Sandbox:Piffpoof9-1c

Introduction
This tutorial is meant to introduce the reader to the basic workflow of the Part Workbench to make a model. This will be done using the Thickness tool and Boolean operations of the Part Design workbench,



Problem Background
We're going to construct a model of a housing for a lock - like the lock on a door. After looking at the task, we have decided we will make this in 3 pieces: And because this is a Part workbench tutorial, we will use the Part workbench.
 * a plate at the back of the lock housing
 * the sides of the lock housing
 * the front plate of the lock housing which will have the aperture through which the key passes

Preparation
FreeCAD has numerous facilities and features. To make our work easier in this tutorial, we need to make sure some of them are visible. From the menu bar at the top of the screen select the option. This will produce the Combo View which is a browser with two panes, one above the other. The upper pane has two tabs Model and Tasks - select Model. The lower pane also has two tabs View and Data - select Data.

Viewing Work in Progress
While working through the tutorial, utilise the Standard View icons built into FreeCAD which will allow you to manipulate your viewpoint and so therefore better see what is being done. The icons are:, , , , , , , , all of which are described on the page Standard View Menu. Manipulating the viewpoint does not effect any of the objects being constructed. The very nature of 3-dimensional modeling means that often some of the result of an operation will be on an aspect of the model not currently visible. Judicious use of the viewpoint allows the modeler to fully appreciate the model being developed.

Creating the First Cube

 * 1) It's now a good time to exit the Sketcher and have the previous steps saved. Click on the Close button at the top of the Tasks Tab of the Combo View

Note: you can save your work at any time in FreeCAD, either in the Sketcher or not, by clicking the Save button.

Results
The objects we have created now constitute the housing for a lock.

There is an | example data set #4 which has the results so far. You can download this and compare it to your own results. Certain things like the positioning of labels on the Sketches may change depending on zoom levels. So your the positioning of your labels may differ but the dimensions and the list of Constraints should be identical.

Further Ideas

 * Create a key to fit this lock (see tutorial XXX)
 * Model some working of real lock inside our lock housing - now that would be complex!

Summary
We used the following tools in this tutorial:

Further Information

 * To learn more about the Part Workbench, see Part Workbench.

To Do On Tutorial

 * 0.16 specific changes
 * View->Views->Combo View becomes View->Panels->Combo View
 * View->Views->Combo View becomes View->Panels->Combo View