In the May/June issues of a leading UK AEC publication, AEC Magazine there was a 16 page special section starting on page 67 all about IFC (sponsored by buildingSMART UK & Ireland). The whole section is all about something we value here at OSArch: OpenBIM, Open Standards & even a mention for the Open Source / Free Software Community. So why is OpenBIM & Open Standards important? ...
Since this is my first article, let me introduce myself and Blender 3D Architect. My name is Allan Brito, and I’ve been an architect working with Blender since version 2.35. When I started using Blender in 2005, it wasn’t something that many architects and designers were actively doing. FLOSS was appealing because it gave me control over my workflow, and I never stopped using Blender for all my projects. In 2008, I started sharing everything I had learned about Blender for architecture on Blender 3D Architect. ...
Please welcome the new release of FreeCAD, version 0.20! Installers and images available for Windows, MacOS and Linux on the FreeCAD website and on GitHub. https://www.youtube.com/embed/-Mqh4-irSO4 This version is pretty much a “stable version”, and a continuation of the work done on the 0.19 version. It is backwards-compatible with it, which means the files you produce with 0.20 are still openable with 0.19. ...
JJ_Nelson shares an initiative in open sourcing the architectural design process in his studio, Studio GIB. He is working on designing a table and open air workshop, with an open source design under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. ...
Topologic has a new milestone release! One of the biggest hurdles for testing and adopting Topologic has been its relative difficult installation. This was due to the particular method we used to create python bindings for the C++ code. To ease the installation process, we had to completely re-write the python bindings using pybind11. This was a laborious process, and bugs may still exist. However, this new release of Topologic can be installed for Blender with Sverchok just as any other add-on: You download the ZIP file (and you do NOT unzip it), you launch Blender (with Sverchok pre-installed), you go to Preferences -> Add-ons and you install the ZIP file as usual. This release of Topologic is compatible with both Windows and Linux and with python 3.7, 3.8, and 3.9. ...
OpenCAx is a group of open source projects that applied to participate in Google Summer of Code 2021 (GSoC). Led by BRL-CAD, this group includes FreeCAD, IfcOpenShell and OpenSCAD. The application was successful, and this program will enable students to work in AEC open source projects. ...
The Epic MegaGrants programme is a financial grant to support projects doing amazing things with the Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community. We are incredibly honoured to present that the BlenderBIM Add-on has been awarded an Epic MegaGrant. ...
One of the most expected releases is finally here. FreeCAD 0.19 has been released with a lot of improvements and new features in all workbenches. The list is long, so let’s go. First, some general highlights. There area a few UI improvements such as the inclusion of more dark themes, new icon themes and few retouches in the navigation cube. Furthermore, an option was added to display a checkbox for every item in the document tree, so it’s easier to use with a touchscreen. ...
In the last February 6th and 7th, took place the FOSDEM 2021, an event organized to promote the use of free and open source software. Usually based in Brussels, the event happened online this year due to the pandemic. FOSDEM features a wide range of subjects and one of the Devrooms was about Computer Aided Modeling and Design, which held some interesting talks that gave us the state of the art of FOSS development for the AEC industry. ...
LibreDWG 0.12 is released. LibreDWG is a free C library to handle DWG files, the native file format from AutoCAD. This library aims to create an API to support softwares to work with DWG. It is currently in the beta stage, so it doesn’t have all the features implemented. However, it already handles reading, converting and writing files from scratch. It also features “SVG and Postscript conversion, converters from and to DXF and JSON, dwggrep to search for text, and dwglayer to print the list of layers.” ...