FreeCAD for Mac

What's new in this version:

General:
- Improved Wayland support

User Interface:
- Three-point lighting was added to improve the rendering of 3D models
- Search bar was added to the Preferences Editor
- A new Theme Editor and theme token system were implemented to allow better customization of stylesheets
- A consolidated and improved Add Property dialog that supports expressions, enums, and units. An improved Expression Editor with better tab completion, resizing behavior, and VarSet input.

Further user interface improvements:
- A default shortcut for Std DlgPreferences has been added
- The Notification area preferences page was improved
- Auto save and additive selection features were added to the Measure tool
- A ToggleTransparency fine-tuning parameter was added to allow users to change the default transparency level enabled by the Toggle transparency tool
- A Show Plane view property was added to display the plane on which a 2D object is based
- It is now possible to change the color of the coordinate system axes using the new preferences under Edit → Preferences → Display → 3D View
- A Show Placement view property was added to display the placement as a coordinate system at the origin of an object
- The SolidWorks navigation style was added
- Navigation Cube animations accumulate the rotation depending on how often you click the flat buttons
- New orbit styles Trackball Classic and Rounded Arcball have been added. Rounded Arcball is now the default, offering pure roll camera rotation when the cursor is near the screen edges
- Support for hints in the status bar was added
- All boolean properties in the property view now use a checkbox instead of a true/false drop-down list
- The Siemens NX navigation style was added
- If there is an active object in the tree, Group will be added to it upon creation
- The Align to Selection command uses smaller rotations
- The Align to Selection command uses the longest edge in a face to align horizontally or vertically
- The Align to Selection command now also aligns the camera view to selected planar curves and non-planar faces
- All MDI windows (including e.g. Spreadsheet and TechDraw) can now be undocked and set to fullscreen using shortcuts (V, U or F11) or View → Document window menu option
- The default list of workbenches is now shorter as rarely used workbenches are deactivated by default. This includes the Inspection, <none>, OpenSCAD, Robot and Test Framework workbenches
- Status bar hints were added for Draft Creation tools.

Further Draft improvements:
- The Draft Fillet command now works on selected edges, instead of the first edge of selected objects
- The Draft AutoGroup and the Draft AddToGroup commands have been improved. The menus of both commands are sorted alphabetically. In the menu of the Draft AutoGroup command layers are separated from groups, and the New layer option prompts for a name and activates the layer. The actions of both commands have been made undoable
- The position of the Scale multiplier field in the UI was improved (Draft SetStyle, Draft AnnotationStyleEditor and Draft Preferences)
- The Draft Draft2Sketch command now also applies coincident constraints between edges from different source objects
- The radius, and chamfer and delete modes of the Draft Fillet command are stored
- An edit option has been added for Draft Clones. After double-clicking them in the Tree view their scaling can be modified in a task panel
- A planar face and an edge can now be selected for the Draft SelectPlane command
- For clarity the Filled checkbox in the task panel of for example Draft Wire has been relabeled to Make face
- The texts of newly created dimensions are now oriented automatically relative to the current working plane. A fine-tuning parameter is available to disable this behavior
- Near snap no longer overrides other snaps. On-object snaps, such as Midpoint snap and Endpoint snap, within snapRange of the cursor are now detected
- In the Draft Preferences a dropdown to select the font name for texts, dimensions and labels has been introduced. Previously the name had to be entered manually
- The Continue option is now stored separately for each Draft and BIM command. For the Draft Dimension command the old Continue option has been re-labeled to Chained mode for clarity, and a new Continue option has been added
- The Draft ShapeString command has seen several improvements. The font file is no longer a preference, instead the last selected file is stored. For the initial value of the font file an attempt is made to get a suitable file from the OS. This is primarily to help users who are not aware of font file locations. The last entered text and height are also stored. A Global option has been added to task panel. By unchecking that checkbox, coordinates can be specified in the working plane coordinate system. Finally, TrueType Collection font files (.ttc) can now also be selected, but only the first font in such a file can be used
- The base object for a Draft Wire, Draft BSpline and Draft BezCurve has been changed to the 
rt::FeaturePython object
- Intersection snap now also detects intersections between faces and edges
- The Working plane orientation option has been removed from the Draft Scale command as it did not work properly

FEM Workbench:
- A popup menu was added to enable the selection of a proper solid if the selected face of CompSolid belongs to two solids. This makes it easier to select inner solids e.g. to apply materials to them.
- ZRefine property was added to Netgen making it possible to create simple extruded hex-dominated meshes when Quad Dominated property is enabled. However, it works only for first order elements unless the generated elements are all hexahedrons.
- FEM results objects now support animations of results.
- Support for Elmer's static current conduction solver was added. Joule heating may also be calculated with it.
- Electric charge density load was added for use with Elmer's Electrostatic equation.
- The Results pipeline can now store results from multiple frames.
- Calculator filter was added to allow the creation of custom fields by defining mathematical expression operating on the existing fields.
- Glyph filter was added along with a framework making it possible to develop more Python VTK filters.
- Electrostatic analyses (also 2D ones) are now supported with the newly refactored CalculiX solver object.
- Data extraction toolset was added to result pipelines.
- Pressure and heat flux loads as well as tie constraint and contact can now be applied to edges in 2D analyses with CalculiX. Similarly, body heat source and centrifugal force loads can be applied to faces of 2D models.

Further FEM improvements:
- Log verbosity and number of threads used for meshing can now be set for Gmsh and Netgen in the Preferences
- The DataSecond Order Linear property and support for local refinement, previously only available for Gmsh, are now also available for the new Netgen implementation
- Box and elliptical beam section types were added to FEM ElementGeometry1D
- The Purge results tool now deletes all the results objects, not just the ones native to CalculiX
- Tie constraint can now be applied also to shell faces
- Output format (binary or ASCII) and saving of geometry IDs can now be set for Elmer, also in Preferences
- A smoothing option was added to the Contours filter
- The BucklingAccuracy parameter was added to CalculiX solver - it might be necessary to capture the first eigenvalue in some linear buckling analyses
- Now all FEM objects for which suppressing makes sense can be suppressed. Previously only constraints were suppressible
- Contact forces are now printed to ccx_dat_file in CalculiX analyses
- The MaterialReinforced tool now uses the new material editor
- The Electrostatic potential boundary condition was extended to also support Neumann-type boundary condition and prescribe electric flux density. It now has a symbol too
- Thermal expansion reference temperature can now be defined for solid material in thermomechanical analyses with CalculiX
- The Fem.frdToVTK Python function was added allowing conversion of CalculiX's frd results files to VTK format used by ParaView
- The Current density boundary condition was improved. It now has two modes (Custom and Normal) and a symbol for the Normal mode
- Two new FEM examples were added - one for the newly implemented Static current equation (Joule heating) and one for Rigid body constraint
- The Heat flux load task panel was improved - radio buttons used to choose the heat flux type were replaced with a combo box
- The Magnetization boundary condition task panel was improved
- Selection mode was added to Geometry reference selector in the task panels of Elmer equations
- The renameArrays Python function was added to rename selected results pipeline fields
- A CalculiX-related preference named Result object was added. If its checkbox Pipeline only is enabled, a newly refactored CalculiX solver object is added to the Analysis container when using the Solver CalculiX option. It has an updated task panel, doesn't generate CCX_Results objects (only the results pipeline object is created) and will be further developed
- The Offset property was added to Shell Plate Thickness, making it possible to offset the expanded shell from the actual mesh
- Support for thermal contact with CalculiX was added via Enable Thermal Contact and Thermal Contact Conductance properties used to specify gap conductance
- Support for hard and tied contact with CalculiX was added
- Support for cavity radiation with CalculiX was added
- Support for amplitudes (time variation) for most mechanical and thermal boundary conditions and 
ads with CalculiX was added. There are new properties: Enable Amplitude and Amplitude Values
- Initial temperature can now be applied to a selected region (via the References property) in CalculiX analyses
- The Glue property was added to the Netgen mesher. When enabled, a continuous mesh is created (this property is equivalent to Gmsh's Coherence Mesh)
- Default Priority of Elmer equations now starts with 255 and decreases with each added equation. This way, the equations are solved in the order they were added to the tree
- CalculiX's membrane and truss elements are now supported and replace shell and beam elements respectively when the new ExcludeBendingStiffness property of the CalculiX solver is enabled
- Displacements of rigid body reference point are now printed to ccx_dat_file
- Initial temperature can now be also used to prescribe temperature field in a static analysis step (with optional amplitude)
- Netgen can now be installed in the standard way mentioned on its download page and it is only necessary to point FreeCAD to the proper Python executable in the preferences (by default the Python executable specified in general Python preferences is used)
- Some preferences related to mesh export now have better defaults. Namely, groups of nodes are enabled for the Gmsh mesher and export to INP files includes FEM elements only and groups by default
- Properties of the CalculiX solver are now grouped and time incrementation properties are more user-friendly (improved names, better defaults, easy switch between automatic and direct incrementation as well as no need to enable additional property to set non-default incrementation)
- There is a new Pastix Mixed Precision property of the CalculiX solver. It's disabled by default so that mixed precision is not used for the PaStiX matrix solver to avoid issues with incorrect results of some analyses
- The Elmer solver's object and task panel were reworked similar to what was done before for CalculiX. It now works with the new implementation of Netgen. Moreover, ParaView PVD files can now be imported
- Three new FEM examples were added - one for the newly implemented electrostatics with the refactored CalculiX solver, one for the newly implemented pressure loads on edges of 2D models and one for the cyclic symmetry introduced in FreeCAD 1.0

Material Workbench:
- Materials can now be stored in external datastores. This feature is experimental and has to be activated explicitly when compiling the source code. It is not available in the standard FreeCAD builds

Further Material improvements:
Several new materials with physical properties were added to the material database:
- Polycarbonate
- PMMA
- Homopolymer and copolymer POM
- PEEK
- Aluminum 7075-T6
- Updated Aluminum 6061-T6

Part Workbench:
Further Part improvements:
- The Set Tolerance tool was added to allow the creation of parametric copies of the selected objects with all contained tolerances set to at least a certain minimum value. Moreover, the Check geometry tool now includes output about tolerances in the Shape Content tab
- The Check geometry tool now also has results entries for valid shapes, shows skipped objects and generates reports in the report view
- Loft and Sweep now create solids by default
- The redundant Part Import and Part Export tools were removed from the menu

Part Design Workbench:
- The task panel of the Hole tool was redesigned. The elements that are not relevant are now hidden, leaving only those useful for the current configuration, even if they are read-only. The panel is based on a diagram that provides direct context, and its elements have been placed near their area of effect.

Added model taper support and more thread profiles to the Hole tool:
- British Standard Whitworth
- British Standard Fine
- British Standard Pipe
- National Pipe Threads
- Transparent previews were added for Part Design additive and subtractive features. They can be disabled temporarily using task panel checkboxes or by default in the Preferences. There is also an optional highlight of the sketch used as a profile for Part Design operation.
- Interactive control draggers were added to Part Design features as a Google Summer of Code project. These allow to manipulate the values of the features by dragging in the 3D view.

Further Part Design improvements:
- The origin feature in a Part Design body makes use of the new core datums. The appearance has been changed and the planes enlarge when creating a new sketch. As the orientation was wrong in older FreeCAD versions, files created with these versions need to be converted on opening. It can break files which reference the datums, and converted or new files created with 1.1 and above will be broken in 1.0 and below
- The Toggle freeze command is now available from Part Design
- The performance of modeled threads from the Hole tool has been improved
- The initial angle for tapered threads in the Hole tool is now automatically set to the value from the ISO 7-1 and ASME B1.20.1 standards
- The Hole tool can now create holes based on sketch points and arcs in addition to circles
- SwitchToTask, formerly a fine-tuning parameter, can now be accessed from the Preferences Editor. It can be used to enable and disable automatic switching to the task panel when the Part Design Workbench is activated
- The Pad task panel was improved to have more options for Two sided mode
- The preference to allow compounds (multiple solids) for Bodies is now enabled by default and not treated as an experimental feature anymore
- Transform tools can now use different spacing
- Projection tool was added making it possible to create defining external geometry and toggle between defining and construction modes for external geometry.
- Intersection tool was added making it possible to create external geometry based on the selected reference geometry and the intersection of the sketch plane.
- External geometry (both projection and intersection) can now be created by selecting a face.
- The Make Internals property of sketches is now fully functional. If enabled, it displays faces for closed contours and makes it possible to select them for Part Design operations. The setting is still experimental but allows for a Master Sketch workflow in Part Design.

Further Sketcher improvements:
- It is now possible to directly use external geometry as input for tools like offset or transform (array), for both external construction and defining geometry
- External geometry (projected or intersecting) is now by default real (defining) geometry (which does not need to be traced as in 1.0 and prior). It can be toggled to construction geometry as any other geometry
- The Sketcher axes are now displayed with infinite length
- Sketches are now ordered alphabetically in the Attach sketch dialog
- Group dragging was added, making it possible to drag all the selected geometrical entities
- There is a new preference that, if checked, makes external geometry creation independent of the current construction mode - it is always created as reference geometry in such a case
- A preference was added to allow optional grouping of the Line and Polyline tools
- When selecting a constraint or a geometry element within the sketch, the corresponding Tasks panel list is now automatically scrolled to that object
- Status bar hints were added for Sketcher geometry creation, constraint, edit and transform tools
- Sketches are now automatically scaled after entering the first dimension to avoid breaking the shape when the first dimension is much larger/smaller than the current size of the geometry
- When creating geometry the mouse movement is ignored if a value is entered in the on-view-parameters (OVP). Tab cycles between OVP input boxes and Enter now confirms. Deleting the value of an OVP input box enables mouse movement for the dimension again
- Rendering of geometry lines is now prioritized over constraints so that dimensions lines don't cover the geometry
- Now all parts of dimension constraints can be selected, not only labels
- It is now possible to use the Ctrl+A shortcut (or Select All option in the Edit menu) to select all geometries within the sketch
- Box selection from left to right now uses another color than from right to left to indicate different behavior
- There is a new preference for constraint symbol size

Spreadsheet Workbench:
- Default shortcuts for Bold text, Italic text and Underline text have been added
- Double-clicking on the separator in the header now resizes the column to content
- Zoom was added to Spreadsheet
- Icons were added to context menu entries

Surface Workbench:
- A task panel was added for the Blend Curve tool

TechDraw Workbench:
- The Insert Area Annotation tool now properly accounts for holes in faces
- Shape validation is now available and can be enabled in Preferences
- Scaling of SVG symbols has been fixed
- New r format specifier was added. It rounds the dimension value to the step specified as decimal before r. For example, %0.5r (or just %.5r) rounds to 0.5
- Snapping of detail view highlights to the closest vertex in the TaskDialog drag highlight process was added
- Instead of toggling view frames, they are now shown and hidden automatically when hovering the cursor over the view
- The cosmetic circle commands were renamed and grouped for clarity
- The deprecated LandmarkDimension and LinkDimension tools were removed
- Number of decimals and reference dimension options were added to the dimension task panel

Import and Export:
- The DXF importer was significantly redesigned at the implementation and user level for a more predictable and consistent user experience
- The DXF importer gained improved support for BLOCK and INSERT DXF entities
- The DXF importer now reports import stats after an import
- The alignment of sketches in SVG export and legacy DXF export has been fixed

API:
New Python API:
- A new FreeCAD.ApplicationDirectories static class is available providing features related to the new versioned directory structure.

Start:
- The Start page can now display the contents of additional folders specified by the user. Their paths should be separated by double semicolons (;;)
- The Examples section on the Start page can be hidden with a setting in the preferences
- Previews (thumbnails) for more 3D model formats (such as STEP and STL) are now displayed in the Recent Files and Examples sections of the Start page if F3D viewer is installed and added to system PATH

Addon Manager:
- The Python dependency updater now works correctly if FreeCAD is installed as a snap package or as an AppImage
- The installation path of Python modules in the dependency updater is now shown as an absolute path for better readability. It is also shown correctly according to the FreeCAD installation method
- The Addon Manager is itself an addon, and can be updated by navigating to its page in the Addon Manager's addons list.
- Addons can now explicitly declare their support for particular FreeCAD versions, and multiple versions and branches are supported for each.
- Python dependencies now use a pip-constraints file to ensure conflict-free installation.

Assembly Workbench:
- The Insert a new part tool was added making it possible to easily add new parts to assembly
- The Create Simulation tool was added making it possible to add motions to joints and create animations
- The Bill Of Materials (BOM) command can now output the values of given properties

Further Assembly improvements:
- The new core datums can be used for attaching joints to assemble multiple parts

BIM Workbench:
- Interactive sun position and ray visualization were added to Arch Site. The pysolar or ladybug Python module is required.

Further BIM improvements:
- The Views panel got an overhaul and now has a section for all 2D views
- The Views panel got an activate and deactivate functionality for objects in the spatial decomposition section
- NativeIFC support for 2D objects was added to BIM, allowing to embed 2D objects (linework, texts, dimensions) inside IFC files, as well as opening such files from other BIM apps
- The Schedule dialog gained support for simple arrays (e.g. non-nested). This enables regular and link arrays (both either expanded or not expanded) to be processed for further calculations in the BIM Schedule report
- The Continue option is now stored separately for each Draft and BIM command
- When adding BIM views to a TechDraw page, they now adhere to the page's scale, so that they have a sensible size
- The default zoom level for new BIM projects has been changed to be more adequate to the magnitudes used for architectural models
- When creating a new Level, selected objects in the tree view are now included in the level
- Spaces can now be created from a single object (e.g. the interior faces of a wall based on a rectangle base)
- FreeCAD standard groups can now be ignored when a model is exported to IFC. This is controlled by a preference and is the new default
- An option to preload all IfcTypes during IFC file import/open process has been added
- The Section Plane command received numerous fixes and usability improvements. Most notably the issue whereby rotating the section plane flipped the cut direction was fixed, and the ability to toggle the CutView from the Task panel was added
- Double clicking on a BIM object that supports editing should open its task panel, instead of editing its label
- The Remove command can now remove windows and doors from walls
- When creating a custom window, the window's frame depth and related properties are described unambiguously to the user
- When exporting models that contain a roof, that roof is no longer removed from the export
- Double-clicking a Level now activates it and its working plane by default
- The W, P shortcut was added to select the working plane
- Support for B-splines for structures, such as Slab, was added
- Upon Wall creation, the wall's DataOffset property can additionally be entered
- The 2D View creation commands are now grouped together for improved usability

CAM Workbench:
- CAM Tool Management was replaced with Better Tool Library integration introducing a new toolbit editor and selector.
- The Toolbit Library Editor was replaced and supports copy and paste as well as drag and drop features.

Further CAM improvements:
- The CAM Shape experimental tool was replaced by Path from Shape with Tool Controller which is a significantly improved version of that tool based on a macro
- Adaptive roughing/overhang detection was implemented including intelligent 2.5D projection of the model and stock for all adaptive operations, one-click "adaptive roughing" of the entire model, "Z stock to leave" setting to complement the "finishing stepdown" setting and a checkbox to order cuts by depth or region
- G84/G74 tapping operations were added experimentaly
- Multi-pass support was added for profile operations
- Support for Snapmaker, Masso and Ondsel SVG postprocessors was added
- The New CAM Simulator was improved, including two additional buttons to reset the camera and decrease the speed
- The Array operation is now considered deprecated as it's currently also implemented as a dressup
- Support for multi-pass profile operations was implemented
- The LeadInOut functionality was improved
- UI elements were added to allow viewing and editing tool controller parameters from within the operation's task panel

Draft Workbench:
- Objects with two arrows can now have different start and end arrows. The size of an object's start and end arrows can also be different
- The Draft Edit command can now also handle Draft Labels
- Support for relative file paths has been added to ShapeStrings and hatches
- The handling of Links in TechDraw DraftViews was fixed
- The extrude mode of the Draft Trimex command has been made link-aware. It can now handle faces belonging to Links and objects in linked containers. And the point that defines the extrusion can be co-planar with the face
- The Move, Rotate and Scale commands have been made link-aware as well
- If a Facebinder based on connected faces is extruded, an attempt is made to close its corners. The Sew property of the object must be set to true for this. Note that the code can fail for complex shapes
- Path arrays have been enhanced with several new properties. It is now possible to reverse the array, specify a fixed spacing unit, and use spacing patterns
- Objects in layers can now have overrrides
- The Draft AddToLayer command, to quickly put objects in the correct layer, has been added
- The TechDraw code that Draft Hatch relies on has been revised to also handle dashed lines in hatch patterns
- The Draft Downgrade and Draft Upgrade commands have been updated. Arrays can be downgraded (exploded), and new objects are put in the same container (Group, Part) as the original objects, and also receive the visual properties of the original objects
- The Draft Polygon command now shows a preview (tracker) of an actual polygon, instead of a circle
- An Align to face checkbox has been added to the task panel of the Draft Hatch command
- An in-command shortcut D to recenter the working plane during commands has been added
- To simplify user input for single axis arrays, a linear mode option has been added to the task panel of the Draft OrthoArray command