FreeCAD, подобно на много съвременни дизайнерски приложения като Revit или CATIA, се основава на концепцията за Workbench. Работната маса може да се разглежда като набор от инструменти, специално групирани за определена задача. В традиционна мебелна работилница ще имате работна маса за човека, който работи с дърво, още една за тази, която работи с метални части и, може би, трета за човека, който монтира всички части заедно.
Във FreeCAD важи същото понятие. Инструментите са групирани в работни маси в зависимост от задачите, за които се ползват.
When you switch from one workbench to another, the tools available on the interface change. Toolbars, command bars and possibly other parts of the interface switch to the new workbench, but the contents of your scene doesn't change. You could, for example, start drawing 2D shapes with the Draft Workbench, then work further on them with the Part Workbench.
Note that sometimes a Workbench is referred to as a Module. However, Workbenches and Modules are different entities. A Module is any extension of FreeCAD, while a Workbench is a special type of Module with a GUI configuration (toolbars and menus).
The workbenches listed below are bundled with every FreeCAD installation.
introduced in 1.1: Some rarely used workbenches are disabled by default. These are marked with D below. A disabled workbench can be enabled in the preferences. Disabled workbenches can still be activated via the menu of TabBar Workbench selector.
DDDDThe following workbenches are no longer included after version 0.21:
The following workbenches are no longer included after version 0.20:
FreeCAD workbenches are easy to program in Python, there are therefore many people developing additional workbenches outside of the FreeCAD main development area.
The external workbenches page lists all that are known to this community. Most are easily installable from within FreeCAD, using the Addon Manager, found under menu Tools → Addon manager.