Creating a drawing of a part (Should know)

The Drawing workbench lets us create 2D views of 3D objects for presentation in formats that are ideal for printing. In this recipe, we will create a drawing with three views.

Getting ready

Select a 3D object in a document and open the Drawing workbench:

How to do it...

1. Select the Insert new drawing icon:

   

2. Pick the Insert an orthographic projection icon:

   

3. A new task will pop up in the Task panel. Select a Primary View:

   

4. Select Secondary Views:

   

5. Click on the OK button in the Task panel.

6. While the Page icon is selected in the Project tree, click on its Data tab.

7. Double-click on the button that has ... as its label.

   

8. A text dialog box will popup. Edit the values, putting in your name, the date, and so on:

   

9. Click on the recompute button to see the results:

   

How it works...

FreeCAD uses algorithms from the OpenCascade CAD kernel to calculate 2D projections from 3D objects. FreeCAD takes advantage of this and inserts those projections onto a SVG canvas. This canvas is actually a template that was imported during step 1.

The Orthographic Projection dialog in the Task panel creates different projections at set angles, scales them, and spaces them in a consistent way.

The text dialog helps us edit SVG editable texts and fills in the text information in the bottom-right corner of the title block.

There's more...

If you want to give your drawing to someone who doesn't have FreeCAD, you might want to export it as a PDF file.

Export a PDF file from your drawing

Select the Page object in the Project tree. From the top menu, select File and then Export PDF. Give your file a name with a *.pdf extension and select a directory to save it to.