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. ...
Bonsai v0.8.5 has been released with 962 new features and fixes. The release is described as a “line in the sand”: a compatibility and consolidation checkpoint driven partly by Blender 5.1 support, the move to Python 3.13, and a lot of structural work preparing for larger changes ahead. ...
FreeCAD 1.1.1 has been released shortly after version 1.1.0. The FreeCAD announcement describes it as a maintenance release with a large number of small fixes, with the full release notes and changelog available from the GitHub release page. ...
That Open Platform’s Release 3.4.0, presented in the “Native 2D Drawings for BIM” event, targeted one of the harder gaps in web-based BIM: producing real technical documentation from models. The release introduced a 2D drawing system built on Fragments and That Open Engine, designed to generate plans, sections, elevations, annotations, and exports directly in the browser. ...
FreeCAD 1.1 has been released, bringing another substantial update after the 1.0 milestone. The release includes transparent Part Design previews, interactive draggers for tools such as Fillet and Chamfer, 3 point lighting, a Clarify Selection tool, Assembly and FEM improvements, animations, and a new CAM tool library system. ...