Every year there’s lot’s of FreeCAD activity centred around the fantastic FOSDEM event in Brussels. This year as well as the usual FreeCAD Day, Chris Hennes (chennes) and Jo Hinchliffe (concretedog) are coordinating the Open Hardware and CAD/CAM devroom. Chris has just posted the text below on the FreeCAD Forum, but we include it here to help spread the word. We hope to see lots of wonderful applications for the devroom and also meeting up with friends in the FreeCAD community on FreeCAD Day.

Chris’ text:

A group of FreeCAD developers and users will once again be meeting in Brussels this January/February in conjunction with FOSDEM'26. FreeCAD Day is scheduled for 30 January, 2026, and will feature lightning talks and discussions about FreeCAD intended for both developers and users. And of course it will feature the famous/infamous “complaint session”

Following FreeCAD Day, FOSDEM itself takes place that weekend, 31 January and 1 February 2026. concretedog and I are coordinating the Open Hardware and CAD/CAM devroom, and we’d like to invite you all to submit talks for consideration. We’re also looking for some volunteers both to help run the devroom on the day of the event, as well as to review talk submissions. Please reach out to one of us if you are interested! The Call for Papers for the FOSDEM session follows (we’ll release a separate CfP and registration link for FreeCAD Day shortly)…

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We are pleased to announce the CfP for the Open Hardware and CAD/CAM devroom at FOSDEM 2026, 31 January-1 February 2026, Brussels, Belgium.

The devroom will take place on Sunday, 1 February 2026 at ULB (Campus Solbosch).

We hope you’ll join us for a full day of talks, demos and interesting discussions on designing, modeling and testing hardware using Open Source tools.

We welcome any talk proposals about the design and creation of physical objects.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Open Hardware Projects
  • Open circuits
  • Product design
  • The business of open hardware
• Circuit Design
  • Printed circuit board design tools
  • Circuit simulation
• 3d modeling and analysis
  • Solid modeling tools
  • Meshing, modeling and transforming physical representations
  • Finite element analysis
• 3d printing
  • 3d slicing tools
  • Motor control
• Machine design and integration
  • Open Hardware projects
  • ECAD/MCAD integration
  • Thermal analysis
  • Wire modeling
• Physical Model Data storage
  • Data representation and optimization
  • Version control in hardware data storage
  • Collaborative and team-based hardware design techniques

Slots will be allocated for short (20 minutes) and long (40 minutes) talks.

Speakers need to specify their preferred format. Both include time for questions and answers.

Depending on the number of submissions, submitters may be asked to utilize an alternate time format.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 5 December 2025 Acceptance notifications: 10 December 2025 Final schedule announcement: 15 December 2025 Devroom: 1 February 2026

The submission process

Please submit your proposal at https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp before 5 Dec 2025.

Select the “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” session. Please note that the “Open Source Design” track, while a lovely group of wonderful hackers, is not the same!

Please include the following information with your submission:

• Abstract
• Preferred Session length
• Speaker bio
• Link to any hardware / code /slides for the talk

Fill in at least a title and abstract for the proposed talk and a suggested duration.

Keep in mind that much of the value in these meetings comes from the discussions, so please allot at least 20% of the talk time for questions and answers.

Questions?

If you have any questions or need guidance on any aspect of submitting, preparing or presenting, please e-mail chennes at freecad.org.

Volunteering

If you are interested in helping the devroom run smoothly, please reach out to Chris Hennes (chennes) or Jo Hinchliffe (concretedog) and we’ll be very happy to have your assistance!