3D view

From FreeCAD Documentation
Revision as of 06:42, 21 September 2019 by Vocx (talk | contribs) (→‎Actions: MenuCommand template. Small fixes.)

Introduction

The 3D view of FreeCAD is an instance of a Coin3D scenegraph. Coin3D is a library that implements the OpenInventor 2.1 scene description standard.

By the default the 3D view shows a small widget with coordinate axes, and the navigation cube also with coordinate axes; the grid can be displayed and configured using the Draft Workbench.

Actions

When the default Start Workbench is active, right clicking on the 3D view shows only one command:

  • Navigation styles: different button styles to use with a 3-button mouse or laptop trackpad.

However, once a Workbench is loaded, there are additional commands:

  • Link actions: creates different types of App::Link objects. introduced in version 0.19
  • Fit all: pan and zoom the 3D view to fit all objects in the document in the screen.
  • Fit selection: pan and zoom the 3D view to fit the currently selected object in the screen.
  • Draw style: solid, wireframe, and point options.
  • Standard views: isometric, top, bottom, left, right.
  • Measure: create some measurements on the 3D view with the selected objects, or clear the measurements on the screen.
  • Document window: docked, undocked, and fullscreen.

Additionally, depending on the workbench and object that is active, other command menus may become available. For example, with the Part Workbench and one object selected:

  • Appearance: color and sizes of lines and vertices, and color of faces.
  • Toggle visibility: hide or show.
  • Toggle selectability: set to be able to be selected or not. Change the property by toggling ViewSelectable in the Property editor.
  • Go to selection: select the object in the tree view.
  • Random color: assign a random color to the object.
  • Delete: delete the object.

For example, with the Draft Workbench and one object selected:

  • Draft
  • Utilities

Details

Since FreeCAD uses Qt as its graphical toolkit, FreeCAD uses the Quarter library to use Coin3D in a Qt environment.

Moreover, it is possible to interact directly with the 3D view scenegraph from the Python console by using the Python library Pivy.

For more information see the power user documentation: