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TechDraw workbench icon TechDraw Workbench

Introduction

The TechDraw Workbench is used to produce basic technical drawings from 3D models created with another workbench such as Part, PartDesign, or Arch, or imported from other applications. Each drawing is a Page, which can contain various Views of drawable objects such as Part::Features, PartDesign::Bodies, App::Part groups, and Document Object groups. The resulting drawings can be used for things like documentation, manufacturing instructions, contracts, permits, etc.

Dimensions, sections, hatched areas, annotations, and SVG symbols can be added to the page, which can be further exported to different formats like DXF, SVG, and PDF.

TechDraw was officially included in FreeCAD starting with version 0.17; it is intended to replace the unsupported Drawing Workbench. Both workbenches are still provided in v0.17, but the Drawing Workbench may be removed in future releases. To keep up with TechDraw plans and developments, visit the TechDraw Roadmap.

If your primary goal is the production of complex 2D drawings and DXF files, and you don't need 3D modelling, FreeCAD may not be the right choice for you. You may wish to consider a dedicated software program for technical drafting instead, such as LibreCAD or QCad.

Pages

These are tools for creating Page objects.

Views

These are tools for creating View objects.

Clips

These are tools to create and manage Clip objects (clipped views).

Decorations

These are tools to decorate pages or views:

Dimensions

These are tools for creating and working with Dimension objects.

Linear dimensions can be based on two points, on one line, or on two lines.

Annotations

The annotation tools are for "marking up" a drawing with additional information.

Extensions

These are tools to improve your TechDraw drawings.

Some of these tools have yet to be released.

Attributes and modifications

Centerlines and threading

Dimensions

Export

These are tools for exporting pages to other applications.

Additional features

Preferences

  • Preferences: preferences for the default values of the drawing page such as projection angle, colors, text sizes, and line styles.

Scripting

The TechDraw tools can be used in macros and from the Python console by using two APIs.

Limitations

  • TechDraw drawings and its API are not interchangeable with the Drawing Workbench and its API. It is possible to convert Drawing Pages to TechDraw Pages using a Python script (moveViews.py).
  • It is possible to have both TechDraw and Drawing Pages in the same FreeCAD document, as each page is completely independent from each other.
  • There are minor differences in specifying editable texts in SVG templates compared to the Drawing module. In TechDraw the scaling of the SVG document affects the position of the editable text fields. See the forum discussion TechDraw templates scale for more details.
  • Do not cut, copy and paste TechDraw objects in the Tree view as this generally does not work out well.
  • Do not drag TechDraw objects in the Tree view with the mouse.

Tutorials

Video tutorials by sliptonic

{{TechDraw Tools navi}}

Workbenches

documentation index > Workbenches > TechDraw Workbench