In the past the stand-alone Screw Maker macro, by ulrich1a, was used to create individual bolts, screws, and washers.

In the past, the Macro BOLTS was used to insert the parts from the BOLTS library.

An option controls whether an object shows the real thread or just a plain cylinder. Various standard screws inserted with the Fasteners Workbench.

ThreadProfile Workbench, to create common threads.

BOLTSFC Workbench, to place fasteners from the BOLTS library.

The screws and nuts don't show a thread by default, but this can be controlled with an option.

Fasteners Workbench, to add/attach various fasteners to parts.

In particular, three resources are recommended that can be installed from the Addon Manager:

See the external workbenches page for information on external tools. Using utilities and parts that other people have created is easy and saves time. Using utilities and parts from workbenches Remember that thread shapes take a lot of memory, and having just one thread in a document can increase the file size significantly, so the user is advised to create threads only when absolutely necessary.

Introducing a strategy for designing a bolt without the commonly found problems.

Many of the techniques presented here have been collected from different forum threads: However, with the popularization of additive manufacturing (3D printing), there is now a real need to model 3D threads, in order to print them exactly as designed. In traditional systems a thread does not need to be represented directly in 3D space, as it can be indicated with its required characteristics in the 2D technical drawing that is sent for manufacturing.

In traditional CAD systems modelling screw threads is discouraged because it puts a big load on the modelling kernel, as well as on the rendering of the shapes. The updated content focuses on the PartDesign Workbench to create the thread, but does not use the PartDesign AdditiveHelix tool as this was introduced later.

It was updated for v0.19, although the overall process has been essentially the same since v0.14, when the tutorial was originally written. This tutorial is a collection of techniques to model screw threads in FreeCAD.

6.2.2 Profile for arbitrary cross-section.

Freecad tutorial for 3d printing