Fusion360 has an interesting feature where after you have created a sketch, you can select an arbitrary face (any closed geometry) within the sketch and extrude/pad/pocket it.
I am wondering if this feature might be something that could be added to FreeCAD?
Feature Request: Pad a face
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RatonLaveur
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Re: Feature Request: Pad a face
Hi, can you described a bit better the behaviour you feel is lacking?
From what I read you want a sketch to be extruded/padded, this you can already do quite well in FreeCAD.
From what I read you want a sketch to be extruded/padded, this you can already do quite well in FreeCAD.
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DeepSOIC
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Re: Feature Request: Pad a face
RatonLaveur wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 2:12 pm Hi, can you described a bit better the behaviour you feel is lacking?
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RatonLaveur
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Re: Feature Request: Pad a face
That made me chuckle. Good demonstration. I can see you had fun 
Re: Feature Request: Pad a face
So it is sort of a master sketch whereof you can pad already parts.
A Sketcher Lecture with in-depth information is available in English, auf Deutsch, en français, en español.
Re: Feature Request: Pad a face
I have had mixed success with extruding a surface. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I haven't figured out yet how to tell when it is going to work or not. I will spend some more time and drill down and see if I can be more specific.
A little background regarding my experience with FreeCAD. I've been using FreeCAD off and on for a few years now since 0.15. I took a hiatus for a couple years and worked with Fusion360. I've come back to take another look at FreeCAD and am presently doing a deep dive on a 3D model for a science olympics project I have volunteered to help out with. So, I am not a FreeCAD expert but I used it quite a bit for two or three years in the 0.15 - 0.17 days. There have been a few significant improvements with 0.18 and 0.19 (I am currently running 0.19).
I think what DeepSOIC and chrisb described is similar to how Fusion360 works. You can select a face and extrude/pad/pocket/loft/etc it. Moreover, you can perform an extrude from a sketch where you select one or more closed geometries within the sketch and then extrude them. The closed geometries are highlighted as you mouse over them in the sketch canvas. It is quite a handy feature which cannot be done in FreeCAD at the moment.
Another thing comes to mind after you have extruded a surface. If you go back and want to edit that feature, it is a little more difficult because you do not really know which feature, say, "Pad05" is (if you haven't named them). It would be cool if when you mouse over a feature in the model tree, it would highlight the feature in the canvas. If you mouse over the body, it is highlighted. But, mousing over the elements of the body doesn't highlight them. At the moment, you need to manually change the visibility of each element. When you mouse over the feature, it would help to see only the extruded element, not the fused element. That is, when you extrude/pad something, the result is a fused solid. When I am "debugging" my geometry, it would be helpful if when you mouse over the element, you see just what you added (or subtracted) before the boolean operation.
A little background regarding my experience with FreeCAD. I've been using FreeCAD off and on for a few years now since 0.15. I took a hiatus for a couple years and worked with Fusion360. I've come back to take another look at FreeCAD and am presently doing a deep dive on a 3D model for a science olympics project I have volunteered to help out with. So, I am not a FreeCAD expert but I used it quite a bit for two or three years in the 0.15 - 0.17 days. There have been a few significant improvements with 0.18 and 0.19 (I am currently running 0.19).
I think what DeepSOIC and chrisb described is similar to how Fusion360 works. You can select a face and extrude/pad/pocket/loft/etc it. Moreover, you can perform an extrude from a sketch where you select one or more closed geometries within the sketch and then extrude them. The closed geometries are highlighted as you mouse over them in the sketch canvas. It is quite a handy feature which cannot be done in FreeCAD at the moment.
Another thing comes to mind after you have extruded a surface. If you go back and want to edit that feature, it is a little more difficult because you do not really know which feature, say, "Pad05" is (if you haven't named them). It would be cool if when you mouse over a feature in the model tree, it would highlight the feature in the canvas. If you mouse over the body, it is highlighted. But, mousing over the elements of the body doesn't highlight them. At the moment, you need to manually change the visibility of each element. When you mouse over the feature, it would help to see only the extruded element, not the fused element. That is, when you extrude/pad something, the result is a fused solid. When I am "debugging" my geometry, it would be helpful if when you mouse over the element, you see just what you added (or subtracted) before the boolean operation.
Feature Request: Pad a face
I can only fully agree with that. This is a very practical function. If you can't imagine that, please feel free to contact me so that I can demonstrate it.