FreeCAD News

FreeCAD is a already long-term par­tic­i­pant to the Google Sum­mer of Code (GSoC) pro­gram, which is Google’s pro­gram to fund stu­dents to work on Free and Open-Source Soft­ware (FOSS) projects. Each year, stu­dents sub­mit pro­pos­als to work on their favorite FOSS project dur­ing the school hol­i­days, and Google awards them a grant.

FreeCAD has been par­tic­i­pat­ing since 2016, togeth­er with some oth­er FOSS CAD projects like Open­SCAD, BRL-CAD or KiCAD under a same umbrel­la. Last year, we decid­ed we’re old enough to try, and par­tic­i­pat­ed on our own. It was a great expe­ri­ence, we got no less than four award­ed stu­dents work­ing on FreeCAD. All of them pro­duced good results, and got to know and inter­act with the FreeCAD family.

The aim of GSoC is not only to get peo­ple to work on FOSS projects, but also to give stu­dents a chance to dive in to a FOSS project and expe­ri­ence first-hand the dynam­ics of open-source devel­op­ment (which I think are total­ly awe­some, and def­i­nite­ly some­thing any com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent should know about). Final­ly, it also tries to cre­ate long-last­ing bounds between stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ties they work with, so they stick to the project after GSoC finishes.

GSoC 2023

This hap­pened last year:

• hlorus worked (and is still work­ing!) on mea­sure­ments tools in FreeCAD. FreeCAD has a very diverse set of dif­fer­ent mea­sure­ment tools, none total­ly com­plete, none total­ly fin­ished. Hlorus, who already worked on oth­er FOSS projects like Blender, start­ed work­ing on a uni­fied sys­tem, that hope­ful­ly will pro­vide a good FreeCAD-wide mea­sure­ment solu­tion. Check the project details on GSoC 2023: Uni­fied Mea­sure­ment Facil­i­ty — FreeCAD Forum

• Amulya worked and is also still work­ing on a mod­ern replace­ment for the FreeCAD library. The FreeCAD library has become this huge, unmain­tain­able, unus­able repos­i­to­ry of FreeCAD mod­els, pieces and parts pro­vid­ed by FreeCAD users. We need­ed a replace­ment which, while still rely­ing on Git and con­tent pro­vid­ed by users, allows a much eas­i­er man­age­ment both by admin­is­tra­tors and users, and has an eas­i­er inte­gra­tion in FreeCAD. Project details are on [GSoC 2023] UI tool for fetch­ing online con­tent — FreeCAD Forum

• Gau­ri worked on a new doc­u­men­ta­tion sys­tem for FreeCAD. While the cur­rent doc­u­men­ta­tion host­ed on the FreeCAD wiki served and still serves us well so far, a series of grow­ing prob­lems made us think we need a bet­ter, more flex­i­ble and safer solu­tion where the con­tents are dis­so­ci­at­ed from the plat­form. Gau­ri set up a mark­down-based docusaurus sys­tem, and some FreeCAD com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers have now picked up her work and are car­ry­ing it fur­ther. Check the details at [GSoC2023] Upgrade the doc­u­men­ta­tion sys­tem — FreeCAD Forum

• Tana­su worked on on-machine inspec­tion tools that allow a CNC machine equipped with a probe tool to “poke” a piece of mate­r­i­al to deter­mine its size and shape. Find more details about it on [GSoC 2023] On-machine Inspec­tion — FreeCAD Forum

Every­thing that hap­pens with GSoC in FreeCAD is in its own sec­tion of the FreeCAD forum. Be sure to check what’s hap­pen­ing there!

GSoC 2024

This year again, FreeCAD has been accept­ed to the GSoC pro­gram. The store is now open, and stu­dents can start look­ing and ask­ing ques­tions and build­ing their pro­pos­als. Are you inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing as a stu­dent? Be sure to check our GSoC 2024 page page with pro­pos­al ideas and every­thing there is to know about the pro­gram. Also look at the GSoC time­line to have an idea of where you would be going.

See you there?