Moreover, a Pad extends along the normal to the Sketch plane, while the Extrusion can be along any direction. They can be copied ans assembled together to create the locomotive or two “back” pieces and a longer extrusion of the body sketch to create the Mk3 coaches. I use this trick to create the cabin, the body and the back of the locomotive as separate building blocks. Creates sketch plane Select 'Circle' from the toolbar and draw rough circle on sketch plane. Move to Part Design workbench Select 'New Sketch' from the toolbar and select 'XY plane' in diplayed dialog. In this way changes in the position of the final block will be independent from the position of the original sketches. Click File- New in menu bar and create new document. Planning to create basic building blocks to be assembled together in different ways (lego style), it is more efficient to create the original Sketches positioned at the origin of the axes, create the Extrusion, clone it if more than one instance is needed, then position it. BUT I'm not sure that will be the best way. Look for this icon in the sketcher toolbar. This would allow you to pull the face edges into your sketch so that you can add constraints to your new sketch components. Move to Part Design workbench Select 'New Sketch' from the toolbar and select 'XY plane' in diplayed dialog. ago You can make linkages to external geometry using the external geometry tool in the sketcher. The easy solution is to create an Extrusion from the same starting sketch, selecting “create solid”: the result of the Extrusion can be repositioned without touching the original sketch. Click File- New in menu bar and create new document. Moreover, if you build new features on top of the Pad, only the very first sketch can be translated/rotated. explodedSketch.png But if you need to handle the contours separately, I would make two sketches. Only the Sketch can be translated or rotated. One way would be to PartExplodeCompound the sketch into its pieces and then extrude the pieces. introduced in version 0.20: Alternatively you can select several sketches or faces. Usage Select one sketch or face to be padded.

Sketch (A) shown on the left end result after pad operation (B) on the right. Using the “Part Design” workbench, when you build a 3D feature such as a Pad based on a Sketch, you cannot translate or rotate the produced Pad. The Pad tool extrudes a sketch or a face of a solid along a straight path.

FreeCAD: create a pad or an extrusion from a sketch? Select the sketch, and then press PartDesign Pad, choose the default options, and press OK to create a solid extrusion.

Freecad extrude part of a sketch