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The addi­tive pipe tool is an excel­lent tool that allows a sketch or sketch­es to be swept along a series of edges to cre­ate a sol­id pipe with the pro­file of the orig­i­nal sketch. It can also be used to cre­ate more com­plex geo­met­ric pipes that flow through a vari­ety of pro­files along their length. As a reminder in these tuto­ri­als we use the tool tip text that appears when you hov­er over a tool icon to describe tools, which is a good way to explore FreeCAD!

Launch a new project from the start page using the “para­met­ric part” option from the New File area. This will cre­ate a new blank project in the Part­De­sign work­bench and will have cre­at­ed an active body. In the active body click to cre­ate a sketch and select to add the sketch to the XY plane. In this sketch we are going to cre­ate a small draw­ing that will define the cross sec­tion out­line of our sim­ple pipe. Let’s use the “Cre­ate rec­tan­gle” tool and then left click to draw a small rec­tan­gle rough­ly cen­tred around the XY ori­gin point. We aren’t going to wor­ry about con­strain­ing our rec­tan­gle for this quick exper­i­ment. Click “close” to close the sketch.

Next let’s click to cre­ate a sec­ond sketch but this time in the XZ plane. In this sketch select the “Cre­ate Poly­line” tool and draw a series of straight lines attached and start­ing on the XZ ori­gin point. Don’t wor­ry too much about the poly­line but know that this will be the path along which our pipe is formed. Hav­ing added two or three sec­tions of poly­line close the sketch.

In the file tree view high­light the orig­i­nal “sketch” item which con­tains our rec­tan­gle and then click the “Addi­tive Pipe” tool icon. In the Addi­tive Pipe dia­logue the upmost tab is “Pipe para­me­ters”. In this tab we should see “Object” is set to “sketch” and fur­ther below we can find an “add edge” but­ton. Click the “add edge” but­ton and then select the first sec­tion of poly­line we drew, con­nect­ed to the XZ ori­gin, in the pre­view win­dow. You should see trans­par­ent pre­view of a pipe form along this sec­tion. Click the add edge again and add the next sec­tion of poly­line and repeat this for all your poly­line sec­tions. Before we click “OK” to apply the changes let’s change the Cor­ner Tran­si­tion val­ue to “Right Cor­ner” in the drop down menu. Feel free to return to this sec­tion and try the oth­er cor­ner tran­si­tion options to see how they effect your pipe design.

For now let’s click “OK” to apply the addi­tive pipe set­tings and to close the addi­tive pipe dia­logue. You should see you now have a nice pipe object that flows with round­ed cor­ners along the polyine you defined. How­ev­er, you’ll also realise, it’s not a hol­low pipe! To make your pipe hol­low select an end face of the pipe object and then left click the “Thick­ness” icon. In the thick­ness dia­logue click the “select” but­ton and rotate your pipe geom­e­try in the live pre­view so that you can select the oppo­site end of the pipe. Select that face and click OK and you should now have a hol­low pipe with a 1mm thick wall.