How to configure FreeCAD to import OpenSCAD parts
Of course this assumes you’ve already downloaded and installed FreeCAD! FreeCAD works well on Windows and Linux (can be installed easily on Ubuntu), but the Mac version is less up-to-date and suffers from Mac-specific bugs, and for this reason I cannot recommend it on this OS at this time. You’re of course welcome to try, but you may be disappointed.
- First you need to install OpenSCAD on your computer.
- Then you need to configure the OpenSCAD executable path. Switch to the OpenSCAD workbench from the menu View --> workbench.
- Go to Edit --> Preferences.
- Switch to the OpenSCAD preferences. Under General OpenSCAD Settings, specify the executable path by clicking on the button at the end of the field to browse your computer.
- Under OpenSCAD import, check both “Use ViewProvider in Tree View” and “Use Multmatrix Feature”.
- Set the “Maximum number of faces for polygons”. For any Openscad “polyhole” with a higher number of sides than this number, a true cylindrical surface will be created. I chose 7, because I wanted 6-sided polyholes to import as hexagons; but you can reduce this value to get circles.
- Click OK.
That’s it. Now open a .scad file. The import may take some time if the part is complex. If it works, the tree will look like this (it’s the one from my example in the first post):
How to export a file to STEP from FreeCAD
To export a part to STEP, you need to select the main object, which here is the “Group009” object in the tree. Then go to Edit --> Export, and type your filename and set the file type to STEP.
Note: with FreeCAD 0.13.1830 on GNOME-based Linux desktops, you need to type the “.stp” file extension manually or the file won’t save. This is an interface bug related to some Qt libraries.
Hope someone finds this useful! 