F3D updated, Now supports FreeCAD files! F3D is a fabulous open source allowing anyone to render and view 3D models. In it’s most simplest form you can go to the public web viewer and view a sample file already pre loaded, or indeed open a file from your machine. Don’t let the ease of this fool you though, there is a wealth of functionality under the hood with a huge array of tweak-able options, from lighting and positioning to animation playback and even video creation. To top it all, as of version 4.0 it now includes the ability to do all this with FreeCAD FCStd files. You can use the web viewer or indeed there are lots of options to download and install this locally, with packages released for many operating systems. FreeCAD itself makes use of the F3D functionality, it’s used inside FreeCAD to generate STEP file thumbnails and more. Of course, many other projects that are using F3D. A great example is Manyfold, the open source, self hostable 3D file hosting system, is using F3D. Magically the latest release of Manyfold by default will render an image preview of any FreeCAD files placed on a Manyfold instance. Isn’t it great when open source stuff all works well together! Massive thanks and kudos to the F3D team for including FreeCAD file rendering in their development roadmap. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/11/05/f3d-updated-now-supports-freecad-files/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

FOSDEM, Open Hardware CAD/CAM Room CFP Once again the exciting prospect of FOSDEM (ULB Brussels Jan 30th 31st 2027) draws ever nearer. It’s such an amazing chance for the broad open source and open culture communities to draw together and share stories, ideas and expertise. Once again Chris Hennes (@chennes) and myself (@concretedog) are managing the Open Hardware CAD/CAM dev room and are delighted to announce the call for participation is now open. We want to see as broad a range of applications to curate a great room for everyone so are interested to hear from you if you are building open hardware projects or working on open hardware tooling, CAD/CAM and beyond. More detail can be found on this page with the link to the CFP form towards the bottom of the text. One thing of note is that if you submit an application you need to double check that you select the Open Hardware CAD/CAM room option from the drop down menu on the form, or your excellent talk might end up somewhere else! https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/29/fosdem-open-hardware-cad-cam-room-cfp/ #hardwarecad #openhardware #camroom #fosdem #cfp #brusselsjan #ulbbrussels #chrishennes #once #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

WIP Wednesday, 28 October 2026 The FreeCAD team has been eliminating blocking issues in preparation for the v26.3 release. Of 44 pull requests merged in the last 7 days, 15 were backports from the main development branch to the dedicated 26.3 release branch. This overview focuses on the work in the main branch only. Part and PartDesign UnKabaraQuiDev fixed three path pattern issues in PartDesign (PR#33865 and PR#33822). Assembly GeeBee2 fixed a bug where a subshape binder surface couldn’t be used for mating correctly (PR#33835). Ayushjo fixed a bug where double-clicking an exploded view tree node would apply explosion to the normal drawing in a certain scenario (PR#32497). TechDraw WandererFan fixed a bug where it was impossible to create an angle dimension on a chamfer of a cylinder (PR#33820). He also fixed an unwanted rotation of detail geometry in axonometric view (PR#33833) and two issues related to cosmetic object deletion (PR#33880). Other changes DesignWeaver3D fixed a Trimex issue in Draft (PR#33619). Connor fixed a bug with a round stock in the Adaptive command in CAM (PR#33705). tritao fixed Spreadsheet numeric values changing after saving and reopening a document (PR#32464). Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by 3x380V, Ayushjo, chennes, flaviut, gudnimg, MortenVajhoj, PhoneDroid, xSetech, and xtemp09. If you want to test the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 44 pull requests have been merged, and 39 new pull requests have been opened. Issue stats: overall, there are 3517 open issues in the tracker, up by 22 from last week (normal when release candidates start getting tested). There are currently 5 unresolved blocker issues for v26.3. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/28/wip-wednesday-28-october-2026/ #wip #ayushjo #partdesign #draft #cam #adaptive #spreadsheet #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

WIP Wednesday, 21 October 2026 The FreeCAD team has been hard at work eliminating blocking issues in preparation for the v26.3 release. Out of 89 pull requests merged in the last 7 days, 38 have been backports from the main development branch to the dedicated 26.3 release branch. This overview focuses on the work in the main branch only. CAM sliptonic added a postprocessor for DynaPath control (PR#33174). faecorrigan created a brand new EstlCam postprocessor with more features (PR#33229). Connor fixed the speed readout’s invisibility in the simulator (PR#33633). davidgilkaufman fixed Clipping arc fitting (PR#33284). Other changes DesignWeaver3D fixed two bugs in Trimex (Draft): start/end points swapping (PR#33442) and not accounting for Placement rotation when working on arcs (PR#33463). maxwxyz fixed Sketcher toolbars disappearing when switching documents (PR#33554). WandererFan fixed a bug where TechDraw-projected shapes would deviate from the body for curves/splines (PR#33707). Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by 28arnab, 3x380V, Chaitanya-970, chennes, Connor, DesignWeaver3D, ElementW, flaviut, gudnimg, Lgt2x, Lokestrom, maxwxyz, mnesarco, relikd, sliptonic, theo-vt, UnKabaraQuiDev, VishalRamKN, WandererFan, wwmayer, and xtemp09. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 89 pull requests have been merged, and 29 new pull requests have been opened. Issue stats: overall, there are 3495 open issues in the tracker, up by 17 from last week (normal when release candidates start getting tested). There are currently 5 unresolved blocker issues for v26.3. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/21/wwip-wednesday-21-october-2026/ #wip #connor #wandererfan #cam #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

FreeCAD 26.3 Release Candidate 2 Hot on the heels of the first release candidate last week we are pleased to announce that builds for 26.3 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) are now available. RC2 contains fixes from RC1 including those blockers that were reported by you (brilliant) users who tested it. We would love it if you download RC2 and test again, if you find a problem please search to see if it is previously reported, and, if not, do raise an issue helping us to make 26.3 an excellent release. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/18/freecad-26-3-release-candidate-2/ #releasecandidate #freecad #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Tutorial: Lofting between Parts with Facebinders The Draft Workbench has an interesting tool called Facebinder which can be used to perform actions like lofting or extruding from faces rather than from sketch geometry or wires. Whilst a somewhat niche tool, it can be incredibly useful when needed. As an example we have these two parts that form the end of a wing design. They are an interesting example as they have been created from an imported .dat airfoil file which imports as a wire, so the parts have no sketch elements. The wire import has then been extruded on the part workbench and then a second copy of the part has been copy pasted. The second part has then been positioned using the transform tool. The position it is now in forms a dihedral (angled) tip for a wing. We want to create a part which connects the two ends of the wings. As this is at an angle we cannot simply lengthen the extrusions of the parts, and as there is no sketch geometry, we cannot use additive lofting tool approaches. Similarly as the parts are not created in Part Design and are not body items we can’t simply use Shapebinders or other methods to loft between the faces. We could create sketch geometry from the airfoil but using the Facebinder tool will be most straightforward. If we switch to the draft workbench we can click on the FaceBinder tool. In turn we can select the internal end faces of our two wing sections. This will create 2 “Facebinder” objects in the model tree. Moving to the Part workbench we can now click on the “Loft” tool. In the loft dialogue we can highlight the first Facebinder object in the left hand column and click the right arrow to move it to the right hand column, we then repeat this with the second Facebinder object. Then when we click “OK” we see that our lofted part is made. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/09/21/tutorial-lofting-between-parts-with-facebinders/

WIP Wednesday, 23 September 2026 This week in FreeCAD development: Sketcher chennes made it possible to mark specific commands as Stable, Experimental, or Development to control their visibility in the UI based on how mature the code is (PR#32740). Group constraints are “Development”, Text geometry is “Experimental”. UI for selecting what’s visible will follow. alfrix fixed a regression where pressing Tab before entering a dimension would cause focus to move after the first digit (PR#32709). Part and PartDesign shubhrai23 fixed a bug where create a clone of a project would place the clone in the root of the project instead as a child object of the select dpart (PR#31978). PaddleStroke added point patterns as part of work on arrays in (PR#32763). alfrix fixed a bug where the Hole Parameter window would not show the custom head value after project save and reopen (PR#32889). maxwxyz fixed a regression where dressup previews would be rendered in the wrong color (PR#32748). greggjaskiewicz patched the Part code to preserve seam edges during face refinement to maintain closed wires (PR#32730). aw-engineer made it possible to use SubShapeBinders as Profile in FeaturePipe (PR#31786). Assembly PaddleStroke added commands and the shared task panel for LinkArray tools (PR#32688) and integrated the tools into Assembly (PR#32762). CAM This workbench continues to be probably the most actively developed one these days. 19 pull requests were merged, including these patches: sliptonic made the first step towards support for tilted workplanes and made it possible to have shared workplanes held by the Job and manage them (PR#32722). He also added a Machine-based postprocessor for Heidenhain (PR#32863), and fixed several bugs (PR#32043, PR#32513, PR#32615, PR#32366). tarman3 added depth parameters checks to Pocket Shape (PR#32573), made LeadInOut skip zero length plunge moves (PR#32257), exposed a bunch of new properties in the Helix task panel (PR#31620), and fixed the processing of vertical faces in Profile in certain scenarios (PR#31259). Dimitris75 fixed several bugs in the planar surfaces code (PR#32766). Connor added the wire EDM toolhead type (PR#32485). davidgilkaufman fixed an flipped arc bug in OffsetWire (PR#32703) and fixed incorrect cycle time estimates on long, shallow horizontal-speed ramp entrances (PR#32170). FEM marioalexis84 fixed the usability of the FEM unit scheme and added the momentum unit N⋅mm (PR#31013). oursland fixed a crash (PR#32871). BIM Roy-043 prevented the conversion of temporary Draft objects in Native IFC (PR#31592), fixed the flipping of the default structure extrusion direction (PR#32244), several IFC import issues (PR#31940, PR#31801), and a few more bugs. He also made it possible for walls based on lines or sketches to handle expressions for the Length property (PR#32806). TechDraw WandererFan fixed section cut shape positioning (PR#31921) and PAT hatches and color changes not rendering on the page (PR#32791). mohamed-khairy-swe fixed centering in balloon rectangular shape with separators (PR#31591). MortenVajhoj added a Screen mode to help deal with situations where you zoom in on complex models, and bits of geometry start obstructing other bits of geometry (PR#32180). He also made it possible to move view TD view captions around (with snapping) and edit them directly on the page (PR#32216): Other changes For people who don’t use the toolbar all that much, maxwxyz added a Create group under Tools with commands for creating a new part, part datums, a new group, and other items (PR#31435). pavliha added support for the pinch gesture and two-finger scroll panning on Apple trackpads (PR#32030). Lgt2x started preparing the code for dropping Qt5 compatibility (PR#29470). Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by 007stevendigar-lgtm, 3x380V, AjinkyaDahale, alfrix, awgrover, chennes, Connor, davesrocketshop, davidgilkaufman, ElementW, jffmichi, Irvinwop, kadet1090, Kuzma30, Lgt2x, Lokestrom, maxwxyz, mnesarco, oursland, PaddleStroke, shubhrai23, tritao, WandererFan, and wmayer. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 98 pull requests have been merged, and 53 new pull requests have been opened. Issue stats: overall, there are 3446 open issues in the tracker, down by 47 from last week. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/09/23/wip-wednesday-23-september-2026/

2026 Q3 grant program: funded projects The FPA members have voted to fund three projects in the third quarter. Morten Vajhøj will work on topological naming and feature identification in TechDraw. Morten will focus on four deliverables: HLR toponaming, attaching callouts to geometry rather the view location, automatic feature identification, and a dozen new features, such as automatic BOM and balloons in assemblies, and automatic hole/thread callouts. Morten joined the project in early 2026, his contributions are all in/around TechDraw and the Measurement tool. He is one of our GSoC students this year, working on a post-selection rewrite of TechDraw. Morten will be awarded a grant of EUR 2,000 upon the successful completion of the project. João Matos will be improving the visual appeal of rendering in the 3D view. Deliverables are: multi-pass infrastructure, linear HDR rendering and correct color handling, physically based material shading, image-based/environment lighting, real-time ambient occlusion, real-time directional-light shadows, and more. João’s previous work involved modernizing FreeCAD’s and Coin3D’s rendering architecture. He will be awarded a grant of EUR 4,000 once the project is completed. Amritpal Singh will work on KiCad integration for Ondsel Lens. Expected deliverables include 3D board viewing, dual ECAD/MCAD viewers, and STEP export. This work is funded from a separate Ondsel Onwards fund submitted by a private sponsor. Amritpal will be awarded a grant of EUR 3,360 when he completes the project. The total funds allocation is EUR 9,360 against the EUR 10,000 budget. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/02/2026-q3-grant-program-funded-projects/

WIP Wednesday, 7 October 2026 The FreeCAD team has switched to preparing for the release of FreeCAD 26.3, the first one under the new versioning scheme. They are now focused on polishing the release branch and preparing the first release candidate. There will be a separate announcement about that. Out of 93 pull requests merged in the last 7 days, 36 have been backports from the main development branch to the dedicated 26.3 release branch. This overview focuses on the work in the main branch only, Sketcher Reqrefusion fixed a bug where moving a sketch point slightly would snap it back to the previous position (PR#32614). theo-vt fixed occasionally disappearing icons in the toolbar (PR#32530). 3x380V fixed a segmentation fault (PR#33177). Part and PartDesign maxwxyz added datum commands to the Create menu (PR#33207) and fixed a regression where for dressup features, the entire solid would be rendered in magenta preview color (PR#33197). oursland fixed a crash in setting a preview color (PR#33163). PaddleStroke added interactive pattern suppression controls (PR#33071) and exposed circular, path, and point pattern tools in PD commands, menus, toolbars, and view providers (PR#33072). CAM Rimas2200 added geometry verification for each cutting pass (PR#33113). Dimitris75 patched Planar Surfaces to fix the ‘Avoid faces boundary’ offset for Safe STL (PR#33053). davidgilkaufman fixed Clipper arc fitting (PR#33049). Other changes Roy-043 made the new Draft_UpdateShape2DView command available from the Draft menu (PR#33121). MortenVajhoj fixed screen mode exports throughout the workbench (PR#32949). Ads9115 fixed the overlay panel remaining visible over the Start page (PR#33297). Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by andershol, Ayushjo, chennes, davidgilkaufman, flaviut, Lgt2x, Lihis, Maik-0000FF, marioalexis84, maxwxyz, MortenVajhoj, n3orma, obelisk79, oursland, PaddleStroke, rblenis, UnKabaraQuiDev, and WandererFan. If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here. Activity stats PR stats: since the previous report, 93 pull requests have been merged, and 58 new pull requests have been opened. Issue stats: overall, there are 3442 open issues in the tracker, up by 5 from last week. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/07/wip-wednesday-7-october-2026/

FreeCAD 26.3 Release Candidate 1 The FreeCAD team has just announced the first release candidate for FreeCAD 26.3. If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on new features and help by reporting bugs, this is a great time to start. What we need from you: Download the build for your operating system from the assets below and run it against your own work. Real models and real workflows find things that test suites do not. Report anything new and not yet reported on GitHub (please use the search). Regressions against version 1.1 are the most valuable reports at this stage. If something worked in 1.1 and does not work here, say so explicitly. The issue tracker on GitHub has a list of open blockers and known critical issues. We expect the number of those to temporarily go up in the coming weeks as people discover issues and report them. There will likely be several release candidates a few weeks apart, each with more fixes. https://blog.freecad.org/2026/10/08/freecad-26-3-release-candidate-1/