Development roadmap/ro

FreeCAD - though usable in many applications - is at the beginning of a long journey into CAD mainstream. There is still a lot to do to reach a state where we can compete with commercial software.

This section gives an overview of what is planned and gives you the opportunity to participate or give your opinion. As we are volunteers to FreeCAD we have only a certain amount of time. So if you interested in one of the topics and willing to help, just let us know! We use the Getting Things Done (GTD) style for the project document. Here is the Project template.


 * The Organization chart shows who does what in the FreeCAD universe.
 * You can follow issues that are currently being worked on via the bugtracker here: http://www.freecadweb.org/tracker/roadmap_page.php

Current projects
These are work in progress.


 * STEP project about improving and advancing the STEP support in FreeCAD
 * Naming project is about implementing a robust Shape referencing frame work.
 * FreeCAD development model project move FreeCAD to a more capable development model
 * Sketcher project is ongoing implementation of the constraint/parametric Sketcher
 * PartDesign project is the effort towards a working part-design in FreeCAD
 * Assembly project creates a assembly module which handle product creation, part-lists and some kinematics.
 * Architecture project will throw the bases of a modern, parametric architectural modeling environment.
 * Units project finally get FreeCAD to recognize different Units and Units-systems.
 * Resource framework project address the user collaboration, PDM catalog/standard part stuff
 * Quality project aims to hide unfinished features and improve the documentation.
 * Raytracing project provide a new generic interface for external renderers for visualisation
 * UTF Project aims to update FreeCAD's Coin3D interface to utilise UTF Strings for better multilanguage experience with non ASCII characters

Future projects
Projects for the near future.


 * Material data model Effort to describe a material data model in FreeCAD
 * FEM project wants to create a FEM module in FreeCAD.
 * CAM project will make the existing CAM stuff in FreeCAD usable.
 * Land Survey Workbench Blueprint

So far finished projects

 * Robot project A Robot simulation workbench

Release schedule
Like in the most FLOSS projects a release schedule is very rough. There will be no fixed dates and "It's done, when it's done!"


 * The Release process page gather ideas for a more efficient release workflow