Part Module/id

The CAD capabilities of FreeCAD are based on the OpenCasCade kernel. The Part module allows FreeCAD to access and use the OpenCasCade objects and functions. OpenCascade is a professional-level CAD kernel, that features advanced 3D geometry manipulation and objects. The Part objects, unlike Mesh Module objects, are much more complex, and therefore permit much more advanced operations, like coherent boolean operations, modifications history and parametric behaviour.



Example of Part shapes in FreeCAD

Tools
The Part module tools are all located in the Part menu that appears when you load the Part module.

Primitives
These are tools for creating primitive objects.


 * [[Image:Part_Box.png|32px]] Box: Draws a box by specifying its dimensions
 * [[Image:Part_Cone.png|32px]] Cone: Draws a cone by specifying its dimensions
 * [[Image:Part_Cylinder.png|32px]] Cylinder: Draws a cylinder by specifying its dimensions
 * [[Image:Part_Sphere.png|32px]] Sphere: Draws a sphere by specifying its dimensions
 * [[Image:Part_Torus.png|32px]] Torus: Draws a torus (ring) by specifying its dimensions
 * [[Image:Part_CreatePrimitives.png|32px]] CreatePrimitives: A tool to create various parametric geometric primitives
 * [[Image:Part_Shapebuilder.png|32px]] Shapebuilder: A tool to create more complex shapes from various parametric geometric primitives

Modifying objects
These are tools for modifying existing objects. They will allow you to choose which object to modify.


 * [[Image:Part_Booleans.png|32px]] Booleans: Performs boolean operations on objects
 * [[Image:Part_Union.png|32px]] Union: Fuses (unions) two objects
 * [[Image:Part_Common.png|32px]] Common: Extracts the common (intersection) part of two objects
 * [[Image:Part_Cut.png|32px]] Cut: Cuts (subtracts) one object from another
 * [[Image:Part JoinConnect.png|32px]] Join features: smart booleans for walled objects (e.g., pipes) (v0.16)
 * [[Image:Part JoinConnect.png|32px]] Connect: Connects interiors of objects (v0.16)
 * [[Image:Part JoinEmbed.png|32px]] Embed: Embeds a walled object into another walled object (v0.16)
 * [[Image:Part JoinCutout.png|32px]] Cutout: Creates a cutout in a wall of an object for another walled object (v0.16)
 * Splitting tools: (v0.17)
 * [[Image:Part BooleanFragments.png|32px]] Boolean fragments: makes all the pieces that can be obtained by Boolean operations between objects (v0.17)
 * [[Image:Part Slice.png|32px]] Slice: Splits an object into pieces by intersections with another object (v0.17)
 * [[Image:Part XOR.png|32px]] XOR: removes space shared by even number of objects (symmetric version of Cut) (v0.17)
 * Compound
 * [[Image:Part MakeCompound.png|32px]] Make compound: Creates a compound from the selected objects.
 * [[Image:Part Compound‏‎Filter.png|32px]] Compound Filter: The CompoundFilter can be used to extract the individual pieces.
 * [[Image:Part_Extrude.png|32px]] Extrude: Extrudes planar faces of an object
 * [[Image:Part_Fillet.png|32px]] Fillet: Fillets (rounds) edges of an object
 * [[Image:Part_Revolve.png|32px]] Revolve: Creates a solid by revolving another object (not solid) around an axis
 * [[Image:Part_Section.png|32px]] Section: Creates a section by intersecting an object with a section plane
 * [[Image:Part_SectionCross.png|32px]] Cross sections...:
 * [[Image:Part_Chamfer.png|32px]] Chamfer: Chamfers edges of an object
 * [[Image:Part_Mirror.png|32px]] Mirror: Mirrors the selected object on a given mirror plane
 * [[Image:Part_RuledSurface.png|32px]] Ruled Surface:
 * [[Image:Part_Sweep.png|32px]] Sweep: Sweeps one or more profiles along a path
 * [[Image:Part_Loft.png|32px]] Loft: Lofts from one profile to another
 * Offset tools:
 * [[Image:Part_Offset.png|32px]] 3D Offset: Constructs a parallel shape at a certain distance from original.
 * [[Image:Part_Offset2D.png|32px]] 2D Offset: Constructs a parallel wire at certain distance from original, or enlarges/shrinks a planar face. (v0.17)
 * [[Image:Part_Thickness.png|32px]] Thickness: Hollows out a solid, leaving openings next to select faces.

Other tools

 * [[Image:Part ImportCAD.png|32px]] Import CAD: This tool allows you to add a file *.IGES, *.STEP, *.BREP to the current document.
 * [[Image:Part ExportCAD.png|32px]] Export CAD: This tool allows you to export a part object in a *.IGES, *.STEP, *.BREP file.
 * [[Image:Part ShapeFromMesh.png|32px]] Shape from Mesh: Creates a shape object from a mesh object.
 * Convert to solid: Converts a shape object to a solid object.
 * Reverse shapes: Flips the normals of all faces of the selected object.
 * Create simple copy: Creates a simple copy of the selected object.
 * [[Image:Part RefineShape.png|32px]] Refine shape: Cleans faces by removing unnecessary lines.
 * [[Image:Part CheckGeometry.png|32px]] Check geometry: Checks the geometry of selected objects for errors.
 * Measure: Allows linear and angular measurement between points/edges/faces.



Boolean Operations


An example of union (Fuse), intersection (Common) and difference (Cut)

Explaining the concepts
In OpenCasCade terminology, we distinguish between geometric primitives and (topological) shapes. A geometric primitive can be a point, a line, a circle, a plane, etc. or even some more complex types like a B-Spline curve or surface. A shape can be a vertex, an edge, a wire, a face, a solid or a compound of other shapes. The geometric primitives are not made to be directly displayed on the 3D scene, but rather to be used as building geometry for shapes. For example, an edge can be constructed from a line or from a portion of a circle.

We could say, to resume, that geometry primitive are "shapeless" building blocks, and shapes are the real spatial geometry built on it.

To get a complete list of all of them refer to the OCC documentation (Alternative: sourcearchive.com) and search for Geom_* (for geometry) and TopoDS_* (for shapes). There you can also read more about the differences between geometric objects and shapes. Please note that unfortunately the official OCC documentation is not available online (you must download an archive) and is mostly aimed at programmers, not at end-users. But hopefully you'll find enough information to get started here.

The geometric types actually can be divided into two major groups: curves and surfaces. Out of the curves (line, circle, ...) you can directly build an edge, out of the surfaces (plane, cylinder, ...) a face can be built. For example, the geometric primitive line is unlimited, i.e. it is defined by a base vector and a direction vector while its shape representation must be something limited by a start and end point. And a box -- a solid -- can be created by six limited planes.

From an edge or face you can also go back to its geometric primitive counterpart.

Thus, out of shapes you can build very complex parts or, the other way round, extract all sub-shapes a more complex shape is made of.

Scripting
The main data structure used in the Part module is the BRep data type from OpenCascade. Almost all contents and object types of the Part module are now available to python scripting. This includes geometric primitives, such as Line and Circle (or Arc), and the whole range of TopoShapes, like Vertexes, Edges, Wires, Faces, Solids and Compounds. For each of those objects, several creation methods exist, and for some of them, especially the TopoShapes, advanced operations like boolean union/difference/intersection are also available. Explore the contents of the Part module, as described in the FreeCAD Scripting Basics page, to know more.

Examples
To create a line element switch to the Python console and type in:

Let's go through the above python example step by step:

loads the Part module and creates a new document

Line is actually a line segment, hence the start and endpoint.

This adds a Part object type to the document and assigns the shape representation of the line segment to the 'Shape' property of the added object. It is important to understand here that we used a geometric primitive (the Part.LineSegment) to create a TopoShape out of it (the toShape method). Only Shapes can be added to the document. In FreeCAD, geometry primitives are used as "building structures" for Shapes.

Updates the document. This also prepares the visual representation of the new part object.

Note that a Line Segment can be created by specifying its start and endpoint directly in the constructor, for example Part.LineSegment(point1,point2), or we can create a default line and set its properties afterwards, as we did here.

A circle can be created in a similar way:

Note again, we used the circle (geometry primitive) to construct a shape out of it. We can of course still access our construction geometry afterwards, by doing:

Here we take the shape of our object f, then we take its list of edges. In this case there will be only one because we made the whole shape out of a single circle, so we take only the first item of the Edges list, and we takes its curve. Every Edge has a Curve, which is the geometry primitive it is based on.

Head to the Topological data scripting page if you would like to know more.

Tutorials

 * Import from STL or OBJ : How to import STL/OBJ files in FreeCAD
 * Export to STL or OBJ : How to export STL/OBJ files from FreeCAD
 * Whiffle Ball tutorial : How to use the Part Module