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Fantastic February: FOSDEM and Funding FreeCAD

Published on Feb 26, 2023 by Julian on FOSDEM, FreeCAD

Fantastic February: FOSDEM and Funding FreeCAD
Celebrating €30k of funding for FreeCAD development, #FreeCADday and a successful FOSDEM 2023.

Five Open Toolchain Foundation members ran our first ever FOSDEM stand. Having a stand at FOSDEM allowed us to meet so many people in the open source engineering community. It was so great to put faces to names and usernames, and to see that everyone is indeed three dimensional rather than a face on a screen.

Our biggest learning from FOSDEM was that we can improve how we communicate our mission. “Toolchain” is one of those powerful words that means different things to different people. To a software developer it might mean projects GCC, to a mechanical engineer it might mean their physical tools like a CNC. It seems there is no single word that perfectly captures “the software you need for designing and making physical objects”.

Our booth at FOSDEM

FOSDEM was timed very well for the Open Toolchain Foundation. Just days before FOSDEM we received confirmation that we had been awarded 30,000 Euros to fund FreeCAD development! This money will support five projects funding the time of established FreeCAD developers. Supporting the development of 3D CAD is one of our core priorities. It was really a great feeling to be able to attend FreeCAD day on the Friday before FOSDEM and announce this funding to the wider FreeCAD community.

Our funded projects are:

  • Snapping in Sketcher - developer: paddle
  • Architectural Modelling - developer: yorik
  • B-Splines in Sketcher - developer: jnxd
  • Magnetic Simulations - uwestoehr
  • Coded CAD/FreeCAD - jmwright, Dave Cowden Mark van der Net

Pieter at FreeCAD Day

FreeCAD t-shirt

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