Download

There are several downloads for various operating systems available. Before downloading keep in mind:

Stable FreeCAD installers
The FreeCAD team provides ready-to-install packages for Windows (XP, Vista and 7, 32 and 64bits),  Mac OS X (Snow Leopard 10.6), and   Debian-based Linux systems (Debian, Ubuntu, 32 and 64bits). Below are links to the Stable installation files for the various systems. Also available on the FreeCAD Files page are unstable packages, that provide the bleeding-edge new features being worked on, but might crash more often or contain features that are incompatible with earlier versions.

Development Versions
If you want to install FreeCAD with more in-development features, and are willing to accept that these versions have a higher chance of bugs and crashes, then you can check the official FreeCAD Files page to download 64 bit, older, or unstable releases. Of course, if you want to stay even more on the bleeding edge of development, you can compile FreeCAD, or use the Ubuntu daily build updates.

Notes for Windows users
The windows installer should also work on older Windows platforms, but has not always been tested. You need Windows Installer V1 on your system (msiexec.exe). See Installing on Windows for details about different installation options. Download the latest .msi file for windows systems, or the appropriate .deb file for your version of Ubuntu or Debian.

Notes for Linux users
On most recent distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu or Arch, FreeCAD is included in the official distribution's packages repository, and you are advised to preferably get FreeCAD from there, to make sure you have a version that is 100% compatible with your system. The pivy python module (usually named python-pivy) is needed by FreeCAD from version 0.9 or above. If it is not available on your system, you must download it from here too.

Notes for Mac users
We rely on very few people to help building Mac OSX packages, so it doesn't get updated as often as the other platforms. The version available on this site might be slightly outdated. (To compile the most up-to-date version from source see CompileOnMac)

Ubuntu PPA packages
The FreeCAD Launchpad team has set up two PPA (Personal Package Archive) repositories that allow easy install of Ubuntu packages based on the development branch. Updates to the software are pushed to the Ubuntu Update Manager, which makes it the easiest way to get the latest FreeCAD build.


 * FreeCAD Daily Builds: an automatic daily build system, which can provide you with a fresh, daily-up-to-date version of FreeCAD. Please be advised that the packages from this bleeding edge PPA may be broken from time to time.
 * FreeCAD Devel: packages available through this PPA are actually copied from the Daily Builds PPA but are summarily tested beforehand. Update schedule is slower, and varies from 1-3 weeks.

Current supported architectures and versions are:


 * Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) 32 & 64-Bit
 * Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) 32 & 64-Bit
 * Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) 32 & 64-Bit

Adding the PPA and installing FreeCAD from the console
Type (or copy-paste) these commands in a console to add the PPA and install FreeCAD along with the documentation:

For FreeCAD Daily Builds: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-daily For FreeCAD Devel: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-dev Then: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install freecad freecad-doc

Adding the PPA and installing FreeCAD from the GUI
Add to your system's Software Sources one of the following PPA (read What are PPAs and how do I use them? if you don't know how):


 * For FreeCAD Daily Builds: ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-daily
 * For FreeCAD Devel: ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-dev

When a dialog window asks you to refresh your software sources, click OK.

Now you can install FreeCAD and FreeCAD documentation through the Ubuntu Software Center, or your package manager of choice.

Alternative FreeCAD builds
These are versions of FreeCAD built by other persons and not officially maintained by the FreeCAD team. They may include customized parts or be optimized for certain types of processors, or other modifications that the package maintainers judged necessary. But they are also sometimes better suited for certain operating systems. Note that on most common linux distributions, official packages are typically installed by the system's package management tool, so you don't need to download and install FreeCAD manually.


 * Official Debian package
 * Official Ubuntu package
 * Official OpenSuse package
 * Softpedia Windows build
 * Packman RPM package (for opensuse, fedora)
 * Slackbuilds package (for Slackware)
 * ArchLinux AUR package
 * Gentoo ebuild package
 * Pardus linux build script

FreeCAD documentation
The user documentation of FreeCAD is being written together by the developers and the users community, on this wiki site. The best way is to read it online, so you are sure to get the latest version:


 * The FreeCAD Manual

The manual can also be displayed as one big text, so you can print it or save it as a pdf file:


 * All-in-one printable version

The manual is also be compiled as a qt help file, so it can be browsed offline with the Qt help viewer. This is usually made at each release and is available together with FreeCAD package on most linux software repositories (on debian/ubuntu-based systems, look for freecad-doc package) and is also bundled in the windows installer. To access it, simply open the "help" menu inside FreeCAD, or use the "What's this?" button.

For convenience, we also provide a pdf version of this manual:


 * 0.10 Manual (Pdf file)
 * 0.11 Manual (Pdf file)
 * 0.12 Manual (Pdf file)

Here you can also find a copy of the OpenCasCade 5.2 docs, in a .chm file. After 5.2, the openCasCade documentation is not available as a single file anymore, but as a heavy 180Mb package. So, since there is little change, we keep this one around for convenience:


 * OpenCasCADE 5.2 documentation

FreeCAD Source package
For all other platforms you need to compile FreeCAD on your own from the Source package. You might also want to compile FreeCAD yourself if you want to optimize certain things, or customize certain parts of FreeCAD. Instructions for compiling can be found on the CompileOnWindows, CompileOnMac and CompileOnUnix pages. You can grab a zip or tar.gz file containing the latest official version here (look for the latest version for your system):


 * official FreeCAD Files repository

Alternatively, you can also download latest source code from the SVN repository. You'll get a more recent version, but it might contain bugs or even fail to compile. Instructions for accessing the SVN repository can be found here:


 * FreeCAD SVN repository

You can also download automatically a GNU tarball from the latest source code tree or any part of it by using the code browser and clicking the "Download GNU tarball" at any time. The trunk folder contains the current development version, while the branches folder contains a snapshot of all stable releases to date.


 * FreeCAD SVN browser

FreeCAD LibPack
To collect all the needed libraries to compile FreeCAD can be a time consuming task. So we deliver a convenient package for development on Windows (VS8) with all needed libraries. You can download the latest version of the libpack from


 * FreeCAD LibPack

For linux, you will normally find all necessary libraries in your software management system, so you should just read the CompileOnUnix page.

Additional modules and related projects
There are additional modules, addons of plugins for FreeCAD developed outside of the main FreeCAD development team. They are listed here but are not officially supported by the FreeCAD team.


 * Fold module: a module in development for working with metal sheets.
 * Ship module: a module in development for ship design.
 * MendelMax: a macro suite for FreeCAD to generate a MendelMax machine
 * OpenPLM: an online PLM platform with FreeCAD support