Ideally you should then attach your sketch to one of the Body's standard planes: To continue with your existing document, if you don't want to start your sketch from scratch: create a Body, then from the tree, drag and drop the sketch over the Body. So you almost never need to manually switch to the Sketcher. PartDesign now implements automatic switching with the Sketcher workbench, when you create your sketch from PartDesign, the UI automatically switches to Sketcher for editing, and returns to PartDesign when you close your sketch. The Body is a new container that is now mandatory (click on the previous link to learn more about it). In 0.17 onward, PartDesign has its own 'create sketch' icon, which automatically creates a PartDesign Body if none is found. That's fine if you use any other workbench afterwards but PartDesign.

In short, the problem is that you started from the Sketcher workbench, and created your sketch from there. Regarding what openBrain wrote, I would actually start first with the Creating a simple part with PartDesign tutorial, then work through the Basic Part Design Tutorial 017. Would post a pic, but don't know how too as it doesn't direct me to select a pic, perhaps someone can help with that too.

The problem I'm having is, on watching a youtube freecad video ( ) his layout is so different from mine, it's really hard to follow, though, after managing to get to the finished sketch part, where I need to revolve it using my own simple drawing, I get this error, that I have no idea how to resolve. Now I'm retired, I have a laser cutter (2D) and recently bought a 3D printer (An圜ubic Mega). I have been using Autocad LT for 20 years, but never used a 3D version.

just joined this forum as recently got freecad and am struggling to make it work for me.

Download megasync 4.8.7