Donation Sponsor

$5 $10 $25 $100 $200 Other

If you are not sure or not able to commit to a regular donation, but still want to help the project, you can do a one-time donation, of any amount.

Choose freely the amount you wish to donate one time only.

We call sponsoring the act of donating money recurrently to the FreeCAD project. You can do that as an individual or as a company or institution, through different channels or platforms, depending on your preferences.

Sponsoring FreeCAD allows its developers to count on a steady flow of income, so it allows the FPA to plan things ahead, and the FreeCAD developers to invest themselves more seriously into FreeCAD.

To encourage persons and companies to sponsor the FreeCAD project, we have created different sponsoring tiers. When donating regularly to the project, unless you prefer to stay anonymous, your name, company name and/or logo will be featured on this website, depending on the tier you fit into:

♥ Normal sponsor : from 1 USD / 1 EUR per month. You will not have your name displayed here, but you will have helped the project a lot anyway. Together, normal sponsors maintain the project on its feet as much as the bigger sponsors.
🥉 Bronze sponsor : from 25 USD / 25 EUR per month. Your name or company name is displayed on this page.
🥈 Silver sponsor : from 100 USD / 100 EUR per month. Your name or company name is displayed on this page, with a link to your website, and a one-line description text.
🥇 Gold sponsor : from 200 USD / 200 EUR per month. Your name or company name and logo displayed on this page, with a link to your website and a custom description text. Companies that have helped FreeCAD early on also appear under Gold sponsors.

Instead of donating each month, you might find it more comfortable to make a one-time donation that, when divided by twelve, would give you right to enter a sponsoring tier. Don't hesitate to do so!

Choose freely the amount you wish to donate each month.

Please inform your forum name or twitter handle as a notein your transfer, or reach to us, so we can give you proper credits!

FreeCAD and Mesh Import

Post-Import

After import the model is (for FreeCAD), just an assembly of faces. You might want to convert the model into a shape FreeCAD can recognize and that could be altered in FreeCAD.

To do this:

Switch to the Part Workbench
Select the mesh, and go to the Part → Create shape from mesh or press the Part ShapeFromMesh button
Click OK in the dialog
Select the newly created shape
Go to Part → Convert to solid
Select the newly created solid
Go to Part → Create a copy → Refine shape or press the Part RefineShape button

Note: The last step is not necessary, but it will clean the solid of most of its residual edges on planar and cylindrical surfaces.

Errors

\"cannot convert because shape is not a shell\"

Well, your shell seems to have errors, maybe it is not closed (has holes). Since the capabilities of the Mesh workbench in FreeCAD are a little limited at the moment, you might want to try examining and repairing your model with third-party software. After doing that, you may try importing and converting your model again.

Third Party Programs

MeshLab
- License: Open Source (GPL V2)
- Runs on Windows 32/64 bit, Linux and macOS
Meshmixer
- License: Freeware
- Runs on Windows 64-bit

Tutorials

FreeCAD Howto Import Export

⏵ documentation index > User_Documentation > File_Formats > FreeCAD and Mesh Import

This page is retrieved from https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-documentation/blob/main/wiki/FreeCAD_and_Mesh_Import.md