PartDesign Preferences/hr

Introduction

The Part Workbench and the PartDesign Workbench use the same preferences. They can be found in the Preferences Editor. In the menu select Edit → Preferences... and then Part/Part Design. This group is only available if one of the workbenches has been loaded in the current FreeCAD session.

Some advanced preferences can only be changed in the Parameter editor. See Fine-tuning.

This page has been updated for version 1.0.

Available preferences

There are three pages: General, Shape view and Shape appearance.

General

On this page you can specify the following:

Name	Description
Automatically check model after boolean operation	If checked, the Boundary representation (BRep) of the model is validated after boolean operations.
Automatically refine model after boolean operation	If checked, the model is refined after boolean operations.
Automatically refine model after sketch-based operation	If checked, the model is refined after changes to source sketches of objects.
Allow multiple solids in Part Design Body by default (experimental)	If checked, Bodies can have multiple solids. introduced in version 1.0

Shape view

On this page you can specify the following:

Name	Description
Maximum deviation depending on the model bounding box	The maximum linear deflection of the tessellated objects from their surface.
Maximum angular deflection	The maximum angular deflection from one tessellated object section to the next section.

Shape appearance

An explanation of the colors can be found here.

On this page you can specify the following:

Name	Description
Shape color	The diffuse color for new shapes. If the option Random is set, a random color is used instead.
Ambient shape color	The ambient color for new shapes. introduced in version 1.0
Emissive shape color	The emissive color for new shapes. introduced in version 1.0
Specular shape color	The specular color for new shapes. introduced in version 1.0
Shape transparency	The transparency for new shapes. introduced in version 0.21
Shape shininess	The shininess for new shapes. introduced in version 1.0
Line color	The line color for new shapes.
Line width	The line thickness for new shapes.
Vertex color	The color for new vertices.
Vertex size	The size for new vertices.
Bounding box color	The color of bounding boxes in the 3D view.
Bounding box font size	The font size of bounding boxes in the 3D view. introduced in version 1.0
Two-side rendering	If checked, the color of the interior side of faces will be the same as the exterior side. If not checked either the backlight color, if enabled, or black is used instead.
Text color	The text color for new document annotations. Currently these annotations can only be added by using the Python console: obj = App.ActiveDocument.addObject("App::Annotation", "Label")

Tessellation

In order to display an object efficiently its surface is tessellated, i.e. it is displayed with some small deviations from its real surface. This applies not only to PartDesign models, but also to other objects in FreeCAD.

There is a lower limit for the tessellation of 0.01%. If you really want to spend the additional time you can reduce the lower limit even further by opening the Parameter editor.

In the Parameter editor navigate to BaseApp → Preferences → Mod → Part, right-click on MeshDeviation, and choose Change value from the context menu. Set the value to the minimum tessellation of your choice. Please keep in mind that the value is in %, i.e. for a value of 0.005% you have to enter 0.00005. The smallest possible value is 1e-7. Note that in the Preferences Editor you will still see 0.01% even if you have set a lower value.