FreeCAD is a general purpose feature-based, parametric 3D modeler for CAD, MCAD, CAx, CAE and PLM, aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits a wider range of uses in engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties. It is 100% Open Source (LGPL2+ license) and extremely modular, allowing for very advanced extension and customization.
FreeCAD is based on OpenCasCade, a powerful geometry kernel, features an Open Inventor-compliant 3D scene representation model provided by the Coin 3D library, and a broad Python API. The interface is built with Qt. FreeCAD runs exactly the same way on Windows, Mac OSX, BSD and Linux platforms.
Home page: http://www.freecadweb.org
Documentation wiki: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/
Forum: http://forum.freecadweb.org/
Bug tracker: http://www.freecadweb.org/tracker/
Git repository: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD
Precompiled (installable) packages are available for Windows and Mac on the releases page at https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases
On most Linux distributions, FreeCAD is directly installable from the software center application.
Other options are described at http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Download
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Compiling FreeCAD requires installation of several libraries and their development files such as OpenCasCADe, Coin and Qt, listed in the pages below. Once this is done, FreeCAD can be simply compiled with cMake. On Windows, these libraries are bundled and offered by the FreeCAD team in a convenience package, on Linux they are usually found in your distribution's repositories and on Mac OSX and other platforms you will usually need to compile them yourself.
The pages below contain up-to-date build instructions:
For Linux: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnUnix
For Windows: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnWindows
For Mac OSX: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMac
For Cygwin: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnCygwin
For MinGW: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMinGW
The FreeCAD documentation wiki contains a lot of documentation on general FreeCAD usage, python scripting, and development. The following pages might help you get started:
Getting started: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Getting_started
Features list: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Feature_list
Frequent questions: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=FAQ
Workbenches: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Workbench_Concept
Scripting: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Power_users_hub
Development: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Developer_hub
The FreeCAD forum at http://forum.freecadweb.org is also a great place to find help and solve specific problems you might encounter when learning to use FreeCAD.