Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

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superson1c
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Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:53 pm

Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by superson1c »

Hi all,

I am a mechanical design engineer and I was searching for a free CAD software.
After some disappointments, I found FreeCAD.
And I am really impressed!
Thumbs up to all the contributors!

Now to my question. I want to import FreeCAD into an external IDE.
It should include the possibility to show a simple visualization of the 3D-model.
Yes, this was often discussed in this forum... I read through many threads.
But: I did not find anybody with a solution that worked fine. Also many threads were old.

So I want to revive the question.
Which is the best working external IDE to import FreeCAD?
Thank you.

Cheers
superson1c
heda
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by heda »

hi and welcome to the forum.

hm...
"It should include the possibility to show a simple visualization of the 3D-model."

In the external ide?

we all have dreams and visions of what "should be possible", often with the notion "how hard can it be" :-)

if you don't see your envisioned "way of working" after having scanned the forum,
it is very likely that it is one of those "it is really hard", in fact so hard that the people that potentially sits on the knowledge to do it - simply don't,
because they know what time sink it would be, or that the judged probability of hitting a brick wall is too high...

your question is an "effect description", i.e. I want it to work like this when it is done.
to get there you need an "implementation description", i.e. how to actually make it work.

my suggestion is that you first of all learn fc, including scripting, I imagine that you can get very close to your vision without using an ide.
once you know fc and scripting a bit better, start to think in terms of "how to do it practically", i.e. how to code it, what methods to use etc.

general questions get general answers, specific questions (nuts and bolts type of questions) are more likely to take you to the next level.
openBrain
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by openBrain »

I think your question isn't clear as 'IDE' stands for 'Integrated Development Environment', which is a software used for coding purposes. Showing 3D objects in it doesn't match very well... :?
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papyblaise
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by papyblaise »

I don't know if that answers
I attach a file made with Fc, export in .stl file
you can visualize it with "Viewer3D" or "Print3D" of Windows
there is surely another equivalent on Mac or Linus
Attachments
Gearball.stl
(432.31 KiB) Downloaded 20 times
superson1c
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Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:53 pm

Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by superson1c »

Hi both,

thank you guys for the reply!
I am not a programmer unfortunately. I know how to use several CAD programs, but I am just learning Python. I was afraid to ask a specific question that does not make sense. I will try to specify my question.

I need to use Python libraries such as tensorflow, keras, pandas, scipy, numpy etc. for deep learning stuff (which I am also just learning).

I think I have to options.

1. Either import the libraries into FreeCAD. It would be great if that works, then I don't need to think about how to visualize the 3d-models. Do you think that is possible? If so, can you please give me links with information how to do it?

2. If not, I think I would need to import everything into an IDE such as PyCharm or Jupyter. If so, which IDE would you recommend?

I hope my questions make sense :-)

Thank you guys!

Cheers
superson1c
Last edited by superson1c on Sun Jul 25, 2021 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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papyblaise
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by papyblaise »

your questions are starting to make sense to me
if I understand correctly (in the mind of Fc) you are looking for how to import 2D files and make sketches to make 3D objects by protusion
openBrain
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by openBrain »

There has been a GSoC about integrating in Jupyter notebook. I don't know the exact status but you can search for this. ;)
heda
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by heda »

superson1c wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 12:47 pm import the libraries into FreeCAD
well, numpy and scipy are already part of fc, just to import... (not sure if scipy depends on build, but numpy for sure...)
other than that - search the forum on "pip install", generally works just fine.

since I avoid everything out of a redmond,

using an ide for running fc is prooven to be somewhat tricky, most people struggle to set up an ide fc - for that reason,
me myself have not really tried it - since I manage just fine without it.
if you are only doing python, I use spyder - there one can typically do the code and then just run it as a macro in fc,
sure there is no real autocompletion or debugging of the fc parts this way (but all others work if you have that in the spyder environment), and for the fc stuff I always do in the fc-python console (in fc itself) to get the autocompletion and docs on the fly, for debugging simple print statements are enough for myself.

If you want an external ide, I know that "thonny" is easy to set up with the freecad, it is the only one I know that works out of the box setting up towards fc-python (that you can search on the forum as well - at least when I search "thonny" it is the top hit). then you will have object inspector, debug, autocompletion, but unfortunately thonny does not render docstrings, so that one has to be ok with when using it. at last it only hooks up to the cmd-version of fc, not the gui-version.
just tried pyzo, but that did not work out of the box.

in the end, looking at scripting examples on the wiki does far more than any ide integration for progress in making fc scripts work!!! (imho)
drmacro
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by drmacro »

I use vscode with FreeCAD and python.

I can step into code and view current values and such.

There appears to be no way to get code completion working though.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
heda
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Re: Best working external IDE to import FreeCAD in 2021

Post by heda »

if installing icecream, that lies inbetween a simple print and python built in log/pdb.
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