Installing the PathWorkBench

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James Brady
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Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:47 pm

Installing the PathWorkBench

Post by James Brady »

Hello FreeCAD community,

I am very novice and cannot figure out how to install the path workbench on my Ubuntu 16.04 system. For other workbenches, I have been able to just download and extract it, then move the whole folder to the /usr/share/freecad/Mod file. On restarting FreeCAD, it shows up as a usable workbench.

Am I missing something for the Path workbench?? One significant thing I did notice: most other usable files are full of .py or .pyc files and "Path" is not...

Please be gracious, I'm very new to this and just want to be able to generate some G-code for my new CNC without having to spend hundreds of dollars.
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DeepSOIC
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Location: used to be Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Re: Installing the PathWorkBench

Post by DeepSOIC »

Hi!
Path workbench is included with FreeCAD and cannot be installed separately.
Please post your FreeCAD version, as instructed in https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2264
chrisb
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Re: Installing the PathWorkBench

Post by chrisb »

For using the Path Workbench I strongly recommend using the 0.17 prerelease. There have recently been huge steps in the development. If you want to stay with the 0.16 for stability reasons you can develop your models 0.16, load them in 0.17 and do all the path stuff there. It is a one way road, there is no easy way back to a 0.16 model.

Now for 0.16: Path WB is included in the latest 0.16.6707. Which version do you use? Perhaps you have configured your FreeCAD in the preferences to show only some of the workbenches?
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James Brady
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2017 11:47 pm

Re: Installing the PathWorkBench

Post by James Brady »

Great. Thanks guys! I got rid of the old version and used Synaptic to get .16:

OS: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.16.6707 (Git)
Build type: None
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-16
Hash: 5465bc47c95db45e0be85dc0e2872419efadce0f
Python version: 2.7.12
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 6.8.0.oce-0.17

Looks like this has what I was looking for right now. I am still quite a bit of novice so I want to hold off on pre-releases until I develop more technical competency. Thanks again. :)
chrisb
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Re: Installing the PathWorkBench

Post by chrisb »

The Path Workbench in 0.17 is very stable and really much better! Look at it like a different program that can read FreeCAD files to produce GCode paths. As soon as 0.17 becomes stable enough you can switch easily.
A Sketcher Lecture with in-depth information is available in English, auf Deutsch, en français, en español.
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