3D view

Introduction
The 3D view of FreeCAD is an instance of a Coin3D scenegraph. Coin3D is a library that implements the OpenInventor 2.1 scene description standard.

Certain properties of the view, like background color, mouse navigation style, and zooming steps, can be configured in the preferences editor.



Actions
link actions were added in version 0.19.

Since the tree view lists most objects that are visible in the 3D view, many of the actions are the same to those that can be executed from the tree view.

When the default Start Workbench is active, right clicking on the 3D view shows only one command:
 * : different button styles to use with a 3-button mouse or laptop trackpad.

However, once a Workbench is loaded, there are additional commands:
 * : Make Link.
 * : Simple group, Group with links, Group with transform links.
 * : pans and zooms the view to fit all objects in the document on the screen.
 * : pans and zooms the view to tightly fit the currently selected object on the screen.
 * : as is, flat lines, shaded, wireframe, points, hidden line, no shading.
 * : isometric, front, top, right, rear, bottom, left, rotate left, rotate right.
 * : create some measurements on the 3D view with the selected objects, or clear the measurements on the screen.
 * : docked, undocked, and fullscreen.

Additionally, depending on the workbench and object that is active, other command menus may become available. For example, with the Part Workbench and one object selected:
 * : launch the Appearance dialog to change color and sizes of lines and vertices, and color of faces.
 * : hide or show.
 * : set to be able to be selected or not. Change the property by toggling in the Property editor.
 * : select the object in the tree view.
 * : assign a random color to the object.
 * : delete the object.

And with the Draft Workbench and one object selected:
 * : creation and modification commands from this workbench.
 * : auxiliary commands from this workbench.

Details
Since FreeCAD uses Qt as its graphical toolkit, FreeCAD uses the Quarter library to use Coin3D in a Qt environment.

Moreover, it is possible to interact directly with the 3D view scenegraph from the Python console by using the Python library Pivy.

For more information see the power user documentation:
 * Scenegraph, description of Coin3D.
 * Pivy, usage of Coin3D from the Python console.
 * Third party libraries used by FreeCAD.