History/fr

Historique


L'histoire de FreeCAD débute en janvier 2001, quand Jürgen Riegel a commencé à travailler sur le projet qui allait plus tard devenir officiellement FreeCAD. CAS.CADE, un cadre de développement de logiciels commerciaux, y compris une geometric modeling kernel (ou CAD kernel), avait été libéré sous une licence open source en 2000 et rebaptisé Open Cascade. Cela a rendu la réalisation d'un programme open source CAD 3D possible, plutôt que d'avoir à programmer un noyau de CAD à partir de zéro, ce qui aurait fallu une énorme quantité de travail.

Le discours de Jürgen :

"The FreeCAD project was started by me in January 2001, as a so called GOM (Graphical Object Modeler), with the idea to use Qt, Python and Cas.CADE, an commercial CAD-Kernel that time I used in Daimler's projects. Cas.CADE gone open source shortly before, so the time seemed right to try a move in the, at that time, empty space of open source CAD. I had a two year experience with OpenCascade in a project called QSpect in which, at the end, I was the main software designer. I learned a lot about 3D and CAD programming. I also was influenced by Catia V5 and its very special user and programming interface… In March 17 2002, within the OpenCascade Project, I registered the software as FreeCAD. I couldn't think of a better name, I'm very bad on names… In April 2003, Werner Meyer, one of the colleges in the QSpect project, switched to a company called Imetric. The contact to Imetric resulted very promising since they searched for a new 3D software platform for their 3D sensors. In 2005, Imetric donated most of its Mesh Module to FreeCAD and the Open Source community, and since then they used FreeCAD as basis for their sensor system software. Since that time, Werner Meyer is a very active developer of FreeCAD. In 2005, after one year of struggle, I decided to rip of the OpenCascade document framework and replace it with an own implementation. So, at the end, we only use the CAD kernel of OpenCascade and not the rest of its Framework. 2007 was another interesting milestone. We switched to QT4 and, therefore, to the LGPL. At that time we did much work, mainly Werner."

"Le projet FreeCAD a été lancé par moi-même en janvier 2001 sous le nom de GOM (Graphical Object Modeler), avec l’idée d’utiliser Qt, Python et Cas.CADE, un noyau CAD commercial que j’ai utilisé dans les projets de Daimler. Cas.CADE étant devenu open source peu de temps auparavant, le temps semblait donc bien choisi pour tenter de le faire évoluer dans l’espace vide de la CAO open source. J'ai eu une expérience de deux ans avec OpenCascade dans un projet appelé QSpect dans lequel, à la fin, j'étais le principal concepteur de logiciel. J'ai beaucoup appris sur la programmation 3D et la CAO. J'ai également été influencé par Catia 5 et son interface utilisateur et de programmation très spéciale… Le 17 mars 2002, dans le cadre du projet OpenCascade, j'ai enregistré le logiciel sous le nom de FreeCAD. Je ne pouvais pas penser à un meilleur nom, je suis très mauvais en noms… En avril 2003, Werner Meyer, l'un des collèges participant au projet QSpect, est passé à une société appelée Imetric. Le contact avec Imetric a été très prometteur car ils recherchaient une nouvelle plate-forme logicielle 3D pour leurs capteurs 3D. En 2005, Imetric a fait don de la majeure partie de son module de maillage à FreeCAD et à la communauté Open Source. Depuis lors, ils ont utilisé FreeCAD comme base de leur logiciel de système de capteurs. Depuis ce temps, Werner Meyer est un développeur très actif de FreeCAD. En 2005, après un an de lutte, j'ai décidé de supprimer le cadre de documentation OpenCascade et de le remplacer par une implémentation propre. Finalement, nous n'utilisons que le noyau CAD d'OpenCascade et pas le reste de son Framework. L'année 2007 a été une autre étape intéressante. Nous sommes passés à QT4 et, par conséquent, à la LGPL. À cette époque, nous travaillions beaucoup, principalement Werner."

Le projet a été annoncé au grand public lors du forum OpenCascade en 2003. Pour reprendre à nouveau les termes de Jürgen :

"Hi together, my name is Juergen Riegel and today I want announce an OpenCasCade project, FreeCAD. It is an Open Source CAx RAD based on OpenCasCade, QT and Python. It features some key concepts like Macro Recording, Workbenches, ability to run as a server and as a dynamically loadable applications' extension, and it is designed to be platform independent… Although it is in an early stage and not usable for users nor developers—the first user release is planned for the end of 2003—, I would like to get some feedback on the direction and design of FreeCAD. The GUI is nearly finished and now we, my co-developer Werner Mayer and me, have started adding the first CAD functions. FreeCAD can be seen as a general purpose mechanical CAD system, but its first audience, I think, will be CAx developers which need groundwork for own development."

Eventually, the project gained traction, and saw the addition of new key contributors in the community.

Yorik van Havre joined the project in 2008 and started work on the Draft Module. Before that point, there was no way to create 2D geometry through the GUI. This module was programmed entirely in Python rather than in C++, the core programming language used in FreeCAD. This proved that Python integration was a success and could be used to extend or customize FreeCAD's capabilities. In addition to his work on the Draft module, Yorik worked on expanding the FreeCAD documentation, and became FreeCAD's de facto "Art director", creating many icons for FreeCAD's GUI and defining its style.

Version 0.7 of FreeCAD released in April 2009 was the first to include the Draft module. The Part module provided a simple CSG workflow with creation of primitive shapes and boolean operations accessible through the Part menu. Extrusion of 2D profiles and filleting was also possible.

Version 0.8 released in July 2009 saw some more work in the Draft module, including a new Dimension tool. The Part module benefited from a new toolbar along with new tools, Revolve and Section.

By the end of 2009, FreeCAD was accepted as a Debian package in the Debian repositories. FreeCAD was added to the Ubuntu 10.04 repositories in 2010.

Version 0.10 released on July 2010 introduced the Sketcher Workbench, based on Sketchsolve, a constraint-based solver to create 2D geometry. The first version was limited to creation of rectangles and lines.

In early 2011, taking the opportunity given by the Launchpad online platform, the FreeCAD Maintainers team was created to provide fresh stable releases along with daily build packages of FreeCAD to users of the Ubuntu operating system.

Version 0.11 released in May 2011 introduced the new Part Design workbench which included tools such as Pad, Pocket, Fillet and Chamfer. The Draft workbench received enhancements and new tools, like BSpline. The Robot workbench featured more GUI tools.

Version 0.12 released in January 2012 featured a more complete Sketcher workbench. It included a totally rewritten solver, FreeGCS. It was the result of months of work by the main FreeCAD developers along with newcomers logari81 (who programmed the solver) and mrlukeparry. More tools were added to the PartDesign workbench.

Release history

 * Overview


 * Legend

An overview about the commit history can be found in the following Forum post: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23695#p184940
 * Commit history

Links

 * SourceForge Files section
 * SourceForge Old Files section
 * Who is behind FreeCad? topic on the FreeCAD forum
 * Announcing FreeCAD Project on the OpenCascade forum