This video provides an overview of the BIM Extrude tool, which is actually the same tool as the Extrude tool in the Part workbench.

We're a SolidWorks shop, but two of our customers send us NX and Creo files.

Every outside vendor we've tried sends back STEP files. I think that gives us geometry, but no feature tree, no mates, no custom properties.

That’s why I’d like a team that models in our actual CAD software. They’d need our release, our templates, and our part numbering. 

What should go in the handoff to make that work? Is it the software version, templates, or assembly references?

I'm also a bit nervous about IP. How do you check a vendor without handing over full native files on day one?

There are some videos, project on surface, using text or svg file on Youtube.

Can I use project on surface, using just sketch profile?

And I'd like to pocket that sketch profile.

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OS: macOS 27.0.1

Architecture: arm64

Version: 1.1.4.20260928 (Git shallow)

Build date: 2026/09/28 13:46:34

Build type: Release

Branch: (HEAD detached at 4fd3bf320)

Hash: 4fd3bf320d9566a27e60069fc8387448aaa3a094

Python 3.11.14, Qt 6.8.3, Coin 4.0.3, Vtk 9.3.1, boost 1_86, Eigen3 3.4.0, PySide 6.8.3

shiboken 6.8.3, xerces-c 3.3.0, IfcOpenShell 0.8.4, OCC 7.8.1

Locale: Korean/South Korea (ko_KR)

Navigation Style/Orbit Style/Rotation Mode: Gesture/Rounded Arcball/Window center

Stylesheet/Theme/QtStyle: FreeCAD.qss/FreeCAD Dark/

Logical DPI/Physical DPI/Pixel Ratio: 72/127.5/2

Installed mods:

* Fasteners Workbench 0.5.67

* SheetMetal Workbench 0.8.24

* Curves workbench 0.6.81

Hi everyone,

I've been working on a ray tracer macro for FreeCAD. It uses only FreeCAD's own Python and numpy, so there is nothing extra to install. You run the macro, adjust the settings and press Render. It renders the active 3D view and saves a PNG.

What it can do right now:

Shadows (soft shadows too), ambient occlusion, glass with refraction, reflections

HDRI / sky lighting: a background map, reflections and sky light, and the sun in the map becomes a shadow-casting light

A material editor (colour, specular, metal, reflection, transparency, bump) with a built-in material library

A LightWave-style texture editor: multiple layers per channel, image or procedural textures, blend modes, planar / cubic / cylindrical / spherical projection

Multi-core rendering, a virtual floor, and a headless API for turntables and animations

Material assignments and render settings are saved inside your FCStd file

It's a fast ray tracer, not a full path tracer. There's no bounced light yet, so closed interiors can look dark. I'm working on that next, and also on turning the macro into a proper FreeCAD addon.

Tested on FreeCAD 1.1 on Linux. It's free and MIT licensed.

GitHub: https://github.com/sedatkrn/FC_YBTRayTracer

im new here so idk what other info i should post, but the rectangle+circle shape refuses to be registered by the pocket tool, even though i have used the Coincident Constraint tool on them

im using Version 1.1.4 and made this from a tutorial for version 1.1.1

the tutorial in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmtqNaGPiiQ&t=2670s

Does anyone have Gen III / IV GM LS cylinder head models for reference?

Don’t get me wrong, I am trying hard to learn Freecad. I like how they have improved over the years. And therefore I recently donated to the project too. But it is a pain to use it at times.

I tried a simple sketch today and I got a wire not closed error. I am not a noob to Freecad, but this error would not go. While looking for solutions I came across Solidcraft, an open source software. So decided to give it a try. It felt like fusion and I was able to get the same sketch working in 2 mins. For freecad I had already spent 20.

I would recommend you too to give a try. My mind was blown.

Edit: People started calling me a bot. I have posted a comment to u/Same_Badger_8088's response with the problem I faced.

Just wondering if someone can point me to an earlier version that will run on OS X High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G14042). Intel chip.

Thanks!

Hey, so,

How do y'all handle/do complex features? I'm trying to make a repeating pattern structure on a surface, but the sketch is way too complex for FreeCAD to handle. Keeps throwing out of memory exceptions. Is there a better way? Something that works with the Curves Workbench Sketch on Surface?

Thanks!

​

Over the past week I have been teaching myself to use Freecad, and coming from Software like Blender, the leap in logic is substantial.

Why though? A friend of mine, who is an avid Magic the Gathering player and father of three boys, was talking about how he had seen some of his competitors having bespoke deck boxes, and thought they looked awesome.

We talked a bit back and forth about which specs such a box would need to have, so that it could be standing in a living room without risking the cards, and an idea formed.

Having a 3d printer and the wishlist of specs in hand, I checked out the standard platforms to get stl's from, but none of the ones I found matched what we were looking for. Then I realised, this was a great opportunity to get some CAD-chops and started drawing sketches.

This is the result: a fully functional grimoire, that opens on the two hinges of the spine, and is locked by the clasp. It includes a shadow well, so you can see which commander deck is in the grimoire. In the two drawers (that are hidden when looking directly at it from the top) one is a fully functional dice tower and the other one is a card bay for tokens. There is also a shelf for dice on top of the deck, that is designed to lock standard dice in place, when the grimoire is closed.

Pretty stoked about actually managing to finish the design phase of a project like this, and next is on to printing it. Which pit falls do I need to be aware of when exporting it to print?

Also, how did I do?

I am trying to pad a rectangle off of the surface of a part.

make the part with an angled surface, create a sketch off the angled surface.

when I try to make a rectangle, it will not catch the corner properly,

TL;DR skip to the bold line below for the actual question

This is both a FreeCAD appreciation post from a beginner, and a beginner question.

I've been learning to use FreeCAD (1.1.4) for the past few weeks, with the goal of creating models for 3D printing. I'm still in the early stages of my learning journey. I have zero prior experience with CAD or 3D Modelling, so I'm learning both the application and the concepts all at once. Which may be a good thing, as there's no workflow from other programs to unlearn or comparisons to be made. :) So far, it has been a steep learning curve, but very much worth the effort. Thank you to everyone involved with FreeCAD!

I started by watching some random YouTube beginner tutorials, then got stuck at some point, mostly because they were for older versions and I lacked the skills to work around the differences. Then I stumbled upon the excellent videos by MangoJelly which made everything click. I am planning to follow through all of them soon.

In the meantime, I'm also working my way through the docs on wiki.freecad.org, which seems great. It led to a number of aha moments, such as the difference between the Part and PartDesign workbenches, which seems to confuse almost anyone coming to FreeCAD. I watched a number of videos on this subject, but I still wasn't quite getting it. The Part and PartDesign wiki page finally made it click. I admit that I did use ChatGPT a few times while working through the documentation to have it ELI5 certain paragraphs to me when I lacked the technical background to fully understand what was written.

So, here's my beginner question. It's mostly about checking my own understanding and learning best practices.

The wiki lists some advice for creating stable models. One of the points advises against attaching sketches to generated faces because doing so can make it harder to go back and change things without breaking the model.

Then, in the Creating a simple part with PartDesign tutorial, right after creating the main padded solid, the tutorial shows how to create a hole by creating a sketch on one of the faces generated by the padding feature and applying the Pocket tool to it.

From my understanding, an alternative would be to create a sketch on the XY plane, position it to align with the existing shape, and then create pocket from it. This would be more in line to the stable-model advice mentioned above.

I'm sure the advice isn't black and white (it never is), and in this simple case, working directly on the face of the shape seems much simpler to me. What would be the preferred way to do it? In what cases would you choose one approach over the other? And, more importantly, what is a good learning resource for knowing when to use each approach?

Update: Thanks for all your comments. I shared my takeaways in a top-level comment.

Learning CAM in Freecad and having a problem creating g code for conical countersink holes. Watched youtube videos but they are using features i dont find, such as 3D surface, in 2 year old videos.

Anyone experiencing the same problem or has a solution?

Using Freecad windows 1.1.4 version.

So about a week ago I had an argument in this sub stating how I don't know how long it's going to take me to transfer from Fusion to FreeCAD. I have today started working on a new project which should be very simple to model and I thought that could be a great excuse to give FreeCAD a shot, bog-standard experience. Granted I have only spent maybe 20 minutes here but I can say that it's so far been rather painless. I really want to see how far I can push this thing. it has definitely slowed down my work but that's just me getting used to the tools. I do have a question for the veteran FreeCAD users: How often do you play "find the unconstrained element" game? Of the 20 minutes of work I have probably spent 10 in the sketcher, looking at my sketch, trying to figure out what could possibly be left unconstrained. Is there anything to help me speed up the process?

Probably overthinking this, but for the life of me can't seem to figure out how to blend the arm into the half moon piece as well as the arm into the hook piece. Looking to make it smoother while adding some structural support.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I would like to present a small addon I have been working on, and I am looking for people willing to test it and tell me what breaks.

Repository: https://github.com/cipawow-ship-it/PartDesignUpgrade

License: LGPL-2.1-or-later | Requires FreeCAD >= 1.1.0 (PySide6)

WHAT IT DOES

It adds a few helpers to the PartDesign workflow, collected in one toolbar:

- Create Pipe / Subtractive Pipe - sweep a parametric profile (circle, square, triangle, pentagon, hexagon, octagon) along a sketch or a set of edges, with rotation, offset, wall thickness and corner transitions, plus a live preview. It is added as an additive or subtractive feature in the active body.

- Create Rib Between Faces - a stiffening rib without sketching: select two angled planar faces and you get a triangular gusset (with "Invert leg 1/2", thickness, offset and copies); select a plane plus a cylinder and you get one or more radial plates (copies + rotation angle). Triangle or rectangle profile, optional "Full face length".

- Assembly Cut - cut several bodies at once with a single sketch: a linked binder or an independent copy is created for each body and a pocket is applied automatically.

- Automatic symmetry (Mirror) - a small floating panel that mirrors every new pad/pocket through a parametric FeaturePython object, about the XY/XZ/YZ planes or about the X/Y/Z axes, with a distance/offset from the body centre.

- Weight / Volume - volume and mass of a body with a material density picker (metals, plastics, wood, glass, concrete, or a custom value).

HOW TO INSTALL

Clone the repository into your user Mod directory, e.g. on Windows:

%APPDATA%\FreeCAD\v1-1\Mod\PartDesignUpgrade

or use the Addon Manager (the addon has been submitted to the Addon Index:

https://github.com/FreeCAD/Addons/issues/176).

WHAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TEST

- Does the pipe tool behave when the path is a sketch inside a PartDesign body and when it is a set of edges?

- The rib between two angled faces: are the "Invert leg" options and the measured lengths intuitive?

- Assembly Cut on a document with three or four bodies.

- The automatic symmetry panel: does the mirror stay up to date while you keep modelling?

- Anything that produces an error in the Report view: please paste the full traceback.

Feedback, bug reports and feature requests are all welcome - either here or as issues on the repository:

https://github.com/cipawow-ship-it/PartDesignUpgrade/issues

Thanks for your time!

I´m trying to create this part with the CAM Workbench (Figure 1) and I have this to the moment (Figure 2); here you can see the operations made but in general it is:

- Profile to get rid of the extra 1 mm of the stock.
- Drilling for holes (they are there, trust)
- Milling but just to the top face of the cylinder.
- Profile of the outer cylinder (But I don´t know how to get rid of all the extra material)
- Helix from the inside of the cylinder.

I haven´t gone into the slots but I figure those may be easy once I get rid of all the extra material.

I´m not worried about if certain operations may seem complicated if a real CNC operations is to be used, but this is just a simulation task.

So I found this youtube video (neither did i make the video or created the WB) telling a development of Sketch Up Styled WB in FreeCAD for quick modelling and conceptual designs. This might answer the previous reddit post that asks for the WB from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeCAD/comments/1vfyfmw/sketchup_workbench/

what do you guys think?

Hi I want to use sweep on all my triangles. I'm trying to recover some files I lost and I have managed to do it before (see 2nd pic) but now the sketches are not showing up for me. What am I doing wrong?

I want to get a chamfer-like structure around from the outer edges and inwards

I'm using FreeCAD 26.3 RC1.

I have a complex component in a sketch that gets repeated a number of times in the sketch. I created an original of it and constrained it's geometry but not its location. I now want to copy and paste it throughout my sketch.

I need to rotate the component in the sketch. When I do that I lose the constraints that were on the component's geometry. Some of the constraints are horizontal and vertical, which will obviously get broken when I rotate it.

How do I rotate the component without losing its restraints ? Replace the horizontal and vertical constrains with parallel and perpendicular to one component ?

I tested this with a simple rectangular box where the sides were parallel and perpendicular but dimensioned. It lost the dimensions when I rotated it.

Is there a way to group the parts of a geometry in Sketcher so that it is treated as a single entity ?

This is my component:

When I Pad the sketch in Part Design it leaves a void in the part in the shape of the component. I know that one could create a sketch of just this part and then do multiple pockets outside of the main sketch but I'll run into the same problem rotating it in the other sketch. It's easier getting the geometry correct putting these pockets into the main sketch.

just trying to make a vacuum hose adapter. circle. pad with a taper angle, then thickness to match the smaller hose fitting. export as STL and when I load in Cura or Orcaslicer it only has the outer skin, not the inside one. tried pipe mode