3D view

From FreeCAD Documentation
Revision as of 21:49, 25 September 2019 by Vocx (talk | contribs) (→‎Actions: select the object in the tree view.)

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.

Certain properties of the view, like background color, mouse navigation style, and zooming steps, can be configured in the Preferences editor.

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 by loading 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:

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