TechDraw Workbench

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Revision as of 21:49, 24 November 2018 by Vocx (talk | contribs) (Lowercase; link; image and not file)

Introduction

The Technical Drawing workbench (TechDraw) is used to produce basic technical drawings from 3D models created with another workbench such as Part, PartDesign, or Arch, or imported from other applications. Each drawing is a Page, which can contain various Views of drawable objects such as Part::Features, PartDesign::Bodies, App::Part groups, and Document Object groups. The resulting drawings can be used for things like documentation, manufacturing instructions, contracts, permits, etc.

Dimensions, sections, hatched areas, annotations, and SVG symbols can be added to the page, which can be further exported to different formats like DXF, SVG, and PDF.

TechDraw was officially included in FreeCAD starting with version 0.17; it is intended to replace the unsupported Drawing Workbench. Both workbenches are still provided in v0.17, but the Drawing Workbench may be removed in future releases. To keep up with TechDraw plans and developments, visit the TechDraw Roadmap.

FreeCAD is primarily a 3D modelling application, and thus doesn't have many 2D drawing tools, which are mostly included in the Draft and Sketcher Workbenches. If your primary goal is the production of complex 2D drawings and DXF files, and you don't need 3D modelling, you may wish to consider a dedicated software program for technical drafting such as LibreCAD, QCad, TurboCad, and others.

Pages

These are tools for creating Page objects.

Views

These are tools for creating View objects.

Clips

These are tools to create and manage clipped views.

Dimensions

These are tools for working with dimensions. Linear dimensions can be based on two points, one line or two lines.

Import/Export

These are tools for exporting pages to other applications.

Decoration

These are tools for changing the appearance of Pages and Views.

Additional features

  • Hatching: TechDraw supports a number of hatching techniques.
  • Line Groups: default weights can be assigned to various line types.
  • Templates: the default templates defined for the Pages.

Preferences

The TechDraw module has a preferences screen to adjust default values.

Scripting

The TechDraw Workbench features a Python API that can be used in scripts and macros.

Limitations

  • TechDraw drawings and Python API are not interchangeable with the Drawing Module. It is possible to convert Drawing Pages to TechDraw Pages using Python (moveViews.py). It is possible to have both TechDraw and Drawing Pages in the same FreeCAD document, as each page is completely independent from each other.
  • There are minor differences in specifying editable texts in SVG templates compared to the Drawing module. See forum discussion here.
  • Do not Cut/Copy/Paste TechDraw objects. This does not generally work out well.

Tutorials

Start Workbench
Test Framework Workbench