1. FreeCAD 1.1.3 and the basic tools

The baseline is FreeCAD 1.1.3. That is the version cadxray was verified on, and CalculiX and Gmsh — needed for structural analysis — ship with 1.1. Version 1.0.x works too, but the exercises on this site are written against 1.1.3.

FreeCAD 1.1.3

1. Download the 1.1.3 Windows installer from freecad.org and install it.
2. Launch it once, then close it. That creates the Mod folder the addon goes into.
3. Check Help → About shows 1.1.3.

OS	Mod folder the addon goes into
Windows	%APPDATA%\FreeCAD\v1-1\Mod\
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/FreeCAD/v1-1/Mod/
Linux	~/.local/share/FreeCAD/v1-1/Mod/

1.0 and 1.1 use different folders

1.0 uses v1-0, 1.1 uses v1-1. If both versions are installed, the addon can land in the wrong one. The diagnostic command on the next page tells you which folder it went into.

The terminal

Every command below goes in a terminal, not in your AI tool’s chat window.

• Windows: find PowerShell in the Start menu. Command Prompt (cmd) works too.
• macOS: the Terminal app.
• Linux: your terminal.

uv

This downloads and runs cadxray’s bridge — the half that lives on the AI tool’s side. You do not need to install Python separately.

Windows PowerShell

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

macOS / Linux

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

After installing, close the terminal and open a new one. Then check:

uv --version

git

Used to fetch the bridge from GitHub. On Windows use the git-scm.com installer; on macOS run xcode-select --install in the terminal.

git --version

Checklist

	Command	What you should see
FreeCAD	Help → About	1.1.3
uv	uv --version	uv 0.x.x
git	git --version	git version 2.x

All three showing up? Go to the next page.