Uppercut

The direct-modeling interface we always wished FreeCAD had.

beta - live for initial discussion and feedback

What it is

Uppercut takes the best ideas from the easiest modelers to use (SketchUp's push/pull and inference drawing, Fusion 360's press-pull) and builds them into FreeCAD 1.1 as one native workbench. Every drag, offset and sweep commits an ordinary parametric feature, so direct modeling and FreeCAD's full feature tree are always both available.

One toolbar covers the whole draw-extrude-measure loop, with single-letter shortcuts scoped to the workbench.

Select Line Rectangle Circle Polygon Arc Push/Pull Offset Follow Me Move/Rotate Scale Eraser Tape Measure Paint Bucket Make Group Add Location

Install

In FreeCAD 1.1, open Edit > Preferences > Addon Manager and add https://github.com/mathmati/uppercut under Custom repositories (branch main).
Add the companion repos you want the same way (list below). Each is optional; Uppercut only shows buttons for what is installed.
Install them from Tools > Addon manager, restart, and pick Uppercut in the workbench dropdown.

Companion add-ons

Uppercut is an umbrella: the drawing and modeling tools come from small standalone add-ons it detects and arranges.

SketchLayer - drawing in the 3D view with inference cues and type-to-dimension
PushPull - click-drag a face to a parametric Pad or Pocket
Offset - offset a face boundary in its own plane
FollowMe - sweep a profile along a path of edges
SiteContext - real map imagery, OpenStreetMap buildings and terrain
Migration Guide - instructor panel for people coming from Fusion 360 or SolidWorks

Early days

This is a young project. It is verified with a headless regression suite on every change, but real-world feedback is what improves it. If something feels wrong, send a screenshot and the error to the issue tracker and we will iterate.