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This is the documentation website of FreeCAD. It is written by the community of FreeCAD users and developers, and is continuously being updated and extended. It might therefore contain errors, inaccuracies, or articles that describe functionality that is not yet available on the version you have installed. We try our best to fix these and make this documentation better, don't hesitate to help and contribute!

Discovering FreeCAD


FreeCAD is an open-source general purpose parametric 3D CAD modeler, made for product design, that is, anything you plan to build in the real world. It is mainly made for two categories of users: Professional users from the fields of mechanical engineering and product design but also from a wider range of uses around engineering, such as architecture or other engineering specialties, and also hobbyist and casual users who need a tool to model objects they want to build or 3D print.

Modeling for product design is usually a complex task, where precision is important. FreeCAD is therefore also a complex tool with a fair learning curve. This documentation will hopefully help to make this learning phase an interesting and enjoyable experience.

Discovering and installing FreeCAD

 * About FreeCAD: A better and deeper description of the FreeCAD project and application
 * Features list: A list of the main features you will find in FreeCAD CLEANUP
 * Screenshots: A collection of screenshots showing how the FreeCAD application looks like CLEANUP
 * Download instructions, or the best ways to get or update FreeCAD depending on your platform
 * Detailed installation instructions for Windows, Linux and Mac
 * FAQ: The most frequent asked questions. This will help you with frequent problems and questions

First steps

 * Getting started: A quick overview of the FreeCAD application and its typical workflows
 * Navigating in the 3D space: A complete description of the different ways to use the mouse in FreeCAD
 * Working with parametric objects CLEANUP

Working with workbenches
The FreeCAD interface is based on the concept of workbenches. Workbenches are sets of tools typically designed for a specific task. Switching between these workbenches changes several parts of the FreeCAD interface such as toolbars and menus. Most of the tasks you will do in FreeCAD will take place inside one or more of these workbenches.

[[Image:Workbench_Part.png|16px]] Part workbench
The Part Workbench provides basic tools for working with solid parts: primitives, such as cube and sphere, and simple geometric operations and boolean operations. The Part workbench provides the foundation of FreeCAD's geometry system, and is used by almost all other workbenches.

[[Image:Workbench_Draft.png|16px]] Draft workbench
The Draft Workbench provides tools doing basic 2D CAD drafting: lines, circles, etc... and also provides generic handy tools that work with all FreeCAD objects, such as move, rotate or scale. It also provides several drawing aids, such as grid and snapping.


 * [[Image:Workbench_PartDesign.png|16px]] The Part Design Workbench for building Part shapes from sketches
 * [[Image:Workbench_Mesh.png|16px]] The Mesh Module for working with triangulated meshes
 * [[Image:Workbench_Image.png|16px]]     The Image Module for working with bitmap images
 * [[Image:Raytracing.png|16px]]          The Raytracing Module for working with ray-tracing (rendering)
 * [[Image:Workbench_Drawing.png|16px]]   The Drawing workbench for displaying your 3D work on a 2D sheet
 * [[Image:Workbench_Robot.png|16px]]     The Robot Module for studying robot movements
 * [[Image:Workbench_Sketcher.png|16px]]  The Sketcher Module for working with geometry-constrained sketches
 * [[Image:Arch.png|16px]]                The Arch Module for working with architectural elements
 * [[Image:Workbench_OpenSCAD.png|16px]]  The OpenSCAD Module for interoperability with OpenSCAD and repairing CSG model history
 * [[Image:Workbench_Assembly.png|16px]]  The Assembly Module for working with multiple shapes, multiple documents, multiple files, multiple relationships...
 * [[Image:Workbench_Mesh.png|16px]]      The Fem Module for Pre- and Post-processing FEM studies
 * FreeCAD-Ship-Ico.png     The Ship Workbench FreeCAD-Ship works over Ship entities, that must be created on top of provided geometry.
 * Plot_Save.png            The Plot Workbench The Plot module allows to edit and save output plots created from other modules and tools.
 * Spreadsheet Create.png            The Spreadsheet Workbench for creating and manipulating spreadsheet data

Customizing FreeCAD

 * Interface Customization: How to customize the interface, modify and adapt the workbench toolbars and keyboard shortcuts to your needs.
 * Setting user preferences

Python scripting

 * The FreeCAD Document

Reference

 * Commands reference: The complete list of FreeCAD commands
 * Tutorials: All available FreeCAD tutorials
 * Python API reference: The auto-generated python API reference of FreeCAD