oc-freecad-cam exposes FreeCAD's Path workbench in a fluent python API that takes OCP TopoDS_Shape objects and their wrappers from CadQuery and Build123d to enable generating parametric tool paths from the comfort of your keyboard.
This project is fairly experimental at this stage. Expect bugs and always double-check the generated gcode for naughty surprises.
See documentation at https://ocp-freecad-cam.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
ocp-freecad-cam is available on pypi: https://pypi.org/project/ocp-freecad-cam/ ocp-freecad-cam does not attempt to install runtime dependencies since it's designed to run with any combination of these three:
Additionally, FreeCAD module needs to be available.
There are at least three options to approach this
1) Using the FreeCAD Python interpreter 2) Using system interpreter with the same major version as the FreeCAD Python interpreter 3) Compiling FreeCAD to use the system interpreter
Number one is now the recommended way and will be documented below
Again, three options. Please use at least version 0.21.
1) Official distributions https://www.freecad.org/downloads.php 2) Official portable packages https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-Bundle/releases
This is fairly straightforward. Download the AppImage, extract it, create a virtual environment from the included interpreter, include lib, activate it and install your preferred packages.
mkdir freecad
cd freecad
wget https://github.com/voneiden/FreeCAD-Bundle/releases/download/0.21.2/FreeCAD_0.21.2-2023-12-26-conda-Linux-x86_64-py311.AppImage
chmod +x FreeCAD_0.21.2-2023-12-26-conda-Linux-x86_64-py311.AppImage
./FreeCAD_0.21.2-2023-12-26-conda-Linux-x86_64-py311.AppImage --appimage-extract
./squashfs-root/usr/bin/python -m venv --system-site-packages fcvenv
echo "$PWD/squashfs-root/usr/lib" > fcvenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/freecad.pth
source fcenv/bin/activate
pip install cadquery build123d ocp-freecad-cam
Test that your interpreter works by running
python -c "import FreeCAD"
While I would suggest using WLS, if you want to stick to pure windows, the general idea is the same as above in the linux example with two exceptions.
1) Instead of "$PWD/squashfs-root/usr/lib" > fcvenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/freecad.pth
use
"$($PWD)\..\src" | Out-File -FilePath "fcvenv\Lib\site-packages\ocp_freecad_cam.pth"
or create the pth file manually somehow. Just note that the venv file structure is a bit different on Windows.
2) Instead of source
you activate the venv with just
.\fcvenv\Scripts\activate
Dev dependencies are listed in requirements-dev.txt, generated from requirements-dev.in with pip-compile
Pocket3D does not work, possibly related to https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/6815 - shouldn't be a big loss though, Surface3D can get the same things done IMO.
VCarve can produce unstable toolpaths, but that is probably a bug in the underlying openvoronoi library. Tweaking the job params may help.
Contributions are welcome.
Apply black and isort and ensure that tests pass. Preferably also include test coverage for new code.