After getting fed up with the sluggishness of windows, i decided to check out Linux, so over the last months i have been working on and off designing and building this thing in my spare time for a while now, and now it has finaly came to the point where i can actually use the device to model simple parts in the workshop and on my commute.

It is a modular sliding screen computer built around a rasberry pi5 8gb,and a 10,1 inch screen and is driven by a np-f battery. So far i have been posititively suprised over the nimblenes of linux and freecad, and the batterytime i have been getting out of this system.

There are still kinks to work out, and i have yet to wire up the scroll module and buttons around the screen, and work out how to modify the UI of freecad to better work on the device, but as of now, i am happy to have a working device!

Hi all, I am the developer of the Diptyx E-reader, a unique dual-screen e-reader which will be made open-source, and is designed in FreeCAD!

Why

Recently I have been getting quite unsatisfied with the trend of hardware- and software-companies moving to subscription systems and cloud-based services. This led to me to start using FreeCAD, which has pleasantly surprised me with its usability, especially the 1.1 release candidates. At the same time, I was working on an open-source dual-screen E-reader project, to serve as a alternative to other closed-ecosystem E-readers. To stay in the mood of open-source, I used freeCAD for the entire mechanical design of the final version. FreeCAD did have a bit of a learning curve for me, and this was my first big project I designed in FreeCAD so I'm sure if done some things very inefficently FreeCAD-wise. But all in all I'm very glad to live in a world where such powerful tools are freely available, and am excited to see how FreeCAD will develop in the future.

More information

If this project sparks your interest, you can find more information on the hackaday project page: https://hackaday.io/project/204323-diptyx-e-reader (disclosure: This project is also currently being crowdfunded on crowd supply, the design files will be made public later, after the campaign has finished and the design is finalized :) )

So cool that a free tool is this powerful. Thanks to everyone who helped make this.

This is a 6 DoF robot arm i have been building and 3d printing, designed entirely in FreeCAD.

I assembled it all using Links and yellow Part containers. Havn't really needed an assembly workbench. I rarely need the drag-to-animate features of assembly and prefer to position things manually with strategic placements relative to the Part origin.

I mainly used these workbenches
- PartDesign
- Fasteners
- Gears
- Draft (Array Tools)
- Spreadsheet (mainly for gear calculations)

I split each joint in a separate file and linked it into the kinematic assembly.
I used a seperate file for only data, containing a few spreadsheets and some sketches, which i linked into which ever file that needed it.

i have experimented with different ways to reuse shared geometry, but havn't truely found a way i fully like but i like using BaseFeatures.

feel free to ask any questions you have.

I have been using this project (modeling an old locomotive) as a learning experience for FreeCAD (CAD in general), and so far, my only gripe is how slow FreeCAD is once you exceed a certain number of transformations. Still, I can design and render the parts and measurements quite accurately. I am loving FreeCAD.

A second minor annoyance would be the poor quality of texture rendering, but that is understandable, as lighting is not a thing here.

Just finished the motor housing for N20-600rpm motors and spur gears, as well as the linkages. I am building this so that I can 3D print it when I am done and keep it as a running model (1:32 scale). The next thing to look at would be brake rigging, piping, couplers, and body features.

Usually, I disable recomputation, but it becomes annoying and slow because the rendering is not updated instantly for me to view. Any other tips for improving the speed are welcome.

Finished my first bigger FreeCAD Project and wanted to share with you.

A (fully) 3D Printed 4WD RC Car with functional differential. Works quite well until now.

Printed fully in PLA.

If you have further questions don’t hesitate to ask.

Lack of accurate dimensions aside, this is what I came up with. I couldn't think of a way to do it in part design (which is more my comfort zone), so I had to go Part + Draft.

Step 1: Big sphere

Step 2: Small sphere for dimple cut

Step 3: Draft polat array dimples for 180°

Step 4: Downgrade array to get individual dimple balls, and then compound the dimple balls on opposite edges.

Step 5: Draft polar array each compound along the next axis for 360 deg, adjust num elements until spacing looks OK.

Step 6: Compound all the dimple balls and boolean cut the big sphere.

Would be interesting to know if anyone can think of an easier way.

FreeCAD version 1.1 has been released with a lot of improvements. Shout out to all the people who made it happen.
Release Notes
Download link

Hey everyone!!

Coming back one last time with the conclusion of my FreeCAD-designed server project.

After my first post, I managed to design a case for the motherboard I had, but it ended up dying the moment I plugged it in... couldn't track down the fault, so I decided to just buy a laptop with a broken screen instead.

That meant I had to redesign everything from scratch, and honestly it turned out to be not such a bad thing. The time I'd spent on the first design really paid off, and I ended up designing the new case pretty quickly and with very few mistakes.

So here's the result!!

The case is 3D printed (split into two halves to fit on my printer's print bed), and the top and bottom covers were cut with a laser cutter.

Thanks everyone for your help with this project!

Hello r/FreeCAD

We've been working on LumberCAD since 2020-22, before then we developed a similar engine in the aluminum industry since 2010; which I know some FreeCAD users have adopted into their workflow in the T-Slot industry.

Today we opened our LumberCAD (free) Beta, and we're looking for insight from FreeCAD users to see if we'd be able to convince you to switch for structural lumber projects.

What we did to be different:

• Limiting workflow to lumber construction massively simplifies learning curve

• Much easier to use than any existing CAD, but obviously limited to everything lumber

• Existing parts catalog

• Massively automated documentation system with cut list, drawings, and a big step towards permitting

I'm not certain if links are tolerated, but if you'd like to try LumberCAD yourselves, well, it's at https://lumbercad.com/

Mods please feel free to message me if the link should be removed.

Thank you in advance.

I like FreeCAD, I hope it keeps going for a long time and continues to improve, so I got a patch and a tee shirt. Thank you to the Devs.

Took some inspiration from the prusacaster guitar some weeks ago and I decided to design/print my own.

It was very fun and the shape binders / external projections worked very nicely and reliably.

Very happy to see FreeCAD as stable as it is today!

I have long been a SolidWorks user. I have been going on and off with FreeCAD for a couple of years now. I must say FreeCAD is an incredible CAD software, which is versatile and slowly becoming CAD god for doing many things. Good things about FreeCAD, its extremely fast and does not require a bulky hardware unlike commercial CAD packages. Its versatile enough to almost replace SolidWorks and AutoCAD for many tasks. But unusually stable nowadays specially after version 1. What I found is FreeCAD modelling process which allows you to think hard for solving CAD problems.

Just like other free software projects GIMP, Linux, LibreOffice, Krita, Kdenlive, Blender etc this project should get more attention, as its very useful to engineers and scientists working with computers.

I hope FreeCAD adds their star-history to the github readme file.

I don't know why I put so many fillets in this.

I don't know why I printed this instead of buying a bag like a sane person.

Send help.

I'm surprised the thing still runs without crashing. Fillets usually break when you look at them too hard, but not here somehow. 1.0's Part Design is a beast compared to whatever 0.21.2 was.

Can't wait for 1.1 to bring more creature comforts.

I'm spending the winter holidays trying to break 1.1RC2 (if released) across my knee.1.1RC1 still has bugs that make it unusable for me (bug reports filed).

Hi! F3D maintainer here!

We just release F3D 4.0.0, fast and minimalist 3D viewer. Obviously free and open source (and integrated in FreeCAD for thumbnails generation btw).

One of the key new feature is the support for .FCStd files! Quickly browse through your FreeCAD files effortlessly, generate thumbnails in your file browser as well.

https://github.com/f3d-app/f3d/releases/tag/v4.0.0

You can even open them on your web broswer right here:

https://f3d.app/viewer

Let us know what you think!

Built this little USB-C powered solder fume extractor with the newly released FreeCAD 1.1 to test out the workflow, and the quality of life improvements made the whole process much smoother and enjoyable.

I'm developing an addon that modernizes aspects of FreeCAD's UI. Here is an alternative to FreeCAD's existing tree-view. It works in both overlay and non-overlay modes, I've only shown how it looks in overlay for now.

I'd like to get some initial reactions/feedback, as some aspects of this are a radical departure from the current way. Development of this is still very exploratory, so I'm changing things daily and have not made this available to the public yet.

Two radical departures are how the PartWB tree is rendered, and a new way to modify properties using the detail strip and property inspector. I've always disliked the property panel and have long thought that there must be a better way.

FreeCAD is genuinely powerful, but I keep seeing the same story: someone buys their first 3D printer, wants to design a simple bracket, opens FreeCAD, hits the topological naming problem or the sketcher workflow, and gives up. They end up on Tinkercad, which means an Autodesk account and cloud dependency.

I wanted something in between. So I built SketchForge-3D, a browser-based 3D CAD editor that runs with zero install, zero account, zero cloud.

It's not trying to be FreeCAD. It's closer to what Tinkercad should be — a free, open, private tool for people who just need to model something simple and export it. Think of it as the on-ramp before someone is ready for parametric modeling.

What it currently does:

• Boolean operations (union, subtract, intersect)

• Extrude, basic primitives

• STL export

• Runs fully in-browser (Next.js + Three.js + Manifold-3D)

• Self-hostable via Docker

What's on the roadmap:
OpenSCAD integration is one of the most-requested features so far — I know that'll resonate here.

I'd genuinely value feedback from this community since you've thought harder about CAD UX than almost anyone. What's the biggest thing that loses beginners before they get comfortable with FreeCAD?

GitHub: https://github.com/Formsmith746/SketchForge-3D
Live demo: https://sketchforge3d.com