Design456

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An attempt to create Direct Modeling workbench for FreeCAD

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# Design456 FreeCAD Workbench

Announcement:

[![](http://img.youtube.com/vi/BPQyW3EqlOc/0.jpg)](https://youtu.be/BPQyW3EqlOc "Design456 Workbench")

**Important Note:** **WIP!!!**

Please feel free to suggest, contribute, join, help, debug etc... I hope you find this workbench useful. Keep in mind that I am still learning FreeCAD API and I might do
some solution in a way that is not perfect or optimized. FreeCAD contains many libraries that are complex. Developers needs sometime to understand fully how to use them.

As I am working on a way to make direct modeling more possible using my workbench, and my reserach to find a way is not yet finished, I cannot develop this workbench yet!! .. Please don't think that the project is dead. I need to find a way to improve the possibilites of direct modeling inside FreeCAD. And that takes time. I read some notes at the FreeCAD forum that the workbench is not developed. This is the reason. Design456App is the answer for the slowness of FreeCAD. It will be based on MESH than CAD engine. Design456App should at the end be injected to FreeCAD (My Workbench).

### Aim 
FreeCAD primarily utilizes a parametric modeling paradigm. This workbench will work to develop 'direct modeling' approach. Currently, this approach will be accomplished interactively using the viewerport widgets.  For example, clicking on a face and being able to extrude or push/pull by moving the mouse, instead of specifying a the distance by entering a number in to a text field.

### Background
Direct modeling approach has lately become more common in popular CAD solutions. This involves directly modifying the geometry without relying on the parameter based feature tree. While not completely replacing the parametric based approach, this approach is good for interoperability, making complex designs with rapid iterations, and using with minimal prior training.

### Install

1. `cd  ~/.local/share/FreeCAD/Mod/`
2. `git clone https://github.com/MariwanJ/Design456`
3. Restart FreeCAD

Result: The Design456 workbench should now be available in the workbench drop-down menu

**Note:** Please keep this workbench up-to-date by pulling changes from this repository via `git`. This can be done before each time Design456 will be used. It seems that sometimes FreeCAD WB manager cannot update my WB. It is better to make a git clone inside the Mod folder as below

1. `cd  ~/.local/share/FreeCAD/v1-1/Mod/`
2. `git clone https://github.com/MariwanJ/Design456.git`
3. Restart FreeCAD

### Usage

### Inspiration

Initial inspiration came from exploring the a template workbench named D3D-Printer-Workbench. Thanks to the author. Other workbenches will be inspected to see what other code can be re-used. 
### FreeCAD is broken and unreliable
```diff
- Some of WB tools might fail due to the internal failure of OCC or FreeCAD as a whole. 
- I wonder if Direct modeling will be possible while the union, cut, ..etc basic operations fails totally in some cases. 
```
[![](http://img.youtube.com/vi/GLnkoe0oK8U/0.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLnkoe0oK8U "How broken is FreeCAD?")

### Notes
- Workbench updates are announced at my youtube channel only. You can also check my project page for getting info about current developments status.
- You need to use latest FreeCAD to not get problems with this WB. Update your local version of Design456 regularly by daily basis.
- Caution: It's recommended to work on a copy of your object even if Undo is functional now. If you find out it works on your test object, then apply it to your original object.  
- There might be other issues, as I am the sole developer on this project, it is difficult to do all the work quickly. I have in my plan to test all these functions in quite depth. But at the moment, I wish to implement them and learn how I can do them. I am still in the beginning of the learning process.  
- Tutorials and guides will be written /made later
- Check out my videos to know how to use the tools.
- The workbench is under heavy development. Still there is no released version. I need to have the base tools to announce a released version.
- Keep updating your local version regularly.

### Feedback

Please leave comments, bugs, fixes in the issue queue of this repository.

### Relevant Links

* FreeCAD forum thread [announcing Design456 workbench](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=54893)    (No more used 2022-01-20)
* FreeCAD forum thread [progress Design456 workbench](https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55866&p=480589#p480589) (No more used 2022-01-20)
### Developer

Mariwan Jalal 2025-12-31

Design456

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