. It's actually good enough for most hobbyist projects (anything in the range of <5k$).

The ability to model with CSG with OpenSCAD and BREP in a single package (thanks to the openscad plugin) allows the best of both worlds. The python scriptability with cadquery allows to generate complex parametric geometries that would be painful to even approach with a regular CAD package.

With constraint references and indirect formula references you can setup pretty robust parametric models that can be reused quite effectively.

FreeCAD has enormous potential.

I applaud the FreeCAD team for their efforts and hope it will become to 3D mechanical CAD what KiCAD has become for PCB design and schematic capture.

That said, I can get Fusion360 for free, and while I hate the fact that it's not open-source and that my files are hidden and locked away ond Autodesk's servers and that they can cancel my free "hobbyist" subscription on a whim, Fusion360 is so much easier and faster to use for my small weekend projects that I just cannot bring myself to go through the pain of learning how to avoid the random crashes of FreeCAD.

EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in.

> EDIT: if there is a donation page for FreeCAD, I am willing to pitch in.

There isn't a single donation page. One of the main developers, Yorik van Havre, has a Patreon [1], and there's a Liberapay [2]. I also just decided to make a Patreon [3] (I'm the sysadmin for the project as well as a developer.)

1. https://www.patreon.com/yorikvanhavre

2. https://liberapay.com/FreeCAD/

3. https://www.patreon.com/kkremitzki

I am of a similar opinion, however I find myself using OnShape more and more for simple projects just because Fusion360 isn't available on Linux and I don't want to reboot just to design something.

In my case, FreeCAD just has to be better than OnShape, not Fusion, to get me to use it for 90% of my designs.

Agree on F360. And, for what it's worth, it does support python scripting as well.

My biggest hope for F360 are: 1. 2D vector import to sculpt workflow, not just model. 2. Shared Parameters between documents in the same projects

I've had great results with their CAM as long as you have a good post processor.

You mentioned CNC milling, what CAM software do you use?

Given he uses Fusion360, I'd bet he also uses Fusion360 for CAM - its CAM is pretty awesome - the value of integrated CAD/CAM instead of dealing with separate CAM is very compelling.

Sibling post says they use Fusion 360, not the GP post that talks about the potential of freecad.

I'm in a similar boat - I use OpenSCAD for tons of 3d-printing and laser-cut work (I even wrote a package manage for it - https://github.com/lostapathy/scad_bundler ). But as I've moved into subtractive manufacturing, I find myself using Fusion 360 for reasonable access to CAM tools. As you note, having that integrated is very compelling.

I'm using FreeCad for my entire CNC milling pipeline- from modeling down to g-code. It works quite well for me.

> FreeCAD has enormous potential.

I absolutely agree. I'm especially interested to see the future of integrations with computational fluid dynamics & finite element analysis (OpenFOAM for the former, Calculix & Elmer for the latter.) For example, one user on the forum was able to simulate the multi-mode heat transfer of a hot metal cube in a wind tunnel (but unfortunately I can't seem to find the post!) Another was looking into integration with KiCAD to simulate the thermal behavior of custom boards.

I have used FreeCAD 0.16 a lot to design and then manufacture simple objects (extruded svg shapes, essentially), and it has worked fine.

It's the only program that I know of, capable of importing OpenSCAD files.

The interface is a little awkward and the icons quite obscure, but other than that it's really good!

> The interface is a little awkward and the icons quite obscure, but other than that it's really good!

One of the many improvements in this version was a complete overhaul of all the workbenches' icons to be aligned to the Tango Desktop Project [1], thanks to Alexander Gryson [2]. I think it helped a lot with the visual consistency, so big kudos to him.

1. http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project

2. https://agryson.net/

cool! i've been toying with the idea of doing some design for CNC milling (i have not done so since my undergrad days). are there inexpensive options for getting time on a CNC machine?

Check your local makerspace or fablab. If your are reasonably confident in the correctness of your design you can use self-service online CNC services like Ponoko and 3dhubs.

Co2 Lasercutting and FDM 3d-printing is generally easier to get access to than CNC though.

I really like this effort of creating an open 3D CAD environment. See here the release notes: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17

The last time I tried designing something in FreeCAD it kept crashing at random inopportune moments, but was so damn close to being good enough. This was version 0.16 from Debian, I'm looking forward to trying again with 0.17.

Hopefully it's a little more pleasant for you this time around. Besides ~6800 commits of improvements in 0.17, we also upgraded our geometry/topology kernel OpenCASCADE from 6.8.0 -> 7.2.0 and this has resulted in a lot of improvements in terms of geometry operation crashiness, as well as adding new features like hidden line removal which is behind a lot of the improvements in making technical drawings with the TechDraw workbench. (Also, the people behind the LulzBot 3D printers contributed financially to the development of that workbench, so big kudos to them!)

I last tried it maybe 3 years back. It was buggy then too, but the main issue was that when I sent a part out to fab they couldn’t get the files to import/render correctly (missing faces).

There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up.

More recently, I’ve been using Onshape. My understanding is that was designed by many of the Solidworks team. It works reasonably well and I’ve not had issues getting parts made.

Ideally I think I’d like something that was both cloud based and open source. But I should give freecad or Solvespace another chance perhaps.

> There solution was “please send us the solidworks file”. So... I gave up.

Ack, that sounds rough--there can definitely be some pain on the bleeding edge (of open-source CAD.)

As far as cloud-based, do you just mean in terms of having that available as a storage/sharing option? Or are you wanting a browser-based client? I've been interested in looking at options for the former for FreeCAD, possibly using either Nextcloud or Mediagoblin servers as backend. (Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good FOSS product lifecycle management software.)

As a thought, I've put time and effort into a potential solution for this, for a different (non-CAD) project though.

Emailed you the details in case it's of interest. Might need to check your spam folder as gmail sometimes puts things from my domain in there (mail config issue on our end, but can't be solved easily).

Cloud based, as in browser-based. I find it handy as it lets me easily move between workstations. Can also pull up and edit designs on my phone in a pinch.

I have been using FreeCAD for a while for real projects where I would have used Inventor. My assemblies and parts are not huge, and being able to write things in python is awesome. You can even use FreeCAD without the gui from python. I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential.

  [1] http://www.freedyn.at/

> I am currently trying to get FreeDyn, a multibody dynamics simulation program to work with it [1]. I have used the FEM workbench to do simple FEAs too. It's an amazingly open platform with a lot of potential.

That would be really cool! I know there is a lot of interest in e.g. a kinematics workbench.

How do you handle assemblies efficiently? I found the assembly workbench to be a major weakness of FreeCad when compared to Solidworks or Inventor.

Typically I am not working on assemblies of more than 10 to 20 parts. You're right though, Inventor and Solidworks do handle them better, but with a lot of complexity that scales better when you are working on assemblies and subassemblies of over 100 parts or more. I used to work on machinery with more parts, but now I work on sub assemblies with fewer parts. The assembly workbench will improve when people who have a need for it improve it in FreeCAD. I used to do assemblies with CSG over 15 years ago, and it was complicated, but I was very frustrated in the early days of Inventor when you went down a path, and then found yourself painted in a corner by the history or constraint tree. Changing one thing, and watching it all blow up was my first letdown after jumping on the parametric/history modeling bandwagon (I also used SolidWorks and IDEAS). FreeCAD has come a long way, and I use it more often than before. Quick startup times and fast working with a great Python API (I used to program AutoLISP for comparison).

> Linux users are advised to get FreeCAD from their distribution's repository

Wow, it has been a long time since I last saw a big piece of software recommending distribution repositories instead of a custom repo, a standalone package, or a curl|bash.

They do have a standalone AppImage. Which somehow managed to hang my entire GNOME session the first time I ran it, but worked after logging out and back in.

According to github I've used FreeCAD for 249 designs over the last 3 years. These parts have been 3d-printed, lasercut and CNC milled. Since 0.16 came out I've been quite happy with the software, but looking forward to switching to this release. Especially improvements in Part Design workflow and the integrated CAM should make my usage much nicer. Major thanks to all the contributors!

Are there some news about jupyter-notebook integration? That would be massive...

There was a potential Google Summer of Code project to work on this last year[1], but it doesn't look like there were any mentors or applicants this year.

1. https://freecadweb.org/wiki/IPython_notebook_integration

Some highlights in video form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLOaL9z59k&t=11s

Those of you coming from Solodworks beware. There isn’t first class Assembly support. However Realthunder’s Assembly3 work is incredibly promising.

https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3

Indeed, now that the Part Design overhaul is complete, Assembly improvements will be one of the main targets for the 0.18 dev cycle.

Is there any estimated timeline for 0.18? 0.16 to 0.17 seems to have taken about 2 years.

There's a roadmap page but it lists 0.18 as "Scheduled For Release 2017-11-03".

It'll almost surely take less time, part of the reason 0.17 took so long was because the Part Design Workbench had compatibility-breaking changes with a whole new workflow. It's probably overly optimistic but some of us are pushing to have this development cycle last roughly until the end of the year before we begin the release process again. At the earliest, that'll probably mean another release this time next year.

Estimates are hard enough in the professional world where one pays X developers to do Y. In a volunteer-ran open source its nearly meaningless...

Start to use it today, use extensions like Assembly2/3 to compensate for missing features and do your best to help out if that is not enough. Or have patience :)

Oh yes, I'm well aware of this. I wouldn't still be using GIMP after 10 years if I wasn't a patient person. :)

Though I fiddled with an example file for ~5 minutes and it crashed twice in that timespan. Exactly like the last time I tried FreeCAD a few years ago. But I would really like to move on from F360 so I will try to give it more of a chance this time, and hopefully I'll find the time to contribute something.

Crashed in FreeCAD 0.17? Is the bug reported with clear steps to reproduce? Ensuring that is in place is already a good contribution!

Is there any effort towards a webassembly port?

Would need Python and Qt5 and OpenCascade. Huge undertaking. And for what gain? It's available on all common desktop platforms already. And one can export 3d-model viewers that can be embedded in HTML.

On web side of things what I think would be desirable is a webUI for parametric designs, ala Thingiverse Customizer

For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application.

It's really useful, really fast and very stable - all in a tiny executable. Definitely worth a try if you're coming from a CAD background - it's the first open source 3D CAD application I've used which could replace Solidworks for quick, painless part modelling.

http://solvespace.com/index.pl

> For those interested in open source 3D CAD applications, there's a really interesting application called SolveSpace which is a very, very fast and low resource 3D parametric CAD application.

Yeah, it's cool project, and I'm one of contributors to SolveSpace development ;-) (mostly, tester and idea generator).

SolveSpace not only 3D CAD - it is 2D/3D CAD and CAE too.

I like to make stress tests for SolveSpace and already know many tricks, so if need some help with SolveSpace - ask me! (I often answer on SolveSpace Forum too).

One of most active users of SolveSpace is Eric Buijs[0], that has many videos on his YouTube channel[1] about SolveSpace usage for solving tasks from different CAD challenges and competitions[2], such as "/r/CAD/ Challenge" (I has own archive[3] of those tasks), etc.

> It's really useful, really fast

Agree, it useful for daily work & small 3D printing tasks. But sadly it's not very useful for very big construction that consists of many sub-models yet...

> and very stable

Not so stable. Be careful - while SolveSpace often work like a charm, if you create redundant constrains it could freeze your PC very fast! Just need be careful with constrains and complex models design in SolveSpace.

[0] https://eribuijs.blogspot.com/2016/09/switching-from-freecad...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPwwPIXHMZYcVyJ2SuRJjuA

[2] https://github.com/m2n037/awesome-mecheng#competitions

[3] https://github.com/symbian9/reddit_cad_challenge

Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Labs, formerly known as Milkymist, creators of the Milkymist One video synthesizer. M-Labs now focuses on quantum information experiment control software. [1]

I remember watching Milkymist/Migen talks [2][3] given by creator Sébastien Bourdeauducq years ago and stumbling across the early SolveSpace site at the time in researching his background. It was already looking quite promising back then, and I got the impression they were using/developing it for their own CAD needs based on what I saw in their IRC channel. There's clearly a lot of talent in that group.

[1] https://m-labs.hk/about.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0VhwgpzZg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zADdKAtHM1Y

> Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Labs

I developed SolveSpace, and whitequark (via M-Labs) is the current maintainer. He's responsible for all the non-Windows ports, plus the last few years of features and some significant refactoring. We hope the latter will make the codebase more accessible to other contributors.

SolveSpace's NURBS operations are worse than OpenCASCADE's, but they're literally orders of magnitude smaller. There's still no great free alternative to Parasolid, SOLIDS++, etc. SolveSpace's constraint solver is pretty good, and people seem to mostly like the UI.

Jonathan, You write faster than me[0] :-)

> plus the last few years of features and some significant refactoring.

Last few years there only Alexey Egorov's new features... :-/

While 'whitequark' is good programmer, his role as maintainer very bad for SolveSpace project itself - he don't work well with community at all. He fully non-responsive to Linux users, he not want hear any ideas from community...

Project now mostly in freeze...

Hope, You will find better project manager (such as Yorik now is in FreeCAD) for SolveSpace for make it more friendly for community. 'whitequark' should be just one of SolveSpace programmer, not maintainer, IMHO.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16797563

> He fully non-responsive to Linux users

Well, he was nice enough to write the Linux port in the first place, and he personally develops under Linux, so...

To develop free, general-purpose, desktop, parametric 3d CAD software is fairly thankless work. It's a huge task, and relatively few developers have the necessary mathematical skill and ME domain knowledge. The commercial market is mature, limiting opportunities to monetize. I have great respect for the time and other resources that whitequark (and others) have chosen to expend here in spite of that.

It's look like nothing changed - whitequark still respond[0] to users and contributors in wrong way...

[0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/318

I'm not say that he is bad programmer or all things that he did are bad.

Some things (i.e. in code) are really cool, but some are very bad (increasing dependency, mostly drop OpenGL1.x support, not providing official builds of SolveSpace for Linux, etc.)

I just tell, that as maintainer (project manager of open-source software) 'whitequark' is not good at all.

He always answer to users from point of coder, not from point of project manager.

I still hope that SolveSpace project could get good project manager that will give for 'whitequark' more time for coding, and take out him from communication with "stupid users"

For QA and communication with testers SolveSpace need another person, that will not be so rude as 'whitequark', IMHO.

> Interesting bit of trivia: SolveSpace comes from M-Lab

You are wrong! Just read it's page on M-Labs site[0]:

> It was originally released by Jonathan Westhues under the GPLv3 license and is now further developed at M-Labs.

SolveSpace firstly was a private project of Jonathan Westhues (from Cambridge MA) known as 2D only CAD SketchFlat[1], later it was extended to 3D and renamed to SolveSpace[2] (Windows only).

There is good interview on LibreGraphicsWorld[3] blog with Jonathan Westhues that cover history of SolveSpace from SketchFlat to SolveSpace 2.0.

After SolveSpace 2.0 switched to open-source (since July 28, 2013) it's sources was published firstly on it's website[4], then on Gitorious[5] and later on Github[6].

After it one of users make a fork of it and call it SolveSpace 2.1[7] - this user was whitequark (member of M-Labs). Later 'whitequark' was invited by Jonathan Westhues (aka 'jwesthues') to original SolveSpace repository on Github[6] and they collaborate on continuous development of SolveSpace 2.1, that bring Linux and macOS support. Since this moment main role in SolveSpace project got 'whitequark'

Later Alexey Egorov (aka 'Evil-Spirit') join to SolveSpace develompent as one of core C++ programmer and already give many new features that already appear as pull request to original repo[6] from his own repo[8].

So, SolveSpace come from Jonathan Westhues, not from M-Labs! Currently it managed by 'whitequark' (member of M-Labs) and few other developers, and during last year under 'whitequark' control project development has very slow activity, most of new features and bug fixes now provided by Alexey Egorov...

I also took part in SolveSpace development as tester and ideas generator, but sadly developers of SolveSpace are very aggressive and not very friendly with its users... Now I'm working on AppImage packaging using own repo[9] with latest commits from 'Evil-Spirit' repo[8].

P.S.: Few years ago there was thread about SolveSpace on HN[10]. Also, there is page for SolveSpace on Wikipedia[11].

[0] https://m-labs.hk/solvespace/

[1] http://cq.cx/sketchflat.pl

[2] http://solvespace.com

[3] http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/solvespace-released...

[4] http://solvespace.com/dl/solvespace-rel2.0.zip

[5] https://gitorious.org/solvespace

[6] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace

[7] https://github.com/whitequark/solvespace

[8] https://github.com/evil-spirit/solvespace

[9] https://github.com/symbian9/solvespace-appimage

[10] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12650290

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolveSpace

My mistake!

I had the impression it came from M-Labs because I discovered SolveSpace by observing their IRC channel where SolveSpace development was occurring - complete with a commit bot spamming the channel with their work.

Nothing but respect for everyone involved was intended.

Since December 18, 2017, there no any commits[0] in 'master' branch...

[0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/commits/master

My memory is unsurprisingly imperfect.

When I played with SolveSpace last year and did some small projects with it I took the single page HTML docs from github and manually created Sphinx docs from them. They're hosted at [1]. I posted to the SolveSpace forum at the time but there was never any feedback from there. I didnt feel inclined to put more work into it. I'm happy if someone forks the GitHub repo and becomes the maintainer.

[1] http://solvespace.readthedocs.io

> I posted to the SolveSpace forum at the time but there was never any feedback from there.

Yeah, I know that filling too... It's happen because current main developer (whitequark) not very friendly with SolveSpace's users and their feature requests... Sadly, but I dream that some time SolveSpace will be maintained such developers as Yorik van Havre and other developers of FreeCAD ;-)

Hope, FreeCAD team will fork SolveSpace for further development and give SolveSpace second breathe then.

> I didnt feel inclined to put more work into it. I'm happy if someone forks the GitHub repo and becomes the maintainer.

OK, think, I could work on it[0] soon ;-)

Currently I try setup[1] AppImage builds with patches (features), that already exists as pull requests but still not merged in official SolveSpace branch.

[0] https://github.com/symbian9/solvespace-docs

[1] https://github.com/symbian9/solvespace-appimage

There's also some effort in the FreeCAD forums to adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD.

> adapt SolveSpace's assembly functionality for FreeCAD

This project has name - FreeCAD Assembly3[0], and test builds already available too[1], so soon it could be merged in main FreeCAD branch. Read details on this project wiki[2] ;-)

[0] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=19111

[1] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/releases

[2] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-...

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