Constructive solid geometry

Introduction
Constructive solid geometry (CSG) is a modelling paradigm that is used in many traditional CAD systems. It essentially consists of using primitive solid objects and doing boolean operations with them, such as fusion, subtraction and intersection, in order to create a final shape.

In FreeCAD, this method is mostly utilized with the Part Workbench, which has the ability of creating primitive objects like  boxes,  cylinders, and  spheres and fuse them together, or use them to cut other objects with tools like.



Alternatively, the PartDesign Workbench uses a more modern approach than simple CSG; this method is called feature editing, which means creating a base solid, and then adding sequential parametric transformations to obtain a final body.

A PartDesign Body created with the PartDesign Workbench can also be used in a boolean operation with other objects.

Tutorials
The tutorials page provides some examples on creating solids with the Part Workbench that use the CSG method.
 * Traditional modeling, the CSG way
 * Wiffle ball tutorial
 * Basic modeling tutorial