Online_Help_Startpage Online Help Startpage Welcome to the FreeCAD on-line help This document has been automatically created from the contents of the official FreeCAD wiki documentation, which can be read online at http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page . Since the wiki is actively maintained and continuously developed by the FreeCAD community of developers and users, you may find that the online version contains more or newer information than this document. But neverthless, we hope you will find here all information you need. In case you have questions you can't find answers for in this document, have a look on the FreeCAD forum, where you can maybe find your question answered, or someone able to help you. How to use This document is divided into several sections: introduction, usage, scripting and development, the last three address specifically the three broad categories of users of FreeCAD: end-users, who simply want to use the program, power-users, who are interested by the scripting capabilities of FreeCAD and would like to customize some of its aspects, and developers, who consider FreeCAD as a base for developing their own applications. If you are comletely new to FreeCAD, we suggest you to start simply from the introduction. Contribute As you may have experienced sometimes, programmers are really bad help writers! For them it is all completely clear because they made it that way. Therefore it's vital that experienced users help us to write and revise the documentation. Yes, we mean you! How, you ask? Just go to the Wiki at http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php in the User section. You will need a sourceforge account to log in, then you can start editing! < previous: Online Help Toc next: About FreeCAD > Index Online version: "http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Online_Help_Startpage" Online Help Startpage 1 Online_Help_Toc Online Help Toc Here is the table of Content for the On-line Help system in FreeCAD. The articles referenced here are automatically included in the FreeCAD.chm file by the wiki2chm.py tool. You find that tool under src/Tools/wiki2chm.py. A printable version of this manual is also available. • Welcome • Introduction ♦ About FreeCAD ♦ Features ♦ Licence ♦ Installing on Windows ♦ Installing on Linux/Unix ♦ Installing on Mac • Working with FreeCAD ♦ Getting started ♦ Navigating in the 3D space ♦ The FreeCAD Document ♦ Setting user preferences ♦ Customizing the interface ♦ Object properties ♦ Working with workbenches ♦ The Mesh workbench ♦ The Part workbench ♦ The Drawing workbench ♦ The Raytracing workbench ♦ The Image workbench ♦ The 2D drafting workbench ♦ List of all FreeCAD commands • Scripting and Macros ♦ Working with macros ♦ Introduction to python ♦ FreeCAD Scripting Basics ♦ Mesh Scripting ♦ Part Scripting ♦ The Coin Scenegraph ♦ Working with Pivy ♦ Embedding FreeCAD ♦ Scripting Examples ◊ Code snippets ◊ Line drawing function ◊ Dialog creation • Developing applications for FreeCAD ♦ Compiling FreeCAD ◊ Finding assistance ◊ Compiling on Windows ◊ Compiling on Unix ◊ Compiling on Mac ◊ Third Party Libraries ◊ Third Party Tools Online Help Toc 1 Online_Help_Toc ◊ Start up and Configuration ♦ Build Support Tools ◊ The FreeCAD build tool ◊ Adding an application module ◊ Debugging FreeCAD ◊ Testing FreeCAD ♦ Modifying FreeCAD ◊ Branding ◊ Translating FreeCAD ◊ Installing extra python modules ♦ Source documentation • Credits ♦ Contributors Online version: "http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Online_Help_Toc" Online Help Toc 2 About_FreeCAD About FreeCAD the FreeCAD interface FreeCAD is a general purpose 3D CAD modeler. The development is completely Open Source (GPL & LGPL License). FreeCAD is aimed directly at mechanical engineering and product design but also fits in a wider range of uses around engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties. FreeCAD features tools similar to Catia, SolidWorks or Solid Edge, and therefore also falls into the category of MCAD, PLM, CAx and CAE. It will be a feature based parametric modeler with a modular software architecture which makes it easy to provide additional functionality without modifying the core system. As with many modern 3D CAD modelers it will have a 2D component in order to extract design detail from the 3D model to create 2D production drawings, but direct 2D drawing (like AutoCAD LT) is not the focus, neither are animation or organic shapes (like Maya, 3ds Max or Cinema 4D), although, thanks to its wide adaptability, FreeCAD might become useful in a much broader area than its current focus. Another major concern of FreeCAD is to make heavy use of all the great open-source libraries that exist out there in the field of Scientific Computing. Among them are OpenCascade, a powerful CAD kernel, Coin3D, an incarnation of OpenInventor, Qt, the world-famous UI framework, and Python, one of the best scripting languages available. FreeCAD itself can also be used as a library by other programs. FreeCAD is also fully multi-platform, and currently runs flawlessly on Windows and Linux/Unix and Mac OSX systems, with the exact same look and functionality on all platforms. Got curious? Take a look at the Feature list or the Getting started articles, or head directly to the User hub! < previous: Online Help Startpage next: Installing > Index Online version: "http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=About_FreeCAD" About FreeCAD 1 Feature_list Feature list This is an extensive, hence not complete, list of features FreeCAD implements. If you want to look into the future see the Development roadmap for a quick overview the Screenshots are a nice place to go. Contents • 1 General features ♦ 1.1 Base application ♦ 1.2 Document structure ♦ 1.3 User Interface • 2 Application specific features ♦ 2.1 Meshes ♦ 2.2 2D Drafting ♦ 2.3 CAD ♦ 2.4 Raytracing ♦ 2.5 Drawing ♦ 2.6 CAM General features Base application • FreeCAD is multi-platform. It runs and behaves exactly the same way on Windows Linux and Mac OSX platforms. • FreeCAD is a full GUI application. FreeCAD has a complete Graphical User Interface based on the famous Qt framework, with a 3D viewer based on Open Inventor, allowing fast rendering of 3D scenes and a very accessible scene graph representation. • FreeCAD also runs as a command line application, with low memory footprint. In command line mode, FreeCAD runs without its interface, but with all its geometry tools. It can be, for example, used Feature list 1 Feature_list as server to produce content for other applications. • FreeCAD can be imported as a Python module, inside other applications that can run python scripts, or in a python console. Like in console mode, the interface part of FreeCAD is unavailable, but all geometry tools are accessible. • Plugin/Module framework for late loading of features/data-types. FreeCAD is divided into a core application and modules, that are loaded only when needed. Almost all the tools and geometry types are stored in modules. Modules behave like plugins, and can be added or removed to an existing installation of FreeCAD. • Built-in scripting framework: FreeCAD features a built-in Python interpreter, and an API that covers almost any part of the application, the interface, the geometry and the representation of this geometry in the 3D viewer. The interpreter can run single commands up to complex scripts, in fact entire modules can even be programmed completely in Python. • a modular MSI installer allows flexible installations on Windows systems. Packages for Ubuntu systems are also maintained. Document structure • Undo/Redo framework: Everything is undo/redoable, with access to the undo stack, so multiple steps can be undone at a time. • Transaction management: The undo/redo stack stores document transactions and not single actions, allowing each tool to define exactly what must be undone or redone. • Parametric associative document objects: All objects in a FreeCAD document can be defined by parameters. Those parameters can be modified on the fly, and recomputed anytime. The relationship between objects is also stored, so modifying one object also modifies its dependent objects. • Compound (ZIP based) document save format: FreeCAD documents saved with .fcstd extension can contain many different types of information, such as geometry, scripts or thumbnail icons. Base application 2 Feature_list User Interface • Fully customizable/scriptable Graphical User Interface. The Qt-based interface of FreeCAD is entirely accessible via the python interpreter. Aside from the simple functions that FreeCAD itself provides to workbenches, the whole Qt framework is accessible too, allowing any operation on the GUI, such as creating, adding, docking, modifying or removing widgets and toolbars. • Workbench concept: In the FreeCAD interface, tools are grouped by workbenches. This allows to display only the tools used to accomplish a certain task, keeping the workspace uncluttered and responsive, and the application fast to load. • Built-in Python console with syntax highlighting, autocomplete and class browser: Python commands can be issued directly in FreeCAD and immediately return results, permitting scriptwriters to test functionality on the fly, explore the contents of the modules and easily learn about FreeCAD internals. • User interaction mirroring on the console: Everything the user does in the FreeCAD interface executes python code, which can be printed on the console and recorded in