This manual is an experiment at taking the opposite way from the official FreeCAD documentation wiki. The wiki is written collaboratively by dozens of community members and, like most wikis, it contains huge amounts of information, but is very hard to access and navigate by newcomers. All workbenches at a glance. One of the biggest difficulty for new users of FreeCAD, is to know in which workbench to find a specific tool. The table below will give you an overview of the most important workbenches and their tools. CLICK HERE TO WATCH PART 2: FreeCAD: Equipment I use:Canon EOS SL2. Freecad software can be used to create two-dimensional (2-D) drawings or three-dimensional (3-D) models.-The course will teach you designing in Freecad software in a step-by-step manner.With this course, you will be able to design your ideas and visualize the concepts and simulate how designs will perform in real world. The FreeCAD interface. FreeCAD uses the Qt framework) to draw and manage its interface. This framework is used in a wide range of applications, so the FreeCAD interface is very classical and presents no particular difficulty to understand. Most buttons are standard and will be found where you expect them (File - Open, Edit - Paste, etc).

Description

Power users have extended FreeCAD with various custom external workbenches that are not integrated into the core source code but are easy to install on an existing FreeCAD distribution. Here we will cover the installation methods for the different operating systems.

Note: starting from version 0.17, FreeCAD features an Addon Manager in the Tools → Addon Manager menu, that allows installing both macros and workbenches. The instructions below are only required if you wish to manually install a workbench. This may be necessary if for some reason the Addon Manager doesn't work but you have access to the workbench downloaded as a .zip package.

Installing on Windows

How to install additional workbenches and addons on Windows

Obsolete

Note: using the 'addons-installer' is not recommended any more. Using the Addon Manager in all systems is the recommended way.

Use the addons-installer from Github.

During Google Summer of Code 2016 student Mandeep Singh started work on an improved version (available here) but that version needs further work before it can be fully integrated in FreeCAD.

Manual Install

Note: This method is possible but not necessary with the introduction of the Addon Manager. Nevertheless, the information here may still be useful to some.

• Download the workbench from github by clicking on the button Clone or Download on the github page (upper right corner) and choosing 'Download ZIP'
• Unpack the downloaded archive on your local hard disk
• Within FreeCAD, locate the macro path by choosing Edit → Preferences → General → Macro and look for the ”Macro path”
• Supposed your Windows-Login is “username” the default macro path is %APPDATA%FreeCAD which is usually C:UsersusernameAppdataRoamingFreeCAD
• Within the macro-directory create (if not already present) a folder called “Mod”
• Within the Mod folder, create a folder with the name of the workbench, for example “Curves”
• Now move the unpacked files and sub-folders of the workbench to the just created workbench-folder
• After restart of FreeCAD you should now have an entry in the workbench selector

Additional Recommendation for updating workbenches

On windows, when updating an already installed workbench, Windows keeps the old .py files as .pyc. Since this may lead to trouble, it is recommended to uninstall the workbench, restart FreeCAD and install the new version of the workbench.

Installing on Linux

How to install additional workbenches and addons on Linux

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Using git

Adding the community-ppa within the ppa-manager.
Installing the workbenches via synaptic packet manager.

In FreeCAD you will now have a new workbench-entry called 'CurvesWB'. Once installed, use git to upgrade to the latest version:

Manual Installation

Note: This method is possible but not necessary with the introduction of the Addon Manager. Nevertheless, the information here may still be useful to some.

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• Download the workbench from github by clicking on the button Clone or Download on the github page (upper right corner) and choosing 'Download ZIP'
• Unpack the downloaded archive on your local hard disk
• Within FreeCAD, locate the macro path by choosing Edit → Preferences → General → Macro and look for the ”Macro path”
• By default, the macro directory is the (hidden) ./.FreeCAD/ directory in your home-directory
• Within the macro-directory create (if not already present) a folder called “Mod”
• Within the Mod/ folder, create a folder with the name of the workbench, for example “Curves”
• Now move the unpacked files and sub-folders of the workbench to the just created workbench-folder
• After restart of FreeCAD you should now have an entry in the workbench selector

Installing on Mac

How to install additional workbenches and addons on MacOS

Manual Installation

Note: This method is possible but not necessary with the introduction of the Addon Manager. Nevertheless, the information here may still be useful to some.

For the sake of this example, say you've chosen the Curves Workbench as the external workbench you want to install:

• Choose and download the git repository of your chosen external workbench as a ZIP file
• Assuming FreeCAD is installed in /Applications/FreeCAD/v0.xx', go to /Applications/FreeCAD/v0.xx' in the Browser, and select FreeCAD.app
• RMB and select 'Show Package Contents', a new window will appear with a folder named 'Contents'
• single-click on the folder 'Contents' and select the folder 'Mod'
• In the folder 'Mod' create a new folder named 'Curves'
• Unzip downloaded repository in the folder 'Contents/Mod/Curves'

General troubleshooting

• Don't use special characters (for example German umlauts) in your windows user name, otherwise FreeCAD will not recognize files and folders in the macro path.
• If you have already set up a user name with special characters either create a new user name or point the macro path to a directory not using special characters.
• Go to Tools → Customize → Workbenches and make sure the workbench is not set to invisible.
• With 32-bit systems and FreeCAD 0.16.6706, after attempts to install, the additional Workbenches may not be available. In this case
  • keep the report view open while starting FreeCAD, and read the error,
  • see this forum thread Assembly2 in Version: 0.16.5602 (Git)

Freecad Manually Install Workbench

• Installation:Download, Windows, Linux, Mac, Additional components, Docker, AppImage, Ubuntu Snap
• Basics:About FreeCAD, Interface, Mouse navigation, Selection methods, Object name, Preferences, Workbenches, Document structure, Properties; Help FreeCAD, Donate

• Help:Tutorials, Video tutorials
• Workbenches:Std Base; Arch, Draft, FEM, Image, Inspection, Mesh, OpenSCAD, Part, PartDesign, Path, Points, Raytracing, Reverse Engineering, Sketcher, Spreadsheet, Start, Surface, TechDraw, Test Framework, Web
• Deprecated or unmaintained workbenches:Complete, Drawing, Robot

• Addons:Addon Manager, External workbenches, Scripting and macros

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• Hubs:User hub, Power users hub, Developer hub

• FreeCAD scripting:Python, Introduction to Python, Python scripting tutorial, FreeCAD Scripting Basics

• Modules:Builtin modules, Units, Quantity
• Workbenches:Workbench creation, Gui Commands, Commands, Installing more workbenches
• Meshes and Parts:Mesh Scripting, Topological data scripting, Mesh to Part, PythonOCC

• Parametric objects:Scripted objects, Viewproviders(Custom icon in tree view)
• Scenegraph:Coin (Inventor) scenegraph, Pivy
• Graphical interface:Interface creation, Interface creation with UI files, Interface creation completely in Python(1, 2, 3, 4, 5), PySide, PySide examples beginner, intermediate, advanced
• Macros:Macros, How to install macros
• Embedding:Embedding FreeCAD, Embedding FreeCADGui

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• Other:Expressions, Code snippets, Line drawing function, FreeCAD vector math library(deprecated)

• Hubs:User hub, Power users hub, Developer hub