FreeCAD 0.21 Released

blog.freecad.org

18 points·app4soft··4 comments

Looks like a serious upgrade in the B-spline workflow in sketches. This will be super handy when working on more organic designs.

Counterdrill hole (counterbore+countersink) is a nice convenience, have done that manually a few times before.

Hole to line and hole to hole constraints also good convenience, and cleans up sketch / makes design intent clearer. Previously that would need additional construction geometry and multiple constraints.

One more yet obscure update is on Curves Workbench (add-on): new Surface Analysis (as a replacement for Zebra Tool) and Draft Analysis tools has been added.[0]

N.B. Here is also my tutorial on «How to add material with physical properties in FreeCAD 0.21», where I described a simple workaround that could be used till materials would be implemented in FreeCAD natively.[1]

[0] https://fosstodon.org/@app4soft/110766955198648841

[1] https://app4soft.neocities.org/freecad-material-tutorial

> Hole to line and hole to hole constraints also good convenience, and cleans up sketch / makes design intent clearer. Previously that would need additional construction geometry and multiple constraints.

Yes -- a small but significant change. Sketch intent is one of the "difficult problems" of CAD, for me. Construction geometry is sometimes the right way forward for that kind of clarity, and array tools can help, but common-sense constraint tools are much more valuable.

I am using an ARM64 build to work with Apple Silicon but it is not in the official builds. I hope they can add this to the Download page soon. Seems rock stable.

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