Draft Workbench

The draft Module is a work-in-progress and quite experimental module made to add basic 2d drawing functionality to FreeCAD. It is written entirely in python, and is also intended to showcase how far you can extend FreeCAD entirely in python, without even touching the source code.

Currently it is not really usable for production work, but already contains a couple of working basic functions. Feel free to test, and give us a feedback on the discussion page.

The draft workbench is available in your workbenches list. When you activate it, two toolbars will appear; a classical toolbar containing the standard draft commands listed below and a special command bar that has no tool icon on it, but that is used by the different functions to display their controls. On that command bar, you can also change general things like current line color and width. As a sidenote, the command bar (and, IMHO, the whole QT interface) looks much better if you choose the "cleanlooks" style in FreeCAD general preferences...

Tutorial
For an in-depth explanation, read the Draft tutorial (work in progress), or read the quickstart section below to get you quickly on rails.

Quickstart
Not all Draft commands work well in 3D at the moment. So, the best thing to do is to put yourself in orthographic 2D view before starting to draw. To do that, open or create a new document, then press the key (or menu view -> orthographic view) to switch to orthographic mode. Then press the key (or menu view -> standard views -> top) to put you in top view. Now, you are ready to draw. You can also configure freecad (menu edit -> preferences) to always start in orthographic mode.

All draft commands follow more or less the same rules: Drawing tools will ask you to pick points on the screen or enter numeric coordinates, while modification tools will ask you to choose an object to work on first, in case no object is selected. In almost all commands, pressing the key will allow you to snap to existing points,  will constrain your movement horizontally, verically or in relation to an existing segment, and in some tools  will give you extra options such as creating a new object instead of transforming an existing one. The key will always cancel the active command.

Note On some desktop systems (ex. Gnome, Kde), the key is bound by default to moving windows on the desktop. You might need to change that shortcut key in your desktop preferences.

Some commands work in non-horizontal planes too, just make sure the Z coordinate is unlocked when drawing, and place yourself in the appropriate view. Below you will find a more complete description of all available tools.

Importing & exporting
These are functions for opening, importing or exporting other file formats. Opening will open a new document with the contents of the file, while importing will append the file content to the current document. Exporting will save the selected objects to a file. If nothing is selected, then all objects will be exported. Be aware that since the purpose of the Draft module is to work with 2d objects, those importers focus only on 2d objects, and, although DXF and OCA formats do support objects definitions in 3D space (objects are not necessarily flat), they won't import volumetric objects like meshes, 3D faces, etc, but rather lines, circles, texts or flat shapes. Currently supported file formats are:


 * Autodesk .DXF: Imports and exports DXF files created with other CAD applications
 * SVG (as geometry): Imports and exports SVG files created with vector drawing applications
 * Open Cad format .OCA: Imports and exports OCA/GCAD files, a potentially new open CAD file format
 * Airfoil Data Format .DAT: Imports DAT files describing Airfoil profiles

Common behaviours

 * 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
 * Copying: All modification tools can either modify the selected objects or create a modified copy of them. Pressing while using the tool will make a copy
 * Construction Mode: Allows you to put geometry apart from the rest, for easy switch on/switch off
 * All newly created objects adopt current Draft color and width
 * The Draft module also has its preferences screen

API
See the Draft API page for a complete description of the Draft functions that you can use in scripts and macros