How to Participate in FreeCAD Community Testing

Participating in community testing for upcoming FreeCAD releases is essential for catching regressions, improving stability, and ensuring new features work across diverse operating systems before official release. This guide outlines how you can contribute by downloading pre-release builds, testing your regular workflows, gathering necessary system diagnostic data, and submitting actionable bug reports to the development team.

Download Pre-Release and Weekly Builds

To test upcoming releases, you need to run pre-release builds, such as Release Candidates (RC) or weekly development snapshots, rather than the stable version.

  • GitHub Releases: Visit the official FreeCAD GitHub repository under the "Releases" section. Major upcoming versions publish "Release Candidate" builds here for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
  • Weekly Development Builds: FreeCAD provides automated weekly builds that showcase the latest code merges. These are available in portable formats (such as 7z archives for Windows or AppImages for Linux), which means they can run alongside your stable installation without overwriting it.
  • Package Managers: On Linux, you can use development channels such as the FreeCAD Daily PPA for Ubuntu-based distributions or Flatpak/Snap beta branches.

Test Workflows and Workbenches

You do not need to be a programmer to test FreeCAD. Testing mainly involves using the software as you normally would and observing unexpected behavior.

  • Model Compatibility: Open complex models created in older versions of FreeCAD to verify that they open correctly and do not suffer from geometry breaking or broken parametric trees.
  • Core Workbench Operations: Exercise core tools in the Sketcher, Part Design, TechDraw, and Draft workbenches. Look for calculation errors, visual glitches, or unexpected crashes.
  • New Features: Review the release notes or roadmap for the upcoming version to identify newly added tools and test their edge cases.
  • UI and Translation: Check for layout overlapping, theme inconsistencies, or missing translations in your native language.

Gather System Information

When you encounter a crash, bug, or unexpected behavior, collect your exact build information:

  1. Open FreeCAD.
  2. Go to the top menu and select Help > About FreeCAD.
  3. Click the Copy to clipboard button.

This captures your exact FreeCAD build number, Python version, Qt version, operating system, and graphics drivers, which developers need to reproduce the problem.

Report Issues Correctly

Clear reporting ensures that developers can diagnose and fix issues quickly.

  1. Search Existing Issues: Before reporting, search the FreeCAD GitHub Issue Tracker and the official FreeCAD forum to see if the bug has already been logged.
  2. Use the Forum for Triage: If you are unsure whether an issue is a bug or a user configuration error, post in the "Open discussion" or dedicated "Release Candidate Testing" threads on the FreeCAD forum first.
  3. Submit a GitHub Issue: If the problem is confirmed, submit a ticket on the GitHub Issue Tracker.
    • Paste the system information you copied from Help > About FreeCAD.
    • Provide step-by-step instructions to reproduce the issue from a blank file.
    • Attach a minimal reproducible .FCStd file that demonstrates the failure.
    • Attach screenshots or terminal error outputs if applicable.