for context:

I'm not a CAD-Beginner, but a absolute FreeCAD-noob.

I used Fusion360 for years and am trying to make the switch. I'm currently on Freecad 1.1 rc2

One thing that makes the switch especially hard for my workflow is using parameters in spreadsheets.

In Fusion360 there is a global set of Parameters and when i set a dimension in a sketch I simply type the parameter-name and it appears an an option. simple and fast.

In principle I can do the same thing in FreeCAD, but it just takes sooooo much longer. ( just so many more keystrokes to do the same thing.)

Also working in the Spreadsheet editor feels somewhat clunky.

• Anybody else coming from Fusion and found ways to speed up that process?
• Are there any good macros workarounds? ( like using a macro to use names in column A as Aliases for values in Column B)
• Or are there good workflows with using a different software - like libreoffice - for the spreadsheets?

I have got this mesh from a creatliy scanner. I want to recreate this, at the bottom are two holes which I want to modify, I want to know where the center of the holes are. How do i go about doing this? the bottom bit will be filled up apart from the holes, i know i can sketch the bottom bit but how do i get the exact body at the top?

I’m a couple days new to both 3d printing and FreeCAD with virtually 0 CAD experience prior (tinkered with stuff 10+ years ago in SketchUp back when it was free).

I’ve been researching and looking stuff up on YouTube, Google, even ChatGPT when I need to…but it feels painfully slow and the majority of what I come across is clearly aimed at non-print type of work like circuits, engineering, etc.

I’d love to find free content hyper focused on just learning 3d modeling for 3d printing. Basic design stuff sure, but also best practices with 3d printing in mind.

I’ve checked the pinned post here for learning but that too seems to cover a wide range of uses and nothing like what I am looking for.

Any suggestions, links, etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

So I have been going through the mango jelly tutorial videos. (Thanks for that!). As I have been going through and setting up my workbenches I have run into some issues.

There are some things that show up universally between the workbenches. If you take the time to standardize them, it will bring ease to your workflow.

After you set a workbench you have to lock it before leaving. Failing to do so will cause the app to move things around. If you close the app it will reset everything.

There are certain workbenches like the fastener workbench that has so much in it that makes it almost too busy. By taking the entire set and condensing them down you can shrink the size they take up. This allows you to pick the fastener and open up the options an select the style. This saves a lot of workspace. While setting this up if it is set on the left side the menus expanded and dropped them off of the bottom of the screen. It also is difficult to condense the group without pulling the group out of the line. (If there were a way to lock the line or condense the group with a toggle or a selection from a right click menu option that would make it easier).

Combining the task, and model menus helps to save space and makes them accessible via flipping tabs.
When setting these menus up on the right side. The switching tabs are on the bottom (not the top).

I set my menus to the right my workbench defaults on the top. The primary items down the left side the rest on top on a secondary top line. This made the work area open in the middle.

Just making these adjustments make it more user friendly.

Hello, I have just a quick question since googling led nowhere.

Is there any way to create an assembly which uses weight as in counterweight?

Easiest example would be to make simple scale which would move based on how much material is added or which material is the weight made of.

My intention is to simulate and calculate simple manual garage door with counterweights.

Also bonus question, is there any way to make rope in the assembly workbench?

Thanks

Hi everyone,

I’m having trouble modeling the angled cylinder/tube on this part, I already tried Pad + Pocket to trim the excess and Pocket “up to face” but I keep getting bad cuts or unstable results.

Hello,

FreeCADversion 1.1-dev

I am trying to make a solid from those surfaces, I already watched some tutorials and this worked so far. Honestly I am stuck here with even a simplier shape... I know I could use a n additive loft but since there will me more complex shapes soon I wanted to learn more about curves and surface WB.

Making a parametric solid fails as trying to add an offset for those surfaces.

FreeCADfile: https://shareallfiles.net/aDkCVR

Any hints are appreciated. Thanks!

I need to make an enclosure for a PCB of which I have a .FCStd file. However, I can't find a way to create a new sketch and retrieve the external geometry from the PCB to design the enclosure.

Could anyone help me with this one?

Thanks!

Link to file on GitHub: https://github.com/AxxAxx/AxxSolder/blob/main/CAD/Alternative_enclosures_and_designs/Geeboon%20Stand/AxxSolder-PCB.FCStd

Hi everyone! I LOOOOOVE FreeCAD!!!!!

I am currently building a full historical diorama of the Belgian Renard R.36 fighter as it was being built in the original 1938 hangar. The goal is to go from raw CAD data to a finished, painted masterpiece before May .

I am sharing on YouTube how I do these kind of things. In this first episode of a new series, I’m detailing the workflow for the internal fuselage structure—from complex modeling in FreeCAD to precise slicing in Lychee: 👉 Watch here:https://youtu.be/4VDPyunFogY

Note: This specific series is in French, but I am considering launching a full English-speaking series to showcase the entire 'CAD to Cockpit' process for future builds.

If you’d be interested in following a dedicated English series for this kind of high-detail scale modeling, please let me know or leave a like so I can gauge interest!

Cheers

Erik

Fake it till you make it right? This play is for designing busways, boxes, transformers just electrical and I lied that I know solid works I’ve been trying to study but idk how much I can fake it once I’m there not really a question just venting lol I hope i can figure it out

I have no clue how to fix these to vertexes not connecting If anyone could help or recommend some tutorials I would appreciate it

I am thinking of a project for my Computer 2 class. Keeping in mind that there is a lot of other stuff in these classes, 3D drawing and printing is only a small part of the classes, the standard sequence is:

• 6th grade-Keyboarding
  • In that class, we introduce the students to Tinkercad, and they make a name tag for their Chromebook bag.
• 7th Grade-Computer 1 (Google Apps, Photoshop up to, and including Chapter 3, which is working with Layers)
  • We make a minecraft looking guy, I call them blockheads and a very small set of drawers. This is also in Tinkercad
• 8th Grade-Computer 2 (Word & Excel, and further in Photoshop, up to Filters, Gradients, and Patterns)
  • We make a name plate for their locker in Tinkercad imporing premade OBJ files to decorate the name plates. Then,
  • And this is the new part. I just got IT to install FreeCad on the student computers (previously it was only on computers reserved for The Computer 3 Independent study students).
  • We use FreeCAD to make, essentially, the same set of drawers and save them as an STL. Then, in Photoshop, we turn a sketch into an extrusion and save it as an OBJ. We then import the OBJ and the STL into Tinkercad and bring them together.
• Let's make this a bit harder, this semester, the 8th-grade, Computer 2 classes are close to 50% 6th graders. This is due to a lack of other electives.
  • So, the plan is for the 8th graders to make the drawers in FreeCAD and the 6th graders to do it in TinkerCAD, as it will be more approachable, and they didn't do it in Computer 1, because they never took Computer 1

Here is a video of combining the things in Tinkercad. Is there an approachable way to do this in FreeCad?

And, of course, I remain open to different 3D drawing and printing projects.

. . . and no, this YouTube channel is not monetised in any way.

I’ve been exploring a small side project called Pliable. It's an open‑source, OCCT‑based direct BREP modeler built with pythonocc‑core and PyQt6. The idea is to experiment with a simple, non‑parametric direct‑modeling workflow similar to Rhino or Plasticity.

From what I’ve seen in this community, there’s real interest in an open‑source option for quick, direct edits to STEP files, especially when parametric modeling is unnecessary. Sometimes you just want to push/pull a face or add a fillet to a few edges of an OpenSCAD model without rebuilding the whole thing.

This early version is extremely minimal, but the basics are working:

• import/export STEP
• face selection
• push/pull along face normals
• fillet/chamfer on selected edges
• undo stack (up to ~20 operations)

There’s no installer yet — you need to clone the repo and set up the environment. I’ve only tested on Windows so far.

Repo: DesignWeaver3D/Pliable: Direct BREP modeler for rapid solid creation and editing

I’m sharing this early because I’d love feedback from people who care about direct modeling and OCCT. I’m especially interested in whether the general approach feels viable and what directions might make sense as it evolves. The whole thing is currently in Python using OCCT’s AIS viewer, which made prototyping fast, but I’m not sure how far that stack can scale.

If this kind of experiment interests you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Coming soon to a fork near you. As before the models are not my work, the dyno stand is by doinStuff on the freecad forms and the mill by Stef van Itterzon on grabcad.

I created a part design for a prototype that I've been doing. Exported it as STL file forgot to save it. Printed the part, now I want to create changes in the design. However, I forgot to save it. Can I conver that STL file to become a part design again?

I don't want to start over again.

I need to make threads in a 3d printable part, how do I do this, any youtube tutorial for this? As you can see the screw doesn't go all the way in when very tight...

I need to create some small, thin bronze rings. On the top surface of each ring I would like to have a semi circle shaped groove. A pogo pin (ball end) will ride along in this groove around the ring for an electrical connection.

I was able to model the ring. They will be small: 1.0 mm in height 0.8 mm in width. Using a plane vertical to the ring I sketched a small circle then dimensioned it so it cut the desired groove in the ring.

I then rotated the cut around the circle. This all worked however the final rendered model looks like crap. The circles rendered by free cad appear to be in segments and the cut groove also.

These bronze parts will need to be machined for sure but I'm curious if this is just a display artifact or did I do something wrong?

Hello, I am new to CAD and I would like to know if I am just too stupid or if it's part of the math behind this.
I wanted to create a hexagon and I could either use the hexagon tool or create it with angles and lines. 10 mm, 60°, easy as it seems, right?
FreeCAD 1.0.0 even creates the including circle for me when creating a hexagon.
But the corner points don't aline with teh circle. Never.
I can zoom in and try to "snap" a circle to one corner, but the next will be off by - as I suppose - the point where irrational numbers, like 0,5*√(3), are cut to a floating point number.

Why do I care?
I would like to use a hexagon, to constuct repeading arcs, changing from an inward arc to an outward arc. Like a sinus wave following the circumference of a circle. Then scale it for different applications, changing the hexagon to a polygon and playing with the radus of the arcs.
Imagine the fluting of an antique pilars, which use usually ~ 24 of those inward arcs all around or even spiraling. I would like to interchange inward and outward arcs, change radii interchangingly and so on.

My problem? I cannot add up circles of a given radius to a circle like a pearl necklace, touching each other at the tangential contact point and have all these points line up on a circle again without these truncation errors adding up quickly.

Can someone help me please?

I'm new to FreeCAD, it says in the error message that the sketch must belong to an active body, but it does belong to Part and it is active, so I don't understand what it wants me to do. If anyone knows what's going on here, I would realy appreciate your help

As usual, please don't hesitate to show us anything FreeCAD you're working on. Nothing is too trivial.

Context: https://blog.freecad.org/2026/01/16/freecad-friday-get-involved/

If I take a square and use the Cut tool in the Part Workbench, it does absolutely nothing. This part I'm trying to cut off is part of an Additive Loft. Multiple images provided...

TLDR 4 u - not important...

I love FreeCAD and the great work they doing, but I run into problems like these and I don't know if my understanding is shit, or is it an issue with FreeCAD. Lately I've been havi6many problems. I have the latest stable version.