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This area is the main help area for newcomers to FreeCAD.

Please note that like FreeCAD itself, these pages are in continuous development. FreeCAD already features many interesting tools for the final user, and more are continuously added, which is why at the moment there is still missing or outdated documentation for the end user.

But don't feel discouraged, browse the contents of this section, and, if you cannot find the information you need, don't hesitate to ask! Among the developers or in the small but growing FreeCAD users community, there will certainly be someone who can help you. You can leave comments related to this wiki documentation site on the FreeCAD help forum and ask your questions there.

And if you have some information you would like to appear here, why not contribute and help us make this manual grow. Head to the Help FreeCAD page, that will help you to get started.

If you would like to know how the development of FreeCAD has started years ago visit the History page.

Using FreeCAD

Introduction

• Application Overview: A general overview of FreeCAD
• Installing: How to install FreeCAD on Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac
• Getting started: A quick overview of the available tools
• FAQ: Frequently asked questions
• Tutorials covering different parts of FreeCAD

Basic Application

• Mouse Model: The use of the mouse to navigate in the 3D space
• Document structure: How is a FreeCAD document organized
• Preferences and Customization: How you can configure FreeCAD to your needs
• Properties: How objects properties work in FreeCAD
• Workbench Concept: How the FreeCAD interface is organized
• Macros: How to easily automate often repeated tasks
• File formats: The different file formats that FreeCAD can read and write

Workbenches

These are the base workbenches bundled with every installation of FreeCAD:

• The Arch Workbench for working with architectural elements.
• The Complete Workbench hold all commands and features from all the modules and workbenches which met certain quality criteria.
• The Draft Workbench contains 2D tools and basic 2D and 3D CAD operations.
• The Drawing Workbench for displaying your 3D work on a 2D sheet.
• The FEM Workbench provides Finite Element Analysis (FEA) workflow.

• The Image Workbench for working with bitmap images.
• The Inspection Workbench is made to give you specific tools for examination of shapes. It is still in development.
• The Mesh Workbench for working with triangulated meshes.
• The OpenSCAD Workbench for interoperability with OpenSCAD and repairing Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) model history.
• The Part Workbench for working with CAD parts.

• The Part Design Workbench for building Part shapes from sketches.
• The Path Workbench is used to produce G-Code instructions. It is still in a stage of development. Only basic functions in 0.16
• The Plot Workbench is used to edit and save output plots created from other modules and tools.
• The Points Workbench for working with point clouds.
• The Raytracing Workbench for working with ray-tracing (rendering)

• The Reverse Engineering Workbench is intended to give you specific tools to convert shapes/solids/meshes into parametric FreeCAD-compatible features. It is still in development.
• The Robot Workbench for studying robot movements.
• The Ship Workbench FreeCAD-Ship works over Ship entities, that must be created on top of provided geometry.
• The Sketcher Workbench for working with geometry-constrained sketches.
• The Spreadsheet Workbench for creating and manipulating spreadsheet data.

• The Start Center Workbench allows you to quickly jump to one of the most common workbenches.
• The TechDraw Workbench is the more advanced and feature-rich successor of Drawing
• The Test Framework Workbench is for debugging FreeCAD.
• The Web Workbench provides you with a browser window instead of the 3D-View within FreeCAD.

External Workbenches

Power users have extended FreeCAD with various custom external workbenches, that are not integrated into the FreeCAD source code, but are easy to install on an existing FreeCAD installation. See here for an overview of the already available workbenches. For instructions how to install these workbenches refer to the tutorial How to install additional workbenches.

Macros

Power users have written various macros to enhance FreeCAD with more capabilities for a list of the macros refer to the page macros recipes. For instructions how to install the macros refer to the tutorial How to install macros.

Reference

• Commands Reference: A complete list of the available FreeCAD commands.

Online Help

This is the official FreeCAD online help. Please note that the whole online help system is currently in rework. It will be used to generate a .CHM file, that will be distributed with the binary packages of FreeCAD. At the moment the online help summarizes some of the most complete sections of this wiki.

• Online help system - Table of Contents

More

• The Power users hub is the place to go if you would like to see more advanced use of FreeCAD
• David is a very low cost 3D scanning system that can already work well with FreeCAD
• Architecture workflow : An example of how FreeCAD can begin to have its preliminary place in an architecture workflow...
• If you would like to help FreeCAD, head to the Help FreeCAD page.
• The FreeCAD Community Portal lists projects made by community members around FreeCAD.
• Don't understand a term or phrase as used in FreeCAD? Try the Glossary page.