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Draft Workbench

Introduction​

The Draft_Workbench Draft Workbench is primarily focused on the creation and modification of 2D objects in FreeCAD. But it is not restricted to the XY plane of the global coordinate system. Its objects can have any orientation and position in 3D space, and some Draft objects can either be planar or non-planar.

Draft objects can be used for general drafting, similar to what can be done with Inkscape or AutoCAD. But they can also form the base for the creation of 3D objects in other workbenches. A Draft Wire may define the path of an Arch Wall, a Draft Polygon can be extruded with Part Extrude, etc. Many of the Draft modifier tools can be applied to 2D and 3D objects created with other workbenches as well. You can, for example, move a Sketch or create a Draft OrthoArray from a Part object.

The Draft Workbench also provides tools to define a working plane, a grid, and a snapping system to precisely control the position of geometry.

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.

Draft_Workbench_Example

The image shows the grid aligned with the XY plane. On the left, in white, are several planar objects. On the right, a non-planar Draft Wire used as the Path Object of a Draft PathArray.

Drafting​

  • image Line: creates a straight line.
  • image Polyline: creates a polyline (also called wire), a sequence of several connected line segments.
  • image Fillet: creates a fillet, a rounded corner, or a chamfer, a straight edge, between two Draft Lines.
  • image Arc tools:
    • image Arc: creates a circular arc from a center, a radius, a start angle and an aperture angle.
    • image Arc by 3 points: creates a circular arc from three points that define its circumference.
  • image Circle: creates a circle from a center and a radius.
  • image Ellipse: creates an ellipse from two points defining a rectangle in which the ellipse will fit.
  • image Rectangle: creates a rectangle from two points.
  • image Polygon: creates a regular polygon from a center and a radius.
  • image B-spline: creates a B-spline curve from several points.
  • image Bézier tools:
  • image Point: creates a simple point.
  • image Facebinder: creates a surface object from selected faces.
  • image ShapeString](https://wiki.freecad.org/Draft_ShapeString): creates a compound shape that represents a text string.
  • image Hatch: creates hatches on the planar faces of a selected object. introduced in version 0.20

Annotation​

  • image Text: creates a multi-line text at a given point.
  • image Dimension: creates a linear dimension, a radial dimension or an angular dimension.
  • image Label: creates a multi-line text with a 2-segment leader line and an arrow.
  • image Annotation styles: allows you to define styles that affect the visual properties of annotation-like objects.

Modification​

  • image Move: moves or copies selected objects from one point to another.
  • image Rotate: rotates or copies selected objects around a center point by a given angle.
  • image Scale: scales or copies selected objects around a base point.
  • image Mirror: creates mirrored copies from selected objects.
  • image Offset: offsets each segment of a selected object over a given distance, or creates an offset copy of the selected object.
  • image Trimex: trims or extends a selected object.
  • image Stretch: stretches objects by moving selected points.
  • image Clone: creates linked copies, clones, of selected objects.
  • image Array tools:
    • image Array: creates an orthogonal array from a selected object. It can optionally create a Link array.
    • image Polar array: creates an array from a selected object by placing copies along a circumference. It can optionally create a Link array.
    • image Circular array: creates an array from a selected object by placing copies along concentric circumferences. It can optionally create a Link array.
    • image Path array: creates an array from a selected object by placing copies along a path.
    • image Path Link array: idem, but create a Link array instead of a regular array.
    • image Point Array: creates an array from a selected object by placing copies at the points from a point compound.
    • image Point Link array: idem, but create a Link array instead of a regular array.
  • image Edit: puts selected objects in Draft Edit mode. In this mode the properties of objects can be edited graphically.
  • image Subelement highlight: temporarily highlights selected objects, or the base objects of selected objects.
  • image Join: joins Draft Lines and Draft Wires into a single wire.
  • image Split: splits a Draft Line or Draft Wires at a specified point or edge.
  • image Upgrade: upgrades selected objects.
  • image Downgrade: downgrades selected objects.
  • image Wire to B-spline: converts Draft Wires to Draft BSplines and vice versa.
  • image Draft to Sketch: converts Draft objects to Sketcher Sketches and vice versa.
  • image Set slope: slopes selected Draft Lines or Draft Wires by increasing, or decreasing, the Z coordinate of all points after the first one.
  • image Flip dimension: rotates the dimension text of selected Draft Dimensions 180° around the dimension line.
  • image Shape 2D view: creates 2D projections from selected objects.

Draft Tray​

The Draft Tray allows selecting the working plane, defining style settings, toggling construction mode, and specifying the active layer or group. image

  • image Select Plane: selects the current Draft working plane. Also available in the menu: Draft → Utilities → image Select Plane.
  • image Set style: sets the default style for new objects. Also available in the menu: Draft → Utilities → image Set style.
  • image Toggle construction mode: switches Draft construction mode on or off. Also available in the menu: Draft → Utilities → image Toggle construction mode.
  • image AutoGroup: changes the active Draft Layer or, optionally, the active Std Group or group-like Arch object.

Draft annotation scale widget​

With the Draft annotation scale widget the Draft annotation scale can be specified. image

Draft snap widget​

The Draft snap widget can be used as an alternative for the Draft snap toolbar. image

Draft snap toolbar​

The Draft snap toolbar allows selecting the active snap options. The buttons belonging to active options stay depressed. For general information about snapping see: Draft Snap.

Draft utility tools toolbar​

Additional tools​

The Draft → Utilities menu contains several tools. Most of them can also be accessed from toolbars or the Draft Tray and have already been mentioned above. For the following tools this is not the case:

Additional features​

  • Working plane: the plane in the 3D view where new Draft objects are created.
  • Snapping: select exact geometric points on, or defined by, existing objects or the grid.
  • Constraining: for each subsequent point you can constrain the movement of the cursor to the X, Y, or Z direction.
  • Construction mode: places new Draft objects in a dedicated group making it easier to hide or delete them.
  • Pattern: Draft objects with a Make Face property can display an SVG pattern instead of a solid face color.

Tree view context menu​

The following additional options are available in the Tree view context menu:

Default options​

For most Draft objects the following option is available:

  • Edit: edits the object. Depending on the object type either Draft Edit or a dedicated edit solution is used. introduced in version 0.21 If there is an active document the context menu contains an additional sub-menu:
  • Utilities: a subset of the tools available in the main Draft Utilities menu.

Wire options​

For a Draft Line and a Draft Wire this additional option is available:

  • image Flatten: flattens the wire on the current Draft working plane. This option does not work properly in version 0.19 and below.

Layer container options​

For a Draft LayerContainer these additional options are available:

Layer options​

For a Draft Layer these additional options are available:

Working plane proxy options​

For a Draft WorkingPlaneProxy these additional options are available:

  • image Write camera position: updates the View Data property of the working plane proxy with the current 3D view camera settings.
  • image Write objects state: updates the Visibility Map property of the working plane proxy with the current visibility state of objects in the document.

3D view context menu​

The following additional options are available in the 3D view context menu:

Default options​

If there is an active document the context menu contains one additional sub-menu:

  • Utilities: a subset of the tools available in the main Draft Utilities menu.

Obsolete tools​

  • image Array: creates an orthogonal array from a selected object. The created array can be turned into a polar array or a circular array by changing its DataArray Type property. Not available in version 0.21 and above.
  • image Drawing: inserts views of selected objects into a drawing page. Not available in version 0.21 and above.

Preferences​

File formats​

The Draft Workbench provides FreeCAD with importers and exporters for several file formats. These are used by the Std Import and Std Export commands.

Unit tests​

See also: Test Workbench.

To run the unit tests of the workbench execute the following from the operating system terminal:

freecad -t TestDraft

Scripting​

See also: Autogenerated API documentation and FreeCAD Scripting Basics.

The workbench includes a module to create samples of all objects in a new document.

Use this to test that all objects are produced correctly:

import drafttests.draft_test_objects as dto
doc = dto.create_test_file()

Inspecting the code of this module can help to understand the programming interface.

Tutorials​