At work I use computer aided design (CAD) software to make 3D models of aerospace parts. At home I’d always been looking for good free CAD software, but never found what I was looking for. I recently revisited FreeCAD, and it has come far. It is still under active development, but it has a lot of the fundamental parametric features working that a hobbyist or mechanical engineer needs. Basically, you can make really good models in it, even though it’s not “done” yet.

Let’s See Some CAD Models

To try it out, I modeled some simple household items, like a cup, a spoon, and a fork. Then I made a jet engine exhaust frame, not based on any real engine. Take a look at the interactive results below. All models can be rotated and zoomed in with your mouse!

The interactive models are embedded with the JSC3D plugin, which was implemented in the kento 3d model viewer.