So, let's continue to post more often about
[FreeCAD](http://www.freecadweb.org). I'm beginning to organize a bit
better, gathering screenshots and ideas during the week, so I'll try to
keep this going. This week has seen many improvements, specially because
we've been doing intense FreeCAD work with
[OpeningDesign](http://www.openingdesign.com). Like everytime you make
intense use of FreeCAD or any other app, you spot a lot of smaller bugs
and repetitive annoyances. But a look a the [commits
log](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commits/master) will inform you
that many of those have already been fixed on the way.

![](../../images/2016/freecad-bak1.jpg)

The above image shows one of these jobs, more about it below

Generally speaking, working with FreeCAD is becoming very stable.
Drafting and modelling is very straightforward already, and the workflow
even begins to become fast. The biggest bottleneck I encountered during
this week is using the Drawing workbench to build 2D sheets of the
model. This is mostly due to the limitations of Qt's SVG engine, which
doesn't support the full SVG specification, and many features like
clipping, multiline texts or hatches are not supported by the Drawing
viewer. When exporting your final Drawing sheet to SVG, however, and
opening it in a better SVG-supporting application such as Inkscape,
Firefox or Chrome, the result is very good. But it is annoying to have
to work in the Drawing module without seeing the actual result (that's
actually the main reason why there is a "preview in browser" button in
Drawing).

But, bearing with these difficulties, it is already totally possible to
produce this kind of result:

![](../../images/2016/freecad-bak3.jpg)

This is about to change, however, with the new TechDraw workbench that
is currently already available in development versions of FreeCAD (refer
to [previous posts](http://yorik.uncreated.net/guestblog.php?2016=258)
to obtain one). TechDraw is not based directly on SVG anymore, but on
the more generic graphics engine of Qt. The final SVG sheet that it
produces is built from it, at the moment you export, but what you see
while you are working is not the SVG data itself anymore. This might
seem more complex (it is, actually), but opens up a huge array of
possibilities. Most of the limitations above don't exist anymore in
TechDraw.

Of the two main tools that we use in architectural and BIM work to build
2D sheets, which are the Draft view and the SectionPlane view (which is
also built with the Drawing Draft tool), so far only the Draft view has
been [implemented in
TechDraw](http://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16516&start=40#p137497),
once the Section View tool is implemented too we can think of abandoning
the Drawing for good.

![](../../images/2016/freecad-bak1.jpg)

I'll describe a bit more of the workflow used in the jobs illustrated
in this post. Almost everything was done directly in FreeCAD. The only
pieces done outside were the cleaning of the existing floor plan, that
we got in DWG form, in DraftSight, and the preparing of the Drawing
template, and a couple of SVG objects to be placed directly on it, in
Inkscape. All the rest is pure FreeCAD.

The basic workflow was this:


1.  Clean of unnecessary stuff in the DWG file, reduce number of layers,
    export it to DXF (in DraftSight)
2.  Import the DXF file in FreeCAD
3.  Draw a couple of lines and wires on top of the walls and columns of
    the existing floor plan (You can draw walls and structural elements
    directly, but I like to draw the baselines myself, to make sure they
    are where I want them, and I find the Draft tools much more
    convenient to draw stuff).
4.  Turn all your lines and wires to walls or structures (this whole
    thing is actually almost as fast as drawing them directly)
5.  Adjust thickness, height, alignment, etc... of walls and structures
6.  Put everything in groups. For me a huge power of FreeCAD over other
    BIM applications is the free grouping possibilities. By creating
    groups, and groups inside groups, you are basically organizing your
    data the way you want. No limitations, no rigid building/foor
    structure to follow. All the separation of, for example, the
    existing walls, the new walls and the walls to be demolished is
    simply done with groups.
7.  Add doors and windows. In most cases I didn't use the "in-wall"
    capability of windows, I made the openings first by subtracting a
    volume, then made the doors outside of any wall, and simply cloned
    them and moved them to their final places. This is bit slower, but
    makes your geometry much more failsafe, since windows are a delicate
    matter and still have bugs here and there.
8.  Add annotations, linework, texts, dimensions, in 2D, directly in the
    model (in the future, we hope to do most of this directly in
    TechDraw, but at the moment this "old-school" workflow is solid
    and works well. Again, separate annotations in groups, depending on
    the subject.
9.  Add one or more Section Planes to define plans and sections you'll
    need. If you grouped your objects well, you will only have one or
    two groups to add to the section plane as "seen objects". It is
    best to leave all the 2D geometry and annotations out, and have
    section planes only see 3D objects (being Arch or not).
10. Prepare a [Drawing
    template](http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Drawing_templates)
    in Inkscape
11. Create a new sheet in FreeCAD's Drawing workbench, give it our
    template, and start adding our stuff there, by using the Draft View
    tool, either with section planes selected (for cut or viewed 3D
    geometry), or groups containing linework, texts and dimensions (for
    2D and annotations). This will allow you to create only a few
    Drawing views, so it keeps manageable.
12. The clip tool of the Drawing workbench is annoying to use (it draws
    a big black rectangle on the sheet, which is not exported
    fortunately), so it's best to think about your layout beforehand,
    and model only what will appear on the sheet.
13. Use the Drawing symbol and annotation tools to add stuff (logos,
    titles, etc) directly on the sheet.
14. Export to SVG, open in Inkscape, there you have a chance to do more
    last-minute fixes if needed, and save as PDF. It is possible to
    export a PDF directly from FreeCAD, but opening it in another app is
    good to make sure everything is OK.
15. Finally, in order to export to IFC, gather the arch objects inside a
    Building, export, and you are done. It is always a good idea to
    verify the exported IFC file in another IFC viewer application to
    make sure everything is there an dat the right place. A quick fix
    for buggy objects is to force them to export to Brep (there is a
    command for that in Arch -> Utilities).



![](../../images/2016/freecad-off2.jpg)

Interesting detail, the small city map in the images above, is taken
directly from [OpenStreetMap](http://www.openstreetmap.org). There you
have a "share" button that exports to SVG. You can then open that in
Inkscape, rework it a bit if you like (change some colors and linetypes,
etc), save it and place it directly on your Drawing sheet.

Of course this workflow above is somewhat distant than what you are used
to with commercial BIM applications. But things are improving, and also
this is not necessarily something negative. It also gives you a lot more
freedom, and the mix of 2D and 3D that FreeCAD offers, that you had in
the old times of AutoCAD or in apps like Rhino is something I find much
valuable.

![](../../images/2016/freecad-off1.jpg)

Don't forget that almost all the work of
[OpeningDesign](http://www.openingdesign.com) is open, so all the files
from the examples above are available online.

Finally, a word about two features I added this week, one is a new
display mode for walls, which shows them in wireframe, but with the
bottom face hatched, which makes it very nice to work in plan view

![](../../images/2016/freecad-wall-footprint.jpg)

Right now it's still in testing, to see how useful it is and how well
it behaves, but if it works well it should be extended to support
different patterns (taken from the material, for example), and to extend
this to structural objects too.

And finally, another feature is a new addition to the structural precast
concrete presets, a stairs element:

![](../../images/2016/freecad-precast-stairs.jpg)