4DOverview: A K.I.S.S. FreeCAD Workbench for easy VISUAL file management within FreeCAD, including overview, Time Travel, Assets, Bill of Process, Bill of Materials, and more.
All features are not ready yet, this workbench is in developpement.
The goal of this workbench is to gather, in a simple and practical way, various small macros I’ve developed over time to streamline the management of my FreeCAD projects.
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Global Project Overview
Provides a visual, high-level overview of all projects stored under a structured root directory
(RootFolder/[ProjectAA, ProjectAB, AC, …]). -
Per-Project FreeCAD Insight
Displays an overview of all FreeCAD parts and assemblies contained in each project. -
Tree Construction History Creation
Generates a lightweight build/history view for individual parts. -
Asset Reuse Tools
Includes small utilities to quickly create new assets based on elements from previous projects.
More features will follow.
The goal of this workbench is to gather, in a simple and practical way, various small macros I’ve developed over time to streamline the management of my FreeCAD projects.
-
Global Project Overview
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Per-Project FreeCAD Insight
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Tree Construction History Creation
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General Presentation
4DOverview : Un Workbench FreeCAD qui organise TOUT , The Ultimate Visual Manager
The install path for FreeCAD modules depends on the operating system used. To find where is the user's application data directory enter next command on FreeCAD's Python console. App.getUserAppDataDir()
Examples on different OS
Linux: /home/user/.local/share/FreeCAD/Mod/ (/home/user/.local/share/FreeCAD/v1-1/Mod (for instance if you use a developper version))
macOS: /Users/user/Library/Preferences/FreeCAD/Mod/
Windows: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\FreeCAD\Mod\
git clone https://github.com/GA3Dtech/4DOverview.git (in the .../Mod/ folder of your operating system)
or go on https://github.com/GA3Dtech/4DOverview, and click on code button to download the ZIP archive of the depository, unzip it, rename the Folder "4DOverview-main" into "4DOverview" ,and paste the "4DOverview" folder in the .../Mod/ folder of your operating system.
restarting FreeCAD is necessary to then load the workbench, you should find it the wb list (menu - View - Workbench)
It is done for an organisation of files like this
RootFolder/
├── ProjectAA/
│ ├── Part01.FCStd
│ ├── Part02.FCStd
│ ├── AssemblyAA.FCStd
│ └── Docs/
│ └── notes.txt
├── ProjectAB/
│ ├── BasePlate.FCStd
│ ├── Arm.FCStd
│ └── AssemblyAB.FCStd
├── ProjectAC/
│ ├── Housing.FCStd
│ └── Cover.FCStd
└── ProjectAD/
└── AssemblyAD.FCStd
For each project folder, 4DOverview will create a subfolder called 4DOverview.
This folder will contain:
- Thumbnails of your FreeCAD files.
- Subfolders named after each file (
.FileName) storing version iterations and construction history.
If the 4DOverview folder grows too large, you can safely delete it and regenerate everything from scratch.
RootFolder/
├── ProjectAA/
│ ├── Part01.FCStd
│ ├── Part02.FCStd
│ ├── AssemblyAA.FCStd
│ └── 4DOverview/
│ ├── .Part01/
│ │ ├── Part01_aa.FCStd Part01_ab.FCStd Part01_ac.FCStd Part01_ad.FCStd Part01_aa.png Part01_ab.png Part01_ac.png Part01_ad.png
│ ├── .Part02/
│ │ └── Part02_aa.FCStd Part02_ab.FCStd Part02_ac.FCStd Part02_ad.FCStd Part02_aa.png Part02_ab.png Part02_ac.png Part02_ad.png
│ └Part01.png (thumbnails)
│ └Part02.png (thumbnails)
├── ProjectAB/
│ ├── BasePlate.FCStd
│ ├── Arm.FCStd
│ ├── AssemblyAB.FCStd
│ └── 4DOverview/
│ ├── .BasePlate/
│ │ └── BasePlate_aa.FCStd BasePlate_aa.png
│ ├── .Arm/
│ │ ├── Arm_aa.FCStd Arm_aa.png Arm_ab.FCStd Arm_ab.png │
└BasePlate.png (thumbnails)
└Arm.png (thumbnails)
| . . .