FreeCAD was released back in 2002, and although still in beta testing, its development has progressed considerably. It is designed to make the process of creating 3D versions of real objects as efficient and simple as possible.
A very useful feature is the ability to start with a static 2D sketch, from which you can then build the final 3D model. FreeCAD works well on Windows and Mac, and you can easily export the model as STL, OBJ or even DXF files, for example for CNC.
Although FreeCAD was developed primarily for machine tools, it can be used for 3D printing as well. Moreover, FreeCAD is an open source program, so you can work with Python.
FreeCAD is ideal for users with some design experience, as some of the tools can be difficult for beginners. But overall, it is a very powerful free 3D modeling tool.
For ease of drawing in FreeCAD there is the possibility to write scripts in python, and for minor operations you can use the python console. The console, however, is elementary: it has no command history.
Before each start FreeCAD looks through the contents of the system directories, as well as the ~/.FreeCAD/Mod/ directory. The scripts located there will be used in the future.
Scripts in FreeCAD fall into two categories: scripts called from the command line (to run them, you must first load the python import command containing their module), and scripts run from the GUI. You can always reload the former with the reload command, but to reload the latter (if you have made any changes to the source code), you will need to restart FreeCAD. Let’s first consider working with the first ones.
