Draft Workbench

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Revision as of 00:02, 22 November 2018 by Vocx (talk | contribs) (Lowercase and full stops. Added links to the mentioned tools)

The Draft workbench allows you to quickly draw simple 2D objects in the current document, and offers several tools to modify them afterwards. Some of these tools also work on other objects, not only those created with the Draft Workbench. It also provides a complete snapping system, and several utilities to manage objects and settings.

Drawing objects

These are tools for creating objects.

  • Line: draws a line segment between two points.
  • Wire: draws a line made of multiple line segments (polyline).
  • Circle: draws a circle from center and radius.
  • Arc: draws an arc segment from center, radius, start angle and end angle.
  • Ellipse: draws an ellipse from two corner points.
  • Polygon: draws a regular polygon from center, radius, and number of sides.
  • Rectangle: draws a rectangle from two corner points.
  • Text: draws a multi-line text annotation.
  • Dimension: draws a dimension annotation.
  • BSpline: draws a B-Spline from a series of points.
  • Point: inserts a point object.
  • ShapeString: inserts a compound shape representing a text string at a given point.
  • Facebinder: creates a new object from selected faces on existing objects.
  • Bezier Curve: draws a Bezier curve from a series of points.
  • Label: places a label with an arrow pointing to a selected element. introduced in version 0.17

Modifying objects

These are tools for modifying existing objects. They work on selected objects, but if no object is selected, you will be invited to select one.

Utility tools

Additional tools available from the menu Draft → Utilities, or via the right-click context menu, depending on the selected object.

Preferences

  • Preferences: general preferences for the working plane and the drawing tools.
  • Import-Export Preferences: preferences available for importing from and exporting to different file formats.

File formats

The Draft module provides FreeCAD with importers and exporters for the following file formats:

Additional features

  • Snapping: Allows to place new points on special places on existing objects
  • Constraining: Allows to place new points horizontally or vertically in relation to previous points
  • Working with manual coordinates: Allows to enter manual coordinates instead of clicking on screen

Scripting

The Draft module features a complete Draft API so you can use its functions in scripts and macros

Tutorials

Image Module
Arch Module