FreeCAD, the open supply pc aided design bundle, has reached the milestone of a model one-point-zero launch — greater than 20 years after it first grew to become publicly accessible.
“In software program improvement, model 1 normally means: our software program is now steady and prepared for ‘actual work,'” explains FreeCAD’s Jo Hinchliffe. “If you’re a FreeCAD consumer, you understand that FreeCAD has been prepared for actual work for years, and is utilized in productive, skilled exercise all around the world already. We the truth is have been tempted many occasions up to now to chop to the chase, and name the following model 1.0 already! However we did not.
“For the reason that very beginnings, the FreeCAD neighborhood had a transparent view of what 1.0 represented for us. What we wished in it. FreeCAD matured through the years, and that checklist narrowed down to only two main remaining items: fixing the toponaming drawback, and having a built-in meeting module.”
The “toponaming,” or “topologiucal naming,” drawback has been a long-standing problem each in FreeCAD and different computer-aided design packages: shapes would typically change their inside title when sure modeling operations have been carried out — leading to parametric options that referred to the unique title breaking. Enhancements have been ongoing since FreeCAD 0.19, with FreeCAD 1.0 bringing in a community-contributed algorithm to hopefully offered a platform to finish the difficulty as soon as and for all. “The TNP drawback will not be utterly solved,” the venture’s maintainers admit, with the repair at present solely utilized to the Sketcher and PartDesign instruments, “[but] additional enhancements will observe within the subsequent model.”
The dearth of an meeting module, in the meantime, is solved with the addition of an Meeting workbench that makes use of the open supply Ondsel solver — and which, in basic open supply fashion, is predicated on work completed for Aik-Siong Koh’s coincidentally-named FreeCAD software program, which launched on the identical time. “The porting has been completed by the opposite FreeCAD’s writer himself,” the maintainers write, “and with this dramatic transfer each FreeCADs at the moment are lastly united.”
Different adjustments within the new launch, which has been accessible in launch candidate take a look at builds since September, embrace enhancements to the consumer interface, a streamlined begin web page for sooner first load, the merging of the Arch workbench into BIM, enhancements to the Draft and FEM workbenches, an overhauled materials dealing with system, and extra — plus a brand new emblem for the venture, chosen by the neighborhood.
The brand new model consists of an Meeting workbench, primarily based on “the opposite FreeCAD.” (📷: Roy 043/FreeCAD)
“This model 1.0 will not be a completed product, just because FreeCAD will not be a product,” Hinchliffe notes. “It’s our venture, our child, our ardour, our software. Model 1.0 is our achievement. All of us who labored on it, from those who helped elevate the venture on its ft and should not collaborating any extra to individuals who simply got here to assist ending translations for this launch, we labored exhausting for this, we deserved this, and this 1.0 means: we’ve completed it.”
The total launch notes can be found within the FreeCAD wiki, with downloads accessible for Microsoft Home windows 8 and better, Apple macOS 10.13 Excessive Sierra and better, and Linux on the FreeCAD web site; the supply code is offered on GitHub below the GNU Library Common Public License 2
