this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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FreeCAD

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Your own 3D parametric modeler.

www.freecad.org

FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size. Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history and changing its parameters.

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Newbie here. FreeCAD is v1.1.1

Is there really no way to do simple manual vertices manipulation?

Coming from Wings3D. Found the Fase feature (PartDesign_Chamfer) which is a good start for my usual extrude/bevel workflow but I can not for my life find out how to manually select and move vertexes manually / individually.

I learned about converting a part into a mesh but even here I seem to not have the option to move vertices around freely?

Do I really have to go down to a 2D drawing first and work from there?

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[–] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

We don’t do manual vertices changes here (at least to my knowledge). That is something which you can do with a 3D modeling software.

Now that being said, you can do the same style of change, how you do it depends on what you are trying to do.

You can select a face and make changes to it like a sketch. So push pull twist, or if you select a vertices you can chamfer or filet.

Your other option is to manipulate the base sketches vertices or take your vertices and make a sketch on it to make a series of operations to get a similar change.

The reason being, in CAD, you can undo or change underneath and if you can it by vertices, which one did you select if you go back and add a new face? FreeCAD specifically has a hard time keeping track of which vertices is which on a recompute.

The other thing unlike modeling CAD is all about measurements, so making sure that the change is anchored and can handle an entire model change is part of the good cad design. For example if you need to pad out a width in step 2, and in step 30 you modify your vertices, but after a print you realize that you padded to much in step 2, your design should be able to handle changing the pad and not breaking at step 30. (Note this is not easy to do in FreeCAD without practice)

Here are a few of my designs if you need a reference of a workflow: https://github.com/the16bitgamer/16BitVirtualStudiosDesigns

[–] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

You can select a face and make changes to it like a sketch. So push pull twist, or if you select a vertices you can chamfer or filet.

Think this is the part I'm missing - as in I didn't find the option yet. For this particular case I want to increase the height of the selected ~~part~~ face.

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

[–] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 1 points 4 weeks ago

It’s located in the part design workbench, I can remember if you can make a cube first the edit it in a part design. But my workflow in CAD is.

Sketch > Part Design > Sketch > Part Design …

In the Part Design work bench you will find additive features (extrude or revolution) as well as Subtractive tools (Pocket or Groove)