FreeCAD — Parametric 3D CAD Fundamentals
Curated: learn parametric 3D CAD in FreeCAD — the leading free, open-source CAD — from the community's most-recommended free beginner course, then prove your understanding in a short technical viva with a senior engineer and get certified. A fundamentals entry point of the CAD & Mechanical track.
Basic Beginners FreeCAD v1 Course
MangoJelly Solutions · video · ~8h · Free · English
Why we picked it: MangoJelly Solutions is the community's default recommendation for learning FreeCAD, and this is their up-to-date beginners course for FreeCAD 1.x — the current, redesigned release. It is a project-based series that models real objects in the Part Design workbench, so a beginner learns the exact loop we care about: sketch on a plane, fully constrain it, pad/pocket it into a solid, and build the part up as an editable tree of features. Because FreeCAD is free and open-source, a learner can install the same software and model along at zero cost, which fits our 'curate the best free course + our own assessment' model perfectly.
- the FreeCAD 1.x interface, documents, and the Part Design workbench
- creating a Body and building a solid from features (Pad, Pocket, revolve)
- 2D sketching and reaching a fully-constrained sketch
- geometric and dimensional constraints to capture design intent
- the parametric model tree: editing sketches/features and recomputing
- modelling real parts and exporting for 3D printing
Study guide
Open the study guide →1 study section · what to focus on + prove it in Forge, then take the check.