What Open-Source CAD Software Can Achieve in Mechanical Engineering

Design Managers' Forum 2025 What Open-Source CAD Software Can Achieve in Mechanical Engineering

2025-10-03 From Monika Zwettler | Translated by AI 3 min Reading Time

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FreeCAD is an open-source software that began as a public project in 2002. Since then, FreeCAD has evolved from an experiment into a professional 3D CAD software. Participants at the Design Managers' Forum 2025 can learn how it can enhance efficiency in product development in mechanical engineering.

Open-source software offers cost efficiency, flexibility, security, and independence through transparent source code and strong community support.(Image: © Igor Tichonow - stock.adobe.com / AI-generated) — Open-source software offers cost efficiency, flexibility, security, and independence through transparent source code and strong community support.
(Image: © Igor Tichonow - stock.adobe.com / AI-generated)

Open-source software offers a variety of advantages, making it an attractive option for various user groups. One of these is, of course, cost savings, as there are no licensing fees. Additionally, the open source code provides flexibility and customizability, allowing users to tailor the software to their specific needs and extend it as desired. Another important aspect is independence from individual vendors.

Strong community support is another advantage, as a large developer community ensures quick support, regular updates, and continuous development. Finally, the collaborative nature of open source fosters innovation: through collaboration and the open exchange of ideas and solutions, new features can be developed quickly while sharing development efforts.

Free And Publicly Available

The advantages of open-source software for the product development process in mechanical engineering are demonstrated by Aleksander Sadowski, owner of Alsado, at the Design Managers' Forum 2025 using the example of FreeCAD software.

FreeCAD is freely and publicly available along with its source code. This allows it to be easily extended using Python code to create custom design tools for internal company processes. Users can also access a virtually endless collection of extensions developed by independent experts, which can be installed for free via the integrated Add-on Manager.

Aleksander Sadowski is the owner of the company Alsado.(Image: Alsado) — Aleksander Sadowski is the owner of the company Alsado.
(Image: Alsado)

Mr. Sadowski, why is the topic of your presentation relevant for designers and developers?

Open-source software has been an integral part of software development for many years. However, in product development, especially in mechanical engineering, it is not yet used as frequently. As a result, valuable potential for developing innovative products is being lost.

For this reason, I demonstrate how open-source software can be effectively used in the product development process, with a focus on mechanical engineering in Germany. This provides designers and design managers with a quick overview of the use of open-source software. The presented product development process was developed and adapted based on the VDI 2222 guideline. The product development process using open-source software has not only been partially implemented for customers but has also been fully applied and optimized internally on an own product—a newly invented security screw.

What are the key aspects of the presentation?

The presentation first demonstrates a general product development process in mechanical engineering and contrasts it with the concrete implementation using open-source software. The software used and the data created in the process are shown as a chain. It is important to note that the presented process can be immediately implemented in companies and that the open-source software used is already available.

CAD software is central to designers in the product development process. Therefore, in the presentation, I focus on the open-source CAD software FreeCAD. Specifically, I also demonstrate how FreeCAD can be used in combination with a versioning solution that is also open-source and free. With versioning, CAD files can be centrally stored, team roles can be assigned, and the history of CAD files can be tracked. An open-source CAD software combined with versioning can also be integrated into small companies without programming knowledge.

The presented process can be immediately implemented in companies, and the utilized open-source software is available now.

What do participants learn from your presentation?

Participants will learn through the presentation the advantages of using open-source software in mechanical engineering and how they can implement the product development process using open-source software in their own companies. They will learn through concrete examples how open-source software is applied. Participants will learn how to create a requirements list so that all team members work towards the same goal, conduct and document a patent search for public domain inventions for their own product, assemble and evaluate a concept of the product from public domain technologies using a morphological box, document a risk assessment of the product concept to ensure it meets minimum safety requirements, create preliminary and detailed designs with CAD files and spreadsheets, test component geometries using FEM simulation, and finally integrate everything into an IT infrastructure so that file versions can be tracked and all project members can collaborate seamlessly.

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Date: 08.12.2025

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With the presentation, I am also making the file templates from the product development process publicly available for the first time. This makes it even easier to implement the product development process using open-source software in your own company.