External workbenches

Introduction
External workbenches are those created by power users which haven't been integrated into the main FreeCAD source code.

Most of these workbenches can be installed from the Addon Manager (menu ). For manual installation see Installing more workbenches. If there are specific instructions or prerequisites for using these workbenches, these should be noted in each workbench's home page.

These workbenches aren't supported by the main FreeCAD development team, so they aren't tested to work with every version of FreeCAD. Questions, bug reports, and improvement requests should be made directly to the authors of the particular workbench.

The lists in this page are organized in topics, but not all of them are available in the Addon Manager. See external workbench list for an alphabetic list of those workbenches that really appear in the Addon Manager.

Current extensions
The workbenches marked with are not recommended in recent versions of the software for different reasons, for example, they are obsolete, or unmaintained, or superseded by a newer workbench, or maybe they don't work with Python 3 or with Qt5, so they should be avoided.

Architecture and construction

 * Civil Engineering is a proposed workbench that intends to combine and develop different tools of interest to civil engineers, including those working with road engineering, terrain topology and geographic data.

Assembly and animation
assembly workbenches are generally incompatible with each other. If you create an assembly with one of these workbenches, you should stick to the original workbench, and not use another assembly workbench in the same document.

Pseudo-assembly
These workbenches don't use constraints to keep relationships between parts, but simply re-position the parts in space.

Deprecated extensions

 * Assembly2 provides tools to create multi-part assemblies. It is unmaintained since 2016. Consider using A2plus instead.
 * cura_engine (github link) is an extension that integrates CuraEngine into FreeCAD in order to facilitate gcode generation for 3D printing. This addon is unmaintained since 2014 and no longer works with recent versions of CuraEngine.
 * Drawing Dimensioning adds dimensioning and annotation tools to the Drawing Workbench. It is deprecated since FreeCAD 0.17. Consider using TechDraw Workbench instead.
 * NavigationIndicator (github link) is an extension that adds an indicator for the mouse navigation style in the status bar. Since FreeCAD 0.17 this extension is obsolete, as the indicator is included natively in FreeCAD.
 * persistenttoolbars (github link) is a small extension to keep the toolbars in their locations. Since FreeCAD 0.17 this extension is obsolete, as the functionality is included natively in FreeCAD.
 * pluginloader (github link) is a small extension that allows the user to install macros, external workbenches, and other extensions in FreeCAD. Since FreeCAD 0.17 this utility is obsolete, as this functionality is already provided by the Addon Manager.

Translating external workbenches
See the wiki page for more information Translating an external workbench