The KiCad friendly parametric CAD project has just released version 0.21
The KicadStepUp workbench works fine with KiCad
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I work in FreeCAD quite lot (sometimes more than in KiCAD)
I’m testing 0.21 already!
I like some of the new features!
Great work developers!
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I have been building a large-ish project in freecad 0.20. I am reluctant to upgrade to 0.21 in case anything breaks. Has anyone seen migration issues?
@teletypeguy [on Mac] Only problem was the usual needing to Reset my Workbench’s and Toolbars (perhaps because my FreeCAD setups are very customized so, they only get about half-way properly set. Two minutes of Resetting was all that was needed).
No upgrade issues in Linux (Ubuntu) and Win10.
I only use the latest version, so I install in in Win10 in the same folder.
But you can have both versions installed (AppImage in Linux and installed in different folders in Windows) to have alternative versions going.
I have never seen incompatibilities with drawings in FreeCAD after upgrades.
Quite often I start using some random “weekly build” a few months after a release, and grab a newer one every few months. But there are some GUI resets sometimes after an update, but most times my updates are from a weekly build to a newer weekly build of 0.21.
Even opening an old file, such as one of my first experiments back from 2012 “just works”. FreeCAD was quite horrible back then. The bugs, combined with missing features and not being able to get my head wrapped about how things were supposed to work caused my to put FreeCAD in some corner for years. The things I was able to do with it back then were promising enough that I kept an eye on the project.
The FreeCAD version below shows “Release”, but I think it’s one of the weekly builds. Unfortunately I don’t see a date in the version info.
OS: Linux Mint 20.3 (XFCE/xfce)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.21.0.32821 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: eaf9d43f37238c33dd1c47b859a6fdf5b7f629fc
Python 3.10.10, Qt 5.15.8, Coin 4.0.0, Vtk 9.1.0, OCC 7.6.3
Locale: C/Default (C) [ OS: English/United States (en_US) ]
Installed mods:
* freecad.gears 1.0.0
* fasteners 0.4.55
* persistenttoolbars
* kicadStepUpMod 10.17.1
* Glass (Disabled)
Sure, but that is not what I meant.
FreeCAD does not show a build date in it’s version info.
A quick check shows that the 32821 build I use at the moment has a date of 2023-04-15 attached to the file itself, and as it’s a weekly build, it was probably made in the week before it.
So that was 4 months ago.
Now I got the new 0.21 and it shows:
OS: Linux Mint 20.3 (XFCE/xfce)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.21.0.33675 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at 0.21.0)
Hash: 41b058e2087de60dc8fef3d3e68c7d0129e13abf
Python 3.10.12, Qt 5.15.8, Coin 4.0.0, Vtk 9.2.5, OCC 7.6.3
Locale: C/Default (C) [ OS: English/United States (en_US) ]
Installed mods:
* freecad.gears 1.0.0
* fasteners 0.4.55
* persistenttoolbars
* kicadStepUpMod 10.17.1
* Glass (Disabled)Although, if you look in the GUI window, it does show the date.
Only an extremely tiny bit annoying they use slashes instead of dashes. According to the only worldwide date standard I recognize: ISO8601, slashes are reserved for time intervals.
But overall, I’m happy to see continuous updates to FreeCAD.
Every now and then I’m trying to donate them some money. For years their attitude was “We’re just a bunch of hackers having fun and don’t have a infrastructure for that”, but the last few years opportunities have been growing. A bunch of FreeCAD developers have Patreon accounts now, and I think there are also more generic ways to donate to the FreeCAD project.
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we often do not see updates) once every few years
FC has daily builds… and normally has a release each year or year and half
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I got interested in freecad a few months ago after watching some of @blackcoffee’s videos. There is a steep learning curve, but I have been designing a little machine, and am getting closer to building it. Freecad is awesome.
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