After 23 years of development, FreeCAD, the popular open-source CAD software, received a full release on November 19. We got in touch with FreeCAD’s developers to ask about their long journey to 1.0, what’s changed in this milestone release, and why you should give the software another try.

“Last year the team identified four issues that we felt were the major roadblocks to a 1.0 milestone,” Chris Hennes, a FreeCAD Maintainer and FPA board member, told All3DP. Those issues were mitigating the “topological naming problem”, a built-in assembly workbench, better handling of materials in terms of rendering and physical properties, and a generally improved user experience.

“Once we had identified these focus areas, we set about putting together teams to work on each one over the last year,” Hennes said. “Each has progressed to a point where the team feels that they are ready for the public to use in their day-to-day CAD work, which is how we defined the 1.0 release.”

FreeCAD’s team says its user interface, the subject of some complaints about past versions of the software, has “seen a great deal of improvement” in the last year, including a new dedicated UI/UX team. Part of those changes is a “theme system” that allows the software to be skinned for custom UIs, akin to the (unassociated) Ondsel ES for-profit fork of the software. Hennes says there are now several third-party add-on “preference packs” that can “quickly and easily configure FreeCAD into many different user interface appearances.”

“User Experience is always going to be something we are working on, but the last year has seen a great deal of improvement in this area.”