Skip to content

Place Robot

In one sentence: Position and orient a robot object in the 3-D scene by setting its base placement interactively.

Overview

Workbench: Robot
Menu: Robot → Place Robot
Shortcut: none

Deprecated workbench

The Robot workbench is deprecated as of FreeCAD 1.0.

Opens a task panel to set the robot's world-frame position and orientation. The robot's Placement property is updated so its base frame sits at the specified location.

Intuition

Before adding trajectories, the robot must be placed in the work cell at the correct location — just as a real robot is mounted at a fixed position on the factory floor. Place Robot sets that base position.

When to use it

  • When setting up a new robot simulation, before creating any trajectories.
  • When repositioning a robot for a different work cell layout.

Step-by-step

  1. Select the Robot::RobotObject.
  2. Choose Robot → Place Robot.
  3. In the task panel, set the position (X, Y, Z in mm) and orientation (Euler angles or quaternion).
  4. Click OK.

Python API

import FreeCAD as App
from FreeCAD import Vector, Rotation, Placement

robot = App.ActiveDocument.getObject("Robot")
robot.Placement = Placement(
    Vector(500, 0, 0),      # base position in mm
    Rotation(0, 0, 0, 1)    # identity rotation
)
App.ActiveDocument.recompute()

See also