PartCAD

PartCAD is the first package manager for CAD models and a framework for managing assemblies. It aims to complement Git with everything necessary to substitute commercial Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools.

PartCAD maintains information about mechanical parts and how they come together to form larger assemblies. The same parts are reused in multiple assemblies and multiple projects. And all of that is supercharged by the ultimate versioning and collaboration features of Git.

This extension helps create PartCAD packages and explore packages that are already published. To learn more about PartCAD, see the documentation or the project repo. Also, make sure to visit our website and browse the repository of published 3D models.

Creating PartCAD packages

After this extension is installed, the PartCAD workbench becomes available.

Usually, the first step suggested by the workbench is to initialize the current workspace as a new PartCAD package. After that new parts and assemblies can be added using the corresponding buttons in the PartCAD explorer view.

Creating parts

If you have a CAD file created in some other tool then click the Add a CAD file to the current package button in the PartCAD Explorer's toolbar (hover the mouse over the middle left view to see toolbar icons on the top of the view) and select the file (STEP, STL, 3MF etc) from the current workspace.

If you want to add a script file (CadQuery, build123d, OpenSCAD etc) that you can edit in VS Code, then click the Add a CAD script to the current package button in the PartCAD Explorer's toolbar. If you select a file that does not exist then you will be prompted for the template to use.

When you edit scripts that are registered in the current PartCAD package, saving the file makes it displayed in the OCP CAD Viewer view.

Creating assemblies

This is what PartCAD (or, at least, its VS Code Extension) is actually for.

Click Add an assembly file to the current package and select a file with the ".assy" extension. ASSY (Assembly YAML) follows YAML syntax. The list of parts has to be added as children under the links node.

Select the desired part or assembly in PartCAD Explorer. After that navigate to the next line under the links node and type "- pa" (which is what you do when you want to add a child item with the name "part") and let VS Code use the first suggested code completion suggestion. This will add the selected part or assembly to the currently edited assembly.

When you edit ASSY files that are registered in the current PartCAD package, saving the file makes it displayed in the OCP CAD Viewer view.

Inspecting published PartCAD packages

To see a good example of a package with parts, it is recommended to browse pub -> robotics -> parts -> gobilda.

To see a basic example of a package with assemblies, it is recommended to browse pub -> furniture -> workspace -> basic. Please, note, that there are customizable parameters that can be tweaked in the PartCAD Inspector view (the bottom left view).

To see an example of a package with more complex assemblies, it is recommended to browse pub -> robotics -> multimodal -> openvmp -> robots -> don1. Please, note, that it takes A LOT OF resources to render the full robot assembly. It's easier to test some parts of the robot like link-lower-arm or link-base.

Implementation notes

Failed to load PartCAD: _nlopt

If you see the above error message then you are probably using Windows and not using Conda. Please, switch to a Python environment created with Conda and Python >=3.9 and <=3.11.

More documentation

To learn more about PartCAD and for a more detailed tutorial, see the PartCAD documentation website.com/openvmp/partcad).