Work is underway on Bonsai Viewer, a dedicated free software IFC viewer for model coordination and review. The gap is straightforward: there is no mature free software equivalent of Revizto, BIMcollab, Solibri, and similar coordination viewers. Bonsai Viewer aims to fill that gap, while also making it easier for others to build their own desktop, tablet, kiosk, on-site screen, or web-based IFC viewer applications on top of IfcOpenShell. ...
Speckle has launched Design Explorer beta, a new widget for Speckle Intelligence dashboards that turns Grasshopper option studies into browsable and shareable comparison views. The workflow is deliberately lightweight: tag option objects in Grasshopper, attach the relevant numeric properties, publish the model to Speckle, and the dashboard discovers the options and metrics automatically. ...
Yorik van Havre has announced LinesCAD, a new side project exploring a simpler free software BIM and 2D CAD application. The first public code is a proof-of-concept IFC viewer in a single Python file, using IfcOpenShell, Pivy/Coin3D, and PySide/Qt to open IFC files without FreeCAD’s OpenCASCADE and C++ application stack. ...
Speckle has introduced a new release centred on a signals-first web interface and Model Validation beta. The updated interface surfaces more workspace, project, model, issue, and integration context up front, reducing the amount of manual digging needed to understand what is happening across a project or portfolio. ...
Open PDF Studio is a new free software PDF editor and annotator from the OpenAEC Foundation. Licensed under the LGPL-3.0, it targets Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and is built with Tauri 2, SolidJS, PDF.js, and pdf-lib. The project describes itself as a lightweight native app without subscriptions, telemetry, or bloatware. ...
FreeCAD and BRL-CAD are both participating in Google Summer of Code 2026. GSoC remains one of the more practical ways for new contributors to enter established free software projects: applicants work with mentors on scoped development projects, while the host communities get focused time on features, refactoring, documentation, testing, and tooling that can otherwise be hard to fund. ...
The FreeCAD Project Association has opened applications for its Q2 2026 grant program. The 2026 program uses a smaller quarterly budget of 10,000 EUR, limits developers to one grant application per quarter, and is focusing more strongly on documentation, testing, release-cycle improvements, bug fixing, and permanent positions. ...
Louis Trümpler announced that point clouds are coming to IFClite as part of the same browser-native openBIM workflow, rather than as a separate viewer or visual overlay. The first pass includes LAS / LAZ streaming, E57 / PLY / PCD readers, Web Worker decoding, WebGPU point rendering, colour modes for RGB, classification, intensity, height, and fixed colour, plus federation-aware point picking. ...
The FreeCAD Project Association has launched its first community design contest, partnering with UK open science hardware company Labcrafter. The contest asks participants to design an open hardware pinch valve, with the full brief and entry process hosted on the FreeCAD forum. ...
Suffolk Technologies has announced an investment in Speckle, following Suffolk Construction’s enterprise-wide deployment of the platform as part of its data strategy. Speckle says the partnership supports the shift from siloed BIM files toward normalized, queryable design data that can feed data lakes, AI workflows, cost coding, change tracking, and cross-project intelligence. ...