Collaborative development portal
Since its publication as an open-source 3D modeling kernel, Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) has become a backbone for numerous outstanding projects. We are excited to announce that the marketplace for OCCT-based projects is launched on OCCT Development Portal!
Having received numerous requests from the open-source community Open Cascade decided to publish free trainings to ease access to Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT). Free presentations available on the recently renewed Development Portal cover Preliminaries, Geometry, and Topology topics.
Preliminaries subject aims at general OCCT-related problems. It focuses on general tasks like getting OCCT, its structure, building from sources, etc. In addition to Open CASCADE Technology overview, the training provides several performance tips and describes Draw Application functionality.
Gmsh is a 3D finite element mesh generator with built-in pre- and post-processing facilities.
Its design goal is to provide a fast, light and user-friendly meshing tool with parametric input and advanced visualization capabilities. Gmsh is built around four modules: geometry, mesh, solver and post-processing. The specification of any input to these modules is done either interactively using the graphical user interface, in ASCII text files using Gmsh's own scripting language, or using the C++, C, Python or Julia Application Programming Interface (API).
FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size.
Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history and changing its parameters. FreeCAD allows you to sketch geometry constrained 2D shapes and use them as a base to build other objects, adjust dimensions or extract design details from 3D models to create high quality production ready drawings.
CAD Assistant is a freeware viewer and converter for 3D CAD and mesh files, developed by Open Cascade.
CAD Assistant is based on open source libraries (Open CASCADE Technology, Qt, FreeType, FreeImage, etc.) and employs open formats for CAD and mesh data (STEP, IFC, IGES, BREP, glTF, JT, PLY, STL, OBJ, 3DM). It also supports a set of other file formats like DXF, SAT (ACIS), XT (Parasolid).
It is made to promote open technologies and brings the power of these technologies to the hands of engineers working with 3D data.
KiCad is an open-source software suite for Electronic Design Automation (EDA).
The programs handle Schematic Capture, and PCB Layout with Gerber output and viewing, SPICE Simulation and other electronics design utilities.
SALOME is an open-source software that provides a generic Pre- and Post-Processing platform for numerical simulation.
It can be used as a standalone application for generation of the CAD model, its preparation for the numerical calculations and post-processing of the calculation results or as a platform for integration of the external third-party numerical codes to produce a new application for the full life-cycle management of CAD models.
Open Cascade continues publishing Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) maintenance releases. The next OCCT maintenance release (version 7.5.2) is prepared.
The sources of Open CASCADE Technology 7.5.2 are available under the V7_5_2 tag in the OCCT repository.
This maintenance release fixes the following critical problems:
Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) testing dataset is published on the renovated developer portal.
OCCT 7.5.0 has introduced PBR (physically-based rendering) metal-roughness material workflow in it’s real-time rendering engine. This feature brings more realistic rendering of metal materials and, which might be even more important, an industry-adopted material definition supported by many 3D applications (thanks to glTF 2.0 aka “JPEG for 3D” wide adoption).
PBR is considerably much more computationally intensive compared to old simplified approximations like Phong/Gouraud shading models, and involves a lot of optimization tricks to bring PBR to real-time. At the moment of development of PBR in OCCT, OpenGL 3.0 (released in ‘2008) with it’s mobile counterpart OpenGL ES 3.0 (specs released ‘2012) was considered a good baseline covering the majority of modern devices for PBR implementation. But what about WebGL?