Freecad

[webfork]

This has already been discussed (thanks to Baas) but I recently re-tested the program and got the same results.

Status: Not portable. Writes to appdata\local\freecad ... Tested version 0.16.

You can use 7zip on the installer. It was worth trying as it supports many more formats than LibreCAD (which is available from PortableApps).

[webfork]

Strangely Softpedia has a listing for Freecad Portable, but I can't find reference to it on the home page:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-S ... CADa.shtml Edit: found the Github download at least (scroll down to releases): https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases

EDIT2: there's also a PA thread on this: https://portableapps.com/node/57528

[Andrew Lee]

I have been learning FreeCAD for close to 2 years now, and finally took time today to figure out how to make it portable.

You can download the official installer and extract the files, but I would strongly encourage you to use the RealThunder branch of FreeCAD, It is available as a 7-Zip package, so it is more convenient. Plus it is much further along in fixing the topological naming problem, which is really great. Trust me, it is going to be one of the first problems you encounter when you try to design anything slightly complex using the official version.

Basically, your model is made up of a list of chronological operations. When you go back and make changes to something earlier in the list, there is a high chance you will mess up the later operations under the officail version. There are workarounds for this (eg. using datum planes), but IMHO they are very tedious and cumbersome to use. Under the RealThunder branch, you are much less likely to encounter this issue.

Anyway, after you have extracted the files, the EXE is bin\FreeCAD.exe (or bin\FreeCADLink.exe for the RealThunder branch). Now create a subfolder called userdata in the main folder. Also create a .bat file in the main folder called freecad.bat with the following content:

Code: Select all

@cd "%~dp0"
@set FREECAD_USER_HOME="%~dp0\userdata"
@start "FreeCad" "%~dp0\bin\FreeCAD.exe" --single-instance "%1"

Now when you can start FreeCAD by running this batch file (and even pass .fcstd file to launch). All temp files and config info will be saved to the userdata subfolder.

Also check out this post, where I discuss how to create a file association for .fcstd files and this wrapper freecad.bat that we have just created.

[Andrew Lee]

I have moved this topic to the submissions forum, and also added a database entry for FreeCAD:

https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=3067

Please vote!

I started off with OpenSCAD but am glad I quickly saw its limitations and moved to FreeCAD. I am so much more productive because of that.

FreeCAD is a very powerful CAD software, and I am so glad it is open-source and also portable. I am still learning all the time by watching YouTube tutorials, and I feel there are lots more features that I have not begun to explored yet.

[webfork]

... added a database entry for FreeCAD: https://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=3067

Thanks for doing that. Voted.