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From Components

In one sentence: Create one mesh segment per disconnected component of the input mesh without any analysis or painting.

Overview

Workbench: Reverse Engineering
Menu: Reverse Engineering → Segmentation → From Components
Shortcut: none

Splits a mesh into individual objects based on existing topological disconnection — each connected component (a set of faces all reachable from each other through shared edges) becomes a separate Mesh::Feature in a "Segments" group.

Intuition

A mesh is "connected" when every face can reach every other face by walking across shared edges. If you scan two separate bolts and import them as one mesh file, there are two connected components (the two bolts) even though both live in the same object. From Components splits them back into individual objects.

No geometry analysis is involved — the tool simply maps the topology.

When to use it

  • You imported a mesh file (STL, OBJ) that contains multiple objects merged into one, and you want them as separate objects.
  • You ran Mesh workbench → Split by Components and now want the pieces as Reverse Engineering segments.
  • You want to fit separate analytic surfaces to parts of a mesh that are already physically disconnected.

When NOT to use it

  • Connected mesh — if the entire mesh is one component, From Components creates a group with a single member (the original mesh). Use Mesh Segmentation or Manual Segmentation to subdivide it.
  • When you need type classification — From Components doesn't label regions as plane/cylinder/sphere. Use Mesh Segmentation for that.

Step-by-step

  1. Select one or more Mesh::Feature objects.
  2. Choose Reverse Engineering → Segmentation → From Components.
  3. FreeCAD creates a "Segments \<mesh name>" group containing one Mesh::Feature per disconnected component.

Parameters

This tool has no parameters — it is fully determined by the mesh topology.

Common mistakes and pitfalls

Creates only one segment — mesh was already connected

Cause: The mesh is topologically one connected component even though it looks like multiple objects.
Fix: Use Mesh Segmentation or Manual Segmentation to split by geometry.

Python API

# From Components is command-driven:
import FreeCADGui as Gui
Gui.doCommand("Gui.runCommand('Reen_SegmentationFromComponents', 0)")

See also