README

FreeCAD
=======

FreeCAD is a general purpose feature-based, parametric 3D modeler for 
CAD, MCAD, CAx, CAE and PLM, aimed directly at mechanical engineering 
and product design but also fits a wider range of uses in engineering, 
such as architecture or other engineering specialties. It is 100% Open 
Source (LGPL2+ license) and extremely modular, allowing for very 
advanced extension and customization.

FreeCAD is based on OpenCasCade, a powerful geometry kernel, features an 
Open Inventor-compliant 3D scene representation model provided by the 
Coin 3D library, and a broad Python API. The interface is built with Qt. 
FreeCAD runs exactly the same way on Windows, Mac OSX, BSD and Linux 
platforms.

Home page:          http://www.freecadweb.org
Documentation wiki: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/
Forum:              http://forum.freecadweb.org/
Bug tracker:        http://www.freecadweb.org/tracker/
Git repository:     http://sourceforge.net/p/free-cad/code/ci/master/tree/

Installing
==========

Precompiled (installable) packages are usually available to you from 
several sources and are described on the FreeCAD download page: 
http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Download

Compiling
=========

Compiling FreeCAD requires to install several libraries and their 
development files such as OpenCasCADe, Coin and Qt, listed in the 
pages below. Once this is done, FreeCAD can be simply compiled with 
cMake. On windows, these libraries are bundled and offered by the 
FreeCAD team in a convenience package, on Linux they are usually found 
in your distribution's repositories and on Mac OSX and other platforms 
you will usually need to compile them yourself.

The pages below contain up-to-date build instructions:

For Linux:   http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnUnix
For Windows: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnWindows
For Mac OSX: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMac
For Cygwin:  http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnCygwin
For MinGW:   http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMinGW

Usage & Getting help
====================

The FreeCAD documentation wiki contains a lot of documentation on 
general FreeCAD usage, python scripting, and development. The following
pages might help you to get started:

Getting started:    http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Getting_started
Features list:      http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Features_list
Frequent questions: http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=FAQ
Workbenches:        http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Workbench_Concept
Scripting:          http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Power_users_hub
Development:        http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Developer_hub

The FreeCAD forum at http://forum.freecadweb.org is also a great place
to find help and solve specific problems that you might encounter when
learning to use FreeCAD.