However, you can skip this step when starting out on a freshly installed Raspbian without any special settings. If necessary, you should make an image of the current installation. The Raspberry Pi Foundation recommends securing the current system on the Rasp Pi before installing the OpenGL drivers since these are still experimental.

To perform your own tests, you should therefore bring the system installed on your Rasp Pi up to date and then reboot: $ sudo apt-get update However, the OpenGL support recently introduced in Raspbian lets FreeCAD work sufficiently fast to complete smaller projects on the Rasp Pi. Putting a CAD program on the Rasp Pi might seem like a futile endeavor because of the unexciting computing power of the Raspberry Pi CPU and GPU. If you don't have a standard-sized computer, you can perform CAD tasks by equipping the Raspberry Pi with FreeCAD. The documentation is very detailed, and it comes with illustrations, so after about 15 minutes, you should be able to complete your first project from a simple metal plate ( Figure 1).įigure 1: Starting out in FreeCAD with a small metal plate. A number of video tutorials on YouTube can help you familiarize yourself with FreeCAD, and the FreeCAD website directs you to a number of offsite tutorial providers. This program runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and a portable release even works on a Windows system with restricted rights. When it came time to test FreeCAD, things clicked right away. During the course of my research, I tested a number of CAD applications on various systems, including AutoSketch, Blender, 3DScratch, Tinkercad, and others however, I couldn't get excited about any of these programs. For the practice test described in this article, I developed a case for the Raspberry Pi with a display, and I had a 3D printing provider print the design.īefore embarking on the test, I had professional experience with 2D CAD programs and only rudimentary exposure to 3D CAD, dating back to my days as a mechanical engineering student in the early 1990s.

In today's world, a Raspberry Pi and the open source software FreeCAD are all you need. In the not-too-distant past, 3D modeling applications required powerful workstations and expensive programs. To model and produce 3D objects, you need a 3D printer and, most importantly, a 3D CAD (computer-aided design) program, which lets you construct an object down to the last detail.

Freecad print