Editing STL/3MF/other mesh based output formats
Surprisingly really easy, just takes a few steps, this guy made an awesome guide:
Short version here:
- Part → Shape from Mesh. Set 0.01 resolution
- Delete the imported STL/mesh
- Select the new Shape and then Part → Convert to Solid
- Delete the Shape made in Step#1
- Select the new Solid and then Part → Copy → Refine Shape
- Select new refined Solid & switch to Part Design toolbar. Then click Part Design → New Body. This will add the shape as the BaseFeature of the new body.
- At this point we can create a new sketch and work on our model just like normal.
I know FreeCAD is scriptable, so since this is literally just sequential steps, plugging the output of one into the next, at some point I’m going to try to make a Macro or something to do this for us.
Turning a Macro into a regular Toolbar button
This lets you make a super native looking Toolbar button out of a macro. You can give it a name, tooltip text, and icon, etc.
- Open the Macro menu: Macro > Macros
- Select the Macro you want to turn into a toolbar button and select “Toolbar” on the right side.
- This will open a series of windows with instructions in red to let you first create the toolbar button, then add the button to a toolbar on one of the workbenches. Just follow the instructions, anything you don’t understand you can just leave blank.
- When you get to the last one, you will have to select the workbench you want it to show up on. This will likely either be Part Design if it’s for a single part, Sketcher for drawing macros, or Assembly, if that’s the case. You can choose others too, or leave it on Global to show on on all Workbenches.
- From there, you press “New” and you can name the new Toolbar, this name isn’t really visible, but you can just call it “Macros” and put all your custom Macros for this workbench here.