The FreeCAD team officially released FreeCAD 1.1 with many smart updates that make 3D modeling faster and more fun. After a lot of hard work from many people, the software is now ready for you to download.
Table of Contents
Improved Wayland Support
FreeCAD 1.1 introduces significant improvements to Wayland support, primarily focused on increasing stability, fixing graphical bugs for Nvidia users, and automating display protocol detection.
1. Fixing Graphics for Nvidia Users
One of the most important updates addresses long-standing issues where users on native Wayland with proprietary Nvidia drivers would see a blank, black, or white viewport.
To solve this, FreeCAD now explicitly requests an OpenGL compatibility profile. This change ensures that the software can access necessary legacy functions required for rendering, which were previously failing on certain Wayland setups.
2. Automatic Protocol Detection and Crash Prevention
The software now handles the Coin3D library (the underlying 3D scene manager) much more intelligently on Linux.
- Automatic Detection: For users with Coin version 4.0.6 or newer, FreeCAD no longer needs to be manually told to use EGL. The library can now automatically detect whether to use GLX or EGL.
- Stability: This automation is critical because it prevents the accidental mixing of GLX and EGL protocols, a conflict that previously caused segmentation faults (SIGSEGV) and application crashes.
- Legacy Support: While this process is now automatic for newer versions of Coin, the 1.1 release still maintains the ability to explicitly inform Coin to use EGL for users running older versions like 4.0.4 or 4.0.5.
3. Improved Visual Quality
Development work also targeted visual glitches specific to Wayland. For example, some users experienced aggressive color banding in background gradients.
This happened because the UI was sometimes rendered in 16-bit color (RGB565) instead of 24-bit color.
FreeCAD 1.1 addresses this by requesting 24-bit color depth whenever it is available, ensuring a smoother and more professional appearance.
Other than Wayland, the DXF importer was also significantly redesigned for better predictability and now provides import statistics upon completion.
Other New Key Features
1. User Interface and Visualization Improvements
- Transparent Previews: The Part Design workbench now features transparent previews for additive and subtractive features, allowing you to see the result before applying it.
- Three-Point Lighting: A new 3-point lighting system has been added to significantly improve the rendering and visual quality of 3D models.
- Interactive Draggers: Tools like Fillet, Chamfer, and various Part Design features now include interactive control draggers in the 3D view, enabling manual value manipulation by dragging.
- Clarify Selection Tool: This new tool (keyboard shortcut G, G) enables temporary transparency and lists nearby geometrical entities (faces, edges, etc.), making it much easier to select hidden or interior objects.
- Theme and Preferences: A new Theme Editor and token system allow for better stylesheet customization. Additionally, a search bar has been added to the Preferences Editor to help locate settings quickly.
- New Orbit Styles: "Rounded Arcball" is now the default orbit style, and a "Trackball Classic" style has also been added.
2. Core System Enhancements
- Overhauled Transform Tool: The Transform tool now supports precise numerical inputs and allows for the alignment of the interactive dragger to any element in the document (such as the center of mass or a target location).
- Core Datum Tools: New tools for creating coordinate systems, planes, lines, and points have been implemented; these are also compatible with the Assembly workbench.
- Quick Measure Updates: The status bar now displays additional information during measurements, including the diameter of circular elements and axis distance.
- Versioned Configuration: FreeCAD now uses versioned directory structures for user data, allowing different versions of the software to run safely alongside one another without configuration conflicts.
3. Workbench Highlights
- Part Design: The Hole tool has been completely redesigned with a context-sensitive task panel. It now supports model taper and several new thread profiles, including British Standard Whitworth (BSW) and National Pipe Threads (NPT).
- Assembly: New features include an "Insert a new part" tool and a "Create Simulation" tool for generating animations of joints and motions.
- CAM (formerly Path): This workbench features a totally new tool library system with an improved toolbit editor that supports drag-and-drop and copy-paste functionality.
- FEM: Results objects now support animations, and new solvers have been added, including Elmer’s static current conduction solver.
- Sketcher: New Projection and Intersection tools allow users to create external geometry from faces or intersecting sketch planes. The "Make Internals" property is also now functional, allowing faces to be displayed for closed contours.
- BIM: New visual tools for interactive sun position and ray visualization have been added to the Arch Site.
- TechDraw: View frames are now automatically shown or hidden when hovering the cursor over a view, reducing visual clutter.
You can view the complete list of new features and changes in the official release notes below:
Download FreeCAD 1.1
You can download the latest FreeCAD version 1.1 for Linux, macOS and Windows right now from the official latest releases page on GitHub or the main website's download section.
Development and Source Code
- Weekly Builds: These "bleeding edge" versions are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux for those who want to test the very latest features.
- Source Code: The official FreeCAD source code is hosted on GitHub and mirrored on GitLab, Codeberg, and Sourceforge.
Support FreeCAD
The FreeCAD project relies on the hard work of volunteers and generous donors. If you enjoy these new features, please consider making a donation to support FreeCAD's future growth. Your help keeps this powerful 3D tool free for everyone in the world.
