FreeCAD: Solid Modeling with the Power of Python

FreeCAD: Solid Modeling with the Power of Python

Brad Collette, Daniel Falck

Language: English

Pages: 69

ISBN: 2:00098954

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Solid Modeling with the power of Python

Overview
* Packed with simple and interesting examples of python coding for the CAD world.
* Understand FreeCAD's approach to modeling and see how Python puts unprecedented power in the hands of users.
* Dive into FreeCAD and its underlying scripting language.

In Detail

FreeCAD is a general purpose platform for CAD development. It can be extended to use different workbenches to solve different problems. Targeted squarely at the engineering community, FreeCAD is an open source design application built to be extended. Python, the powerful scripting language, is woven deeply into FreeCAD's DNA and gives users unprecedented power to automate and invent.

"FreeCAD [How-to]" is a lean, fast tour of FreeCAD's major workbenches and design philosophy. The reader will get a hands-on introduction to several modeling techniques and learn how Python makes macro automation and design possible.

FreeCAD allows users to design in a variety of ways; from drawing 2D designs as lines and circles to combining primitive solids into complex 3D shapes. Objects can even be created or modified by code you write in Python. FreeCAD even allows power users to extend the application itself with new dialogs, panels, and scripts. This book will not only show you how to get started using FreeCAD in a traditional GUI mode, but will teach you how to harness its powerful scripting language for more power.

What you will learn from this book
* Creating 3D solid objects with python
* 2D draft design and constraint modeling
* Turning 2D drawings into 3D objects
* Combining simple primitives into complex solids
* Recording Macros
* Creating objects with code
* Importing and exporting data
* Creating a Custom python dialog to automate a task
* Harnessing the constraints engine with python

Approach

Written in cookbook style, this book offers many recipes to create objects, import and export data, create 3D solid objects. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information.

Who this book is written for

If you've been toying around with FreeCAD and want to have more control over your work flow then this book is for you.

The reader needs to have basic knowledge of modeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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one of the daily builds. These are generated automatically by build scripts each day and consequently have had no formal testing. The daily build contains the most recent features and bug fixes committed to the source code by the developers. Daily builds aren't available for Windows but an unstable binary installer is periodically built. Download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/files/ FreeCAD%20Windows/. Building from source Detailed instructions for building FreeCAD from source

provided with icons in the tool bar to make it easy to position the project on the screen. These views are actually orientations of your work and shouldn't be confused with the view windows described previously. The term view also refers to the camera projection type: orthographic or perspective. Freezing and Saving views You can preserve a favorite orientation of your work by freezing it (Shift+F). This adds a menu item for the frozen view to let you easily return to this orientation later.

project is now growing faster than ever; this helps the project to reach higher development speed and quality level, and it is thrilling to see now the first steps of FreeCAD in the professional world. I have also known Dan Falck for a long time, from the old mailing lists, when we were all desperately looking for ways to do CAD work on the Linux platform. Dan is a well-known figure of the Linux, CAD, and CNC world, and worked a lot on HeeksCAD, a very close cousin of FreeCAD, also based on the

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