image viewer

[cahlfors]

Hi everyone!

I would like to use the image viewer as a background as an aid in constructing drawings on top of it to get proportions and details right (from photos for instance), but I am unabe to create anything on top of an image. Is this possible to do? Perhaps this is not the intended purpose of the image viewer?

My CAD skills are at a beginner's level and I am using the packaged 0.11 version on Ubuntu.

Thanks,
/Chris

[NormandC]

Hi cahlfors,

Welcome here!

Honestly, I have no idea what the Image Viewer in FreeCAD is for, but it does only that - view images, and nothing else.

What you want to do is possible, though - with the Draft workbench. But I'm not sure if it can be done in v0.11. If you don't see it, see at the end of my post to know how to upgrade your version of Freecad.

First, one suggestion: if you're working in the "complete" workbench (which comprises an imposing selection of tools from all the workbenches), I suggest you switch to the Draft workbench (View --> Workbench menu). Once in it, there's a nice drop down selector to choose which workbench you want to work with. In my opinion, it's better to work that way, because then you get a feeling of what tools belong to which workbench. After some time it will give you a better understanding of the software IMHO.

The Draft Rectangle can receive a texture image. So select the working plane you want for your background to be, set your view to this plane, and draw a rectangle. After that, with the Rectangle object selected, go to the Properties side bar, View tab, and locate the "Texture Image" field. Click on it, a button will appear to browse your folders and locate your desired image. The image will be applied to the face of the rectangle. Oh, one more thing you need to set: in the Properties View tab, set Display mode to "Flat lines", to see the image.

Now you have to do some basic math to ensure your rectangle has the same ratio as your image, otherwise the image will be squashed or stretched. Don't sweat it if you can't seem to draw your rectangle to the exact dimensions you need: you can resize it in the Properties sidebar, this time in the Data tab by its height and length properties.

By the way, the FreeCAD version in Ubuntu 11.04/11.10's repository is one year old. There's been an awesome amount of features added since then! I recommend you add one of FreeCAD's PPA repositories to get the latest 0.13 development release. Since these PPA offer development snapshots, they are bound to be slightly more unstable, but in my experience not that much - and you gain a lot more functionality!

Here's a link to the v0.12 release notes (v0.13 was started a month ago): https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... _notes_012

Instructions to add either one of FreeCAD's PPA: https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... A_packages

Don't hesitate to ask more questions.

[cahlfors]

Gee, thanks - what a welcome!

That will keep me busy for a while. Of course I will add the repo.

Thanks!

/Chris