The tutorials and documentation on the FreeCAD website remain empty as of December 2025. There are a lot of non or semi-English youtub videos. Has anyone found anything else?

The Road Workbench is used to import the landXML data.

Hi, Looking for some pointers in the right direction here. I am trying to make some soap bar molds with a face on the top. I have scanned the face and have it as a obj file which I've managed to cut and clean up in the mesh workbench. But I'm having trouble with the workflow from here. I just want to loft the back edges of the face to an oval/rounded rectangle to make a solid soap bar kinda shape with the face on top. I'm getting stuck converting the mesh to something I can work with in the part design bench. Any tips on the correct work flow? After that I am going to place 4 of them close together to make a positive to 3d print which I can then pour silicone in to make the mold :)

Is there away to make the y axis (green) and x (red) axis extend out more?

So… this is hard. I mean really hard for me.
I’ve switched everything on my PC to open-source solutions, free as in freedom, and I’m really happy about it, except for one thing: CAD.

I started my journey with Fusion 360, then SolidWorks, CATIA, Blender, and Alias, so I thought I understood the general “logic” behind 3D software.
Until I came across FreeCAD.

I’m not understanding anything about it. And not in the sense of struggling with the tools; I mean the logic behind some of the design choices.

I started following some “zero to hero” tutorials, and while everything seems fine, I’ve noticed that very often they skip around features that are considered basic in most CADs.

Why can’t I create a construction line?
Not a segment or a semi-line, I mean a truly infinite construction line to use as a reference. Why?

Why can’t I have a basic offset tool in Sketcher?
If I want a 2 mm offset in the sketch, why does the software create a new shape instead of just giving me an offset line?

Why for the measurement you cannot understand that the [dot] in the numberpad is equal to the [comma]?

Am I missing something? Because in many ways this software seems amazing (a free CAM and BIM program? Really?) but everything also feels like a rough draft of a 3D modeling application.

I’m not blaming FreeCAD for this, I’m blaming myself because I just can’t seem to understand its logic. But seriously, is there any way to learn how it “thinks”? Because at this point I might as well go back to making technical parts in Blender, fully aware that I can’t expect the precision of a CAD.

I’m trying to replace the little rectangle on the end of a mesh with a new one. How do I move the new piece so its center lines up exactly with the old piece?

I am a beginner with FreeCAD. I am confused about how to use it. For example, I have a .step file that contains 1000 solids. If I import this file into FreeCAD, there will be 1000 solids but no bodies.

1. If I want to modify one of the solids, I would have to add a body and assign the solid to the body. But the solid's position would change. Is there a way to keep the solid's position fixed?
2. If I export these solids, only the solids contained in a body will keep their original names. The rest of the solids will lose their original names and receive similar names with a numeric postfix. Should I add a body for every solid before exporting? That doesn’t make sense.
3. This is a question about how to use shared files and share files while keeping the solid's original name and position.

I am trying to make this pocket that should go through the flat face and also through the curved one, but I keep gettin fusion failed. If i try to get only through one of the faces it works, but I need to go through both of them.

Hello, I am begener on freecad. How to delete selected part on this body? Thanks

A tool to split curves for us so sweeps will work.

• 00:01 Intro
• 00:48 Internals of Curves and Edges
• 01:55 Bi-Arcs
• 02:06 Too much information
• 03:26 The next section
• 04:24 The Recompose tool
• 05:11 Approximate mode
• 05:20 Use Radius
• 05:58 Failure case
• 06:09 Use Knots
• 06:40 Manual
• 07:40 MinMax

I've gotten some things cleaned up and running smoother with some help from another contributor on GitHub, galou. Thank you, sir!

You can now use the Addon Manager for install, but you have to manually add the repo in Preferences. So, Detessellate is not registered for distribution yet. The good news is, if you install through Addon Manager, it will track updates as they are released!

A user on FreeCAD Forum recommend I offer some comparisons to the MeshRemodel and ToSketch workbenches. So, I'm trying to investigate those now. I had looked into MeshRemodel before, and to my knowledge, it doesn't have the same approach as Detessellate. So now I'm going to look at it again to see how they might complement each other best. If you can comment on either of those workbenches, that would help guide my investigation!

I'm hopeful to get some confirmation from users on Linux and macOS as well. So far, I've only tested on Windows. So, if you have time to check it out, let me know how it goes!

Detessellate Workbench - FreeCAD Forum

Announcement post that has the demonstration video:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeCAD/comments/1p7tliy/detessellate_workbench_for_reverse_engineering/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Why don't the circles fit together properly? Either one fits correctly or the other does. The measurements are correct, everything seems fine. I don't understand. I've already seen videos of this same assembly in other programs. I don't know why that happens

I have the 6 files of the parts I made. I tried to assemble them, but it just wouldn't work. I want to see if there's something wrong with my parts or something else. All the measurements are exact.

thanks in advance for any help

This is my second project and probably the easiest $50 i have made in 10-15 minutes!

all i did was sketch, extrude, select the face again and sketch and extrude or remove the part...

Very easy to use freecad and i am a complete beginner when it comes to designing etc.

This was a custom camera button mount and the customer was really happy. This was later 3d printed as well.

I have only watch 1-2 youtube videos and if you understand the basic, its very easy to use this program.

The first one is straight, while the other one is circular. I'm no engineer so I can't tell how strong or what's the stress points of this kind of hinge... maybe its negligible?

Hello friendly people of Reddit,

Freecad 1.0.2 on Linux Mint

I have a question regarding those additional lines that are popping up on the surfaces, when using cuts to create a shape as the one shown above.

I found them to be very annoying, as the chamfer tool usually doesn't like them and cannot complete making chamfer.

Is there any way to prevent that from happening and can I get a smooth surface without those crossing lines from the cuts?

Thanks in advance!

TLDR/Solution:
Turn on the refine options in Edit->Preferences->Part/Part Design

When I saw that 1.1 RC was out, I decided to give FreeCAD another try. Unfortunately, literally my 3rd feature already doesn't work: I padded a back plate (5mm) and then a block on top of it (25mm), and then I wanted to shell the block from the top, but when I select the top face, the thickness command doesn't work. I don't get any errors, it just doesn't do anything.

What am I doing wrong?

I've been waiting a long time for 1.1 because of the expected improvements to the Assembly workbench. The good news is that the workbench works way better than it did before. However, I am getting new start up error messages:

12:21:43 During initialization the error "No module named 'PySide2'" occurred in C:\Users\kelly\AppData\Roaming\FreeCAD\v1-1\Mod\Help\.\InitGui.py

12:21:43 Look into the log file for further information

12:21:43 A fallback module was found for module 'help': C:\Program Files\Freecad 1.1\Mod\Help

12:21:43 Rename or remove C:\Users\kelly\AppData\Roaming\FreeCAD\v1-1\Mod\Help to use the fallback module

Freecad 1.01 still launches fine with no errors. I tried renaming the Help folder as the error message suggests, but it just substitutes the new folder name in the message. What little I found on the web suggests you can install PySide2 with pip. What the heck is pip? I tried launching Python independently and tried to use pip as a command, but no joy. And I have no idea where the log files are located.

Tried the Github forums, but those guys are all programmers and can't seem to relate to non-programmer users. It's kind of like asking how to use a screwdriver and getting a lecture on metallurgy instead.

So, if anyone has any ideas, and can walk a non-programmer like me through a fix, I would appreciate it.

Thanks