Manual:All workbenches at a glance/it

Uno delle maggiori difficoltà per i nuovi utenti di FreeCAD, è quella di sapere in quale ambiente di lavoro trovare uno strumento specifico. La tabella qui sotto è una panoramica dei più importanti ambienti e dei loro strumenti. Per un elenco più completo fare riferimento alla pagina della documentazione di FreeCAD per ciascun ambiente.

Quattro ambienti sono inoltre progettati per lavorare in coppia, e uno di loro è completamente incluso nell'altro: Architettura contiene tutti gli strumenti di Draft, e PartDesign tutti gli strumenti di Sketcher. Tuttavia, per chiarezza, quì sono separati.

Parte
L'ambiente Parte fornisce gli strumenti di base per lavorare con le parti solide: primitive, come il cubo e la sfera, e operazioni geometriche semplici e operazioni booleane. Essendo il punto di ancoraggio principale con OpenCasCade, l'ambiente Parte fornisce le fondamenta del sistema di geometria di FreeCAD, e quasi tutti gli altri ambienti producono della geometria basata su Part.

Draft
L'ambiente Draft fornisce gli strumenti per fare disegni di base CAD 2D: linee, cerchi, ecc ... e una serie di utili strumenti generici come spostare, ruotare o scalare. Esso fornisce inoltre diversi aiuti di disegno, come la griglia e l'aggancio. Esso è pensato principalmente per disegnare le linee guida per gli oggetti di Arch, ma serve anche come "coltellino svizzero" di FreeCAD.

Sketcher
The Sketcher Workbench contains tools to build and edit complex 2D objects, called sketches. The geometry inside these sketches can be precisely positioned and relationed by the use of constraints. They are meant primarily to be the building blocks of PartDesign geometry, but are useful everywhere in FreeCAD.

Part Design
The Part Design Workbench contains advanced tools to build solid parts. It also contains all the tools from the sketcher. Since it can only produces solid shapes (the rule number one of Part Design), it is the main workbench to use when designing pieces (parts) to be manufactured or 3D-printed, as you will always obtain a printable object.

Arch
The Arch Workbench contains tools to work with BIM projects (civil engineering and architecture). It also contains all the tools from the Draft workbench. The main use of the Arch Workbench is to create BIM objects or give BIM attributes to objects built with other workbenches, in order to export them to IFC.

Drawing
The Drawing Workbench handles the creation and manipulation of 2D drawing sheets, used for displaying views of your 3D work in 2D. These sheets can then be exported to 2D applications in SVG or DXF formats, to a PDF file or printed.

Other built-in workbenches
Although the above summarizes the most important tools of FreeCAD, many more workbenches are available, among them:


 * The Mesh Workbench allows to work with polygon meshes. Although meshes are not the preferred type of geometry to work with in FreeCAD, because of their lack of precision and support for curves, meshes still have a lot of uses, and are fully supported in FreeCAD. The Mesh Workbench also offers a number of Part-to-Mesh and Mesh-to-Part tools.
 * The Raytracing Workbench offers tools to interface with external renderers such as povray or luxrender. Right from inside FreeCAD, this workbench allows you to produce high-quality renderings from your models.
 * The Spreadsheet Workbench permits the creation and manipulation of spreadsheet data, that can be extracted from FreeCAD models. Spreadsheet cells can also be referenced in many areas of FreeCAD, allowing to use them as master data structures.
 * The FEM Workbench deals with Finite Elements Analysis, and permits the performing of pre- and post-processing FEM calculations and to display the results graphically.

External workbenches
A number of other very useful workbenches produced by FreeCAD community members also exist. Although they are not included in a standard FreeCAD installation,they are easy to install as plug-ins. They are all referenced in the FreeCAD-addons repository. Among the most developed are:


 * The Drawing Dimensioning Workbench offers many new tools to work directly on Drawing Sheets and allow you to add dimensions, annotations and other technical symbols with great control over their aspect.
 * The Fasteners Workbench offers a wide range of ready-to-insert fasteners objects like screws, bolts, rods, washers and nuts. Many options and settings are available.
 * The Assembly2 Workbench offers a series of tools to mount and work with assemblies.

Read more


 * The complete list of workbenches
 * The Part Workbench
 * The Draft Workbench
 * The Sketcher and Part Design Workbench
 * The Arch Workbench
 * The Drawing Workbench
 * The FEM Workbench
 * The FreeCAD-addons repository