In FreeCAD, on top of these common features, there is a new interesting one: The possibility to reference not only other cells, but other objects from the document, and retrieve values from their properties. The spreadsheet editor of FreeCAD, although it is not as complete and powerful as the more complete spreadsheet applications we listed above, has nevertheless most of the basic tools and functions that are commonly used, such as the possibility to change the aspect of the cells (size, color, alignment), join and split cells, use formulas such as =2+2, or reference other cells with =B1. Double-click the new Spreadsheet object in the tree view.Now, let's extract some information about these objects.Edit their Placement property (or use the Draft Move tool) to place them a little apart, so we can better see the effects of what we'll do:.Start by switching to the Part Workbench, and create a couple of objects: a box, a cylinder and a sphere.In the following example, we will create a couple of objects, retrieve some of their properties in a spreadsheet, then use the spreadsheet to directly drive properties of other objects. That would mean the spreadsheet and the object depend on one other. There is only one thing to keep in mind, as FreeCAD prohibits circular dependencies between objects, the same spreadsheet cannot be used to set a property of an object and at the same time retrieve a property value from the same object. This turns spreadsheets into powerful control structures, where the values inserted in specific cells can drive dimensions of the model. In FreeCAD, however, spreadsheets have an additional utility: Their cells can receive a name, and can then be referenced by any field supported by the expressions engine. Spreadsheets can be exported as CSV files, which can be imported in any other spreadsheet application. These spreadsheets can then be populated with data extracted from your model, and can also perform a series of calculations between values. This workbench allows you to create spreadsheets such as those made with Excel or Calc from LibreOffice directly in FreeCAD. FreeCAD features another interesting workbench to explore: the Spreadsheet Workbench.
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