Open Source SOLIDWORKS Alternatives
The best open source alternative to SOLIDWORKS is FreeCAD. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to SOLIDWORKS and 11 is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to SOLIDWORKS are LibreCAD (Free, Open Source), OpenSCAD (Free, Open Source), SolveSpace (Free, Open Source) and BRL-CAD (Free, Open Source).
- FreeCAD is a general purpose parametric 3D CAD modeler. The development is completely Open Source (LGPL License).
FreeCAD vs SOLIDWORKS opinions
AS far as I have tried, FreeCAD is the only FOSS alternative to Solidworks/Catia/PTC that has a funtional workflow. It is the best of a poor bunch.It's free for both personal and commercial use - LibreCAD (originally QCad then CADuntu) is an open source 2D CAD application for Windows, Apple and Linux. It is based on Qt, which is a leading cross-platform application and UI development framework.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
LibreCAD vs SOLIDWORKS opinions
Seth 2D application, not 3D like Solidworks - OpenSCAD is a software for creating solid 3D CAD objects. It is free software and available for Linux/UNIX, MS Windows and MacOS.
- SolveSpace is a parametric 3D CAD program with extrude, revolve, union and difference functions. Save/Export as DXF, PDF, SVG, STL, STEP. Mesh generation expected by most 3d printers. Constraint solver point tracing for motion analysis.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
SolveSpace vs SOLIDWORKS opinions
sgtdre It shows that it can open .step files and I have a few GrabCad files that I want to check out and see it I can at least save to other file formats, ;ie .dwg - BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform open source solid modeling system that includes interactive geometry editing, high-performance ray-tracing for rendering and geometric analysis, image and signal-processing tools, a system performance analysis benchmark suite, libraries for...
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- For more than 20 years being always at the forefront of 3D, Open Cascade has gained considerable expertise in geometric modeling. In order to demonstrate software developing capabilities the company decided to come up with a sample of parametric CAD modeler — CAD Builder.No screenshots yet
- SALOME can be used as standalone application for generation of CAD models, their preparation for numerical calculations and post-processing of the calculation results.
SALOME vs SOLIDWORKS opinions
Salome can solve some problems as SolidWork's COSMOS can. Also UI concept of Salome is very similar - MakerSCAD is a web-based parametric 3D design software with a block-based programming language to create objects for 3D printing, animations, games and websites.
- Freemium • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Chrome OS
Discontinued
Site certificate expired. Software itself hasn't been updated in a very long time, is incomplete, and doesn't function
- Varkon is a very powerful parametric 2D/3D CAD, modeling and application development tool for engineering, design, architecture, etc. It does 2D drafting, 2D and 3D modeling, sculptured surface modeling, and even animations.
Discontinued
The project seems no longer developed. Last version, 1.19E, released in November 2012, can be still downloaded from SourceForge.
- Archimedes is a free and open source CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. It is a robust system built over Eclipse’s Rich Client Java Platform fully based on plug ins.
Discontinued
The project seems no longer developed. Last version, 0.66, released in June 2012, can be still downloaded from SourceForge.