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.orgDocumentation 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=DownloadCompiling=========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=CompileOnUnixFor Windows:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnWindowsFor Mac OSX:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMacFor Cygwin:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnCygwinFor MinGW:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=CompileOnMinGWUsage & Getting help====================The FreeCAD documentation wiki contains a lot of documentation on general FreeCAD usage, python scripting, and development. The followingpages might help you to get started:Getting started:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Getting_startedFeatures list:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Feature_listFrequent questions:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=FAQWorkbenches:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Workbench_ConceptScripting:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Power_users_hubDevelopment:http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Developer_hubThe FreeCAD forum athttp://forum.freecadweb.org is also a great placeto find help and solve specific problems that you might encounter whenlearning to use FreeCAD.