The Arch Workbench is mainly made for two kinds of workflows:īuild your model with a faster, mesh-based application such as Blender or SketchUp, and import them in FreeCAD in order to extract plans and section views. But at the moment the implementation is not complete, and the Arch workbench still doesn't support them. Units are being implemented in FreeCAD, which will allow you to work with any unit you wish (even imperial units, you guys from the USA can be eternally grateful for this to Jürgen, FreeCAD's godfather and dictator). That means that automatic "wizard" tools that create complex geometry automatically, such as Arch Roof or Arch Stairs can only produce certain types of objects, and other tools that have presets, such as Arch Structure or Arch Window only have a couple of basic presets. Most Arch tools are still in development.
This is worked on both by the FreeCAD and IfcOpenShell developers, and in the future we can expect full-powered IFC support. You can already import IFC files, quite reliably, provided IfcOpenShell is installed on your system, but exporting is still not officially supported. FreeCAD will have a complete Material system, able to define very complex materials, with all the goodies you can expect (custom properties, material families, rendering and visual aspect properties, etc), and the Arch Workbench will of course use it when it is ready. You can usually successfully import 2D files, but don't expect very high performance if you want to keep working on them in 2D. There is a reasonable set of tools for drawing and editing 2D objects with the Draft Workbench and Sketcher Workbench, but it is not made for handling very large (and sometimes badly drawn) 2D CAD files. Most are being worked on, though, and will disappear in the future.įreeCAD is no 2D application. If you took care of the quality of your model and its objects are manifold solid shapes, turning them into architectural objects only requires the press of a button.Īt the time I'm writing this, though, the Arch Workbench, as the rest of FreeCAD, suffers some limitations. You can easily design an architectural model in a mesh-based application such as Blender or SketchUp and import it in FreeCAD. The Arch Workbench is very mesh-friendly. The Arch Workbench also inherits much of the Draft Workbench functionality, such as snapping and working planes.
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They will still retain their full modeling history, and continue being totally editable. You can design architectural objects with any other tool of FreeCAD, such as the PartDesign Workbench, and when they are ready, convert them to architectural objects. The whole power of FreeCAD is at your fingertips. Very complex things, usually hard to define in other BIM applications, like a floor slab curving up and becoming a wall (yes Zaha Hadid, it's you we're talking about), present no particular problem at all in FreeCAD. Any solid object can always become any architectural object. Walls don't need to be vertical, slabs don't need to look like slabs. Since cutting through 3D objects with a 2D plane, in order to extract sections, is also a boolean operation, you can immediately see the importance of this point.Īrchitectural objects can always have any shape. This ensures a much more error-free workflow, and very reliable boolean operations. From FreeCAD's strong mechanical background, we learned the importance of always working with solid objects. Here are, for example, a couple of interesting features of FreeCAD's Arch Workbench that you'll hardly find in other BIM apps:Īrchitectural objects are always solids. As it is still under development, don't expect to find here the same tools and level of completion as grown-up commercial alternatives such as Revit or ArchiCAD, but on the other hand, FreeCAD being used in a much bigger scope than these applications, the Arch Workbench greatly benefits from the other disciplines FreeCAD caters to, and offers some features rarely seen in traditional BIM applications. The purpose of the Arch Workbench is to offer a complete BIM workflow inside FreeCAD. Also check our tutorials section, and on youtube you will also find a lot more of FreeCAD tutorials. The Getting started page is a must read, if you have no previous experience with FreeCAD. In any case, you should be prepared to look for yourself for further information about how FreeCAD works on the FreeCAD documentation wiki. I will try to make it simple enough so you don't need any previous experience with FreeCAD, but having some experience with 3D or BIM applications will be useful. This tutorial aims at giving you the basics to work with the Arch Workbench.
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