About FreeCAD

FreeCAD will be a general purpose 3D CAD modeler. The development will be completely Open Source. As with many modern 3D CAD modelers it will have a 2D component in order to extract design detail from the 3D model to create 2D production drawings, although 2D (e.g. AutoCAD LT) is not the focus, neither are animation and organic shapes (e.g. Maya, 3D StudioMAX and Cinema 4D).

FreeCAD is aimed directly at mechanical engineering, product design and related features like CatiaV4 and V5, SolidWorks and Solid Edge, and therefore also falls into the category of MCAD, PLM, CAx and CAE. It will be a feature based parametric modeler with a modular software architecture which makes it easy to provide additional functionality without modifying the core system.

Also a major concern of FreeCAD is to utilize all the great libraries out there in the field of Scientific Computing. E.g. the OpenCascade library.


 * OpenInventor in the incarnation of Coin3D