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Top 23 C++ Cad Projects
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Project mention: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (February 2025) | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-02-23
I'm a long-time FreeCAD user, and one of my annoyances is that long-running operations lock up the entire UI and can't be aborted.
So for my first contribution to FreeCAD I'm working on fixing this.
The underlying CAD operations are done by "OpenCascade", and at first I thought OpenCascade had no support for aborting operations part of the way through. So my first implementation was to move the operation into a child process and give the user a dialog box that would allow terminating the child process.
But it actually turns out OpenCascade does support aborting the operations! So now I'm working on doing it the OpenCascade way.
My PR is here: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/19796
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Project mention: OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-14
Multi thread support is an experimental feature available on nightly build (and needing to be enabled). The bug tracking it is interesting to read, it has been a long journey... https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/391
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LibreCAD
LibreCAD is a cross-platform 2D CAD program written in C++17. It can read DXF/DWG files and can write DXF/PDF/SVG files. It supports point/line/circle/ellipse/parabola/spline primitives. The user interface is highly customizable, and has dozens of translations.
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Project mention: Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison | news.ycombinator.com | 2025-03-31
I'm a hater of complexity and build systems in general. Following the instructions for building solvespace on Linux worked for me out of the box with zero issues and is not difficult. Just copy some commands:
https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace?tab=readme-ov-file#...
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kicad-source-mirror
This is an active mirror of the KiCad development branch, which is hosted at GitLab (updated every time something is pushed). Pull requests on GitHub are not accepted or watched.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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> Can anyone explain where this blob of "assembly language" comes from?
Assembly language is definitely the right analogy: it's a low-level target generated by higher-level tools. In this case, the expression came from a Python script calling this text(...) function:
https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony/blob/f6a56dd7/py/fab/sha...
The font is hand-built from geometric primitives (rectangles, circles, etc) and CSG operations (union, intersection, difference)
> What is considered an acceptable preprocessing or transformation?
I'm looking for interesting ideas, and to mine the depths of PLs / compiler / interpreter / runtime research. Just returning a fixed image isn't particularly interesting, but (for example) I just updated the site with a compile-to-CUDA example that shows off the brute force power of a modern GPU.
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qcad
QCAD - The Open Source 2D CAD. QCAD is a cross-platform CAD solution for Windows, macOS and Linux. It supports the DXF format and optionally the DWG format (through a proprietary plugin).
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OCCT
Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) is an open-source software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE.
Project mention: OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-14OpenSCAD has been great for simple projects. It’s very easy to get productive with if you know basic programming concepts. However, I’ve run into frustrating limitations on more complex projects. The core geometry engine is skittish.
I still use OpenSCAD, but I’m diving into the OCCT ecosystem. It has a steeper learning curve, but seems to be significantly more robust.
https://dev.opencascade.org/
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Libfive is the closest successor. Blender also starts to support implicit modeling. https://libfive.com/
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Project mention: The first release candidate of FreeCAD 1.0 is out | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-09-11
I still recommend RealThunder's fork (https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD/) at the moment, even though his fork is a bit lagging at the moment.
Most of his contributions to the topology fixes got merged back into freecad now, but his enhancements to UI/behavior aren't (yet), and they make a night and day compared to ondsel too.
I didn't find any significant limitation to RealThunder's assembly3.
In any case, while far from most commercial offerings, FreeCAD is progressing and the future looks bright. I've stopped using f360/onshape in the last years for my hobby designs. Once you know the specific limitations of freecad+occt (something you learn in each cad program) and how to work them around effectively, it's already pretty powerful.
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LibreCAD_3
LibreCAD 3 is a next generation 2D CAD application written to be modular, with a core independent from GUI toolkits. Scripting is possible with Lua.
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Ventilator
Fully-featured ICU ventilator design, optimized for manufacture using commonly available components and free to license. Repository tracks all mechanical, electrical and systems design, software, requirements and regulatory documentation. (by RespiraWorks)
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Project mention: Show HN: Mandala – Automatically save, query and version Python computations | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-07-11
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
C++ Cad discussion
C++ Cad related posts
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The Prospero Challenge
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Add a Workaround to Nahimic Crapware
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FreeCAD 1.0
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Useful things I've 3D printed
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FreeCAD 1.0.0 Released
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OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller
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The first release candidate of FreeCAD 1.0 is out
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A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
www.influxdata.com | 15 May 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source Cad projects in C++? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | FreeCAD | 24,607 |
| 2 | openscad | 7,820 |
| 3 | LibreCAD | 4,921 |
| 4 | solvespace | 3,435 |
| 5 | LibrePCB | 2,595 |
| 6 | leocad | 2,566 |
| 7 | kicad-source-mirror | 2,173 |
| 8 | antimony | 2,137 |
| 9 | mayo | 1,611 |
| 10 | qcad | 1,601 |
| 11 | OCCT | 1,547 |
| 12 | libfive | 1,501 |
| 13 | oce | 830 |
| 14 | FreeCAD | 828 |
| 15 | CavalierContours | 464 |
| 16 | LibreCAD_3 | 332 |
| 17 | lpub3d | 156 |
| 18 | Ventilator | 143 |
| 19 | VisualScriptCAD | 117 |
| 20 | OCP | 117 |
| 21 | sse | 15 |
| 22 | oc | 13 |
| 23 | ZEDD-VALORANT-SWORD-thingy | 0 |
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