freecad-ai
FreeCAD workbench with a chat interface that builds and edits 3D models from natural language through 50 structured tools and 24 LLM providers.
Summary rewritten from the vendor site because the catalog version did not match it.
What it does and how it connects
FreeCAD AI is an AI-powered assistant workbench for FreeCAD that generates and executes Python code to create 3D models from natural language descriptions. The README marks it alpha software and warns to expect rough edges, breaking changes, and the occasional FreeCAD crash from LLM-generated code.
Its chat interface runs in Plan mode, where code is reviewed before execution, or Act mode, where 50 structured FreeCAD operations run with tool calling. It supports 24 LLM providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama, Gemini, OpenRouter, and DeepSeek, plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with skills, hooks, vision routing, file attachments, session resume, and error self-correction with up to 3 retries.
Context awareness includes document state in prompts, and fallback profiles retry a turn on each listed provider when the first cannot be reached. The latest release is v0.33.0-alpha from October 2026.
What engineers report
On Windows every headless child process opens an empty console window, and it stays open for the life of the child.
2026-10-10Read the original
Alternatives
Compare side by side- Journeyman
A FreeCAD workbench where a provider-agnostic LLM inspects the active document and proposes FreeCAD Python for review.
- FreeGAD
A FreeCAD workbench where an AI agent reads the model and applies confirmed edits as single undo transactions.
- CADialogue
The official research implementation of a multimodal conversational assistant that creates and refines parametric FreeCAD models from text, speech, and image input.
- text-to-cad (CAD Skills)
An agent skills framework that gives AI coding agents parametric CAD superpowers through the build123d Python library.
- fusion360-mcp-server
An MCP server that connects AI coding agents to Fusion 360 through an in-Fusion add-in bridge.
Recurring errors it addresses
Error Index entries this tool is built to reduce or work around.
- When an agent fans out parallel create calls through the FreeCAD MCP bridge, the shared connection races: the first object is created even though its call reports failure, and the second object is silently never created with the status still showing healthy.Error Index
- A FreeCAD MCP bridge silently ignored parameters the client materialized from JSON-Schema defaults, so box(size=20) produced a default 10mm shape. The agent believes it built the requested geometry while the model is something else entirely.Error Index
- A FreeCAD MCP bridge's autosave-before-call rewrote the active document on every tool call even with zero unsaved changes, stamping phantom diffs onto git-tracked CAD files. Agent activity pollutes version control with edits no human authored.Error Index
- A CAD agent bridge's screenshot tool refused any image over a 50KB socket frame, so every real model screenshot was dropped, and images that did fit arrived as base64 text inside JSON instead of real image blocks. The agent's only visual feedback channel was dead for production-scale models.Error Index
- A FreeCAD user reports fillet/bevel as big weaknesses of FreeCAD and shows a fillet that breaks in FreeCAD and in the FreeCAD-Nxt add-on meant to fix it.Error Index
Sources
Not verified
- Pricing: none stated on the repo.
- Real user voices (recent repo activity is mostly provider-preset pull requests; the one user report found, issue 124, is quoted as a voice).
- A named individual builder beyond the repository owner handle ghbalf
Last verified November 6, 2026. Listings are informational. The evidence score measures public, verifiable evidence and is not an endorsement or a compatibility claim.