How to read this site

What the boxes mean

Three kinds of box appear on these pages.

A sentence to paste into your AI tool as-is. Use the copy button at the top right.

How an exercise page is built

Every exercise follows the same order. Header (input files · time · what you end up with · what you learn) → Setup → Steps (say this → what the AI does → how to check) → Checking your result (success criteria as numbers) → When it doesn’t work → Going further. At the very end there is a list of the tools running behind the scenes, and a link to the original session log. You do not need to know the tool names.

Which exercise to start with

Your situation	Exercise
Starting out	1. Four holes in a plate
You have a PDF drawing	2. Cover from a machining drawing
You have a DXF	3. PCB board, 10. Pull-up bar frame
A vendor sent you a STEP	4. Clamp jaw
All you have is an STL	5. Spool guide
An existing model keeps turning red	6. Red sketch
You have to produce a drawing	7. Making a 2D drawing
You are printing it	8. Print review
You are worried it will break	9. Cantilever analysis

Input files

Every exercise has an «Original and finished» section. It shows the original (drawing, STEP, STL) and the finished files (FCStd, STEP) as images, and links them from the GitHub Release. The finished files were produced by actually running that exercise’s steps on FreeCAD 1.1.3, so when you get stuck you can open one and compare the tree and the Params against yours. Exercises 1, 6, 8 and 9 have no input file and start from words alone; 6, 8 and 9 offer a practice model to download.

Questions and feedback

Questions and feedback go to GitHub Issues on the cadxray repository. Leaving behind the prompts that worked — and the ones that didn’t — saves the next person some flailing.

Search

The search box at the top (Ctrl+K) finds pages by words like “hole”, “interference” or “STEP”.