Jo Hinchliffe on the FreeCAD blog:
After more than twenty years of intense and sustained development, the FreeCAD community is proud to announce the release of version 1.0. FreeCAD 1.0 is now available for download on all platforms.
In software development, version 1 usually means: our software is now stable and ready for “real work”. If you are a FreeCAD user, you know that FreeCAD has been ready for real work for years, and is used in productive, professional activity all over the world already. We in fact were tempted many times in the past to cut to the chase, and call the next version 1.0 already!
But we didn’t. Since the very beginnings, the FreeCAD community had a clear view of what 1.0 represented for us. What we wanted in it. FreeCAD matured over the years, and that list narrowed down to just two major remaining pieces: fixing the toponaming problem, and having a built-in assembly module.
Twenty years is a long time for a project to survive, especially a volunteer-led one. Congratulations to all involved on shipping 1.0.
FreeCAD is my CAD tool of choice, mostly for designing things to 3D print. When I got my 3D printer 3 years ago I didn’t really entertain using any of the proprietary CAD tools. I wanted to use something that worked on Linux and would continue to do so into the future—without a monthly cost like a lot of software these days. From what I see in YouTube videos of people using alternatives like OnShape, FreeCAD might not be the easiest or full-featured tool but for my usage it has been perfectly fine.