FeaturePython Objects

Introduction
Besides the standard object types such as annotations, meshes and parts objects, FreeCAD also offers the amazing possibility to build 100% python-scripted objects, called Python Features. Those objects will behave exactly as any other FreeCAD object, and are saved and restored automatically on file save/load.

One particularity must be understood, those objects are saved in FreeCAD FcStd files with python's json module. That module turns a python object as a string, allowing it to be added to the saved file. On load, the json module uses that string to recreate the original object, provided it has access to the source code that created the object. This means that if you save such a custom object and open it on a machine where the python code that generated the object is not present, the object won't be recreated. If you distribute such objects to others, you will need to distribute the python script that created it together.

Python Features follow the same rule as all FreeCAD features: they are separated into App and GUI parts. The app part, the Document Object, defines the geometry of our object, while its GUI part, the View Provider Object, defines how the object will be drawn on screen. The View Provider Object, as any other FreeCAD feature, is only available when you run FreeCAD in its own GUI. There are several properties and methods available to build your object. Properties must be of any of the predefined properties types that FreeCAD offers, and will appear in the property view window, so they can be edited by the user. This way, FeaturePython objects are truly and totally parametric. you can define properties for the Object and its ViewObject separately.

Hint: In former versions we used Python's cPickle module. However, this module executes arbitrary code and thus causes a security problem. Thus, we moved to Python's json module.

Basic example
The following sample can be found in the src/Mod/TemplatePyMod/FeaturePython.py file, together with several other examples:

Available properties
Properties are the true building stones of FeaturePython objects. Through them, the user will be able to interact and modify your object. After creating a new FeaturePython object in your document ( obj=FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.addObject("App::FeaturePython","Box") ), you can get a list of the available properties by issuing:

You will get a list of available properties:

When adding properties to your custom objects, take care of this:
 * Do not use characters "<" or ">" in the properties descriptions (that would break the xml pieces in the .fcstd file)
 * Properties are stored alphabetically in a .fcstd file. If you have a shape in your properties, any property whose name comes after "Shape" in alphabetic order, will be loaded AFTER the shape, which can cause strange behaviours.

Property Type
By default the properties can be updated. It is possible to make the properties read-only, for instance in the case one wants to show the result of a method. It is also possible to hide the property. The property type can be set using

where mode is a short int that can be set to: 0 -- default mode, read and write 1 -- read-only 2 -- hidden

The EditorModes are not set at FreeCAD file reload. This could to be done by the __setstate__ function. See http://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13460&start=10#p108072. By using the setEditorMode the properties are only read only in PropertyEditor. They could still be changed from python. To really make them read only the setting has to be passed directly inside the addProperty function. See http://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13460&start=20#p109709 for an example.

Other more complex example
This example makes use of the Part Module to create an octahedron, then creates its coin representation with pivy.

First is the Document object itself:

Then, we have the view provider object, responsible for showing the object in the 3D scene:

Finally, once our object and its viewobject are defined, we just need to call them (The Octahedron class and viewprovider class code could be copied in the FreeCAD python console directly):

Making objects selectable
If you want to make your object selectable, or at least part of it, by clicking on it in the viewport, you must include its coin geometry inside a SoFCSelection node. If your object has complex representation, with widgets, annotations, etc, you might want to include only a part of it in a SoFCSelection. Everything that is a SoFCSelection is constantly scanned by FreeCAD to detect selection/preselection, so it makes sense try not to overload it with unneeded scanning. This is what you would do to include a self.face from the example above:

Simply, you create a SoFCSelection node, then you add your geometry nodes to it, then you add it to your main node, instead of adding your geometry nodes directly.

Working with simple shapes
If your parametric object simply outputs a shape, you don't need to use a view provider object. The shape will be displayed using FreeCAD's standard shape representation:

Same code with use ViewProviderLine

Further information
There are a few very interesting forum threads about scripted objects:

- http://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13740

- http://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=12139

- https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13460&start=20#p109709

- https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=21330

In addition to the examples presented here have a look at FreeCAD source code src/Mod/TemplatePyMod/FeaturePython.py for more examples.