A few days ago I was working on one of my own projects, in particular I was designing some part to print using my 3D printer, when I faced the need to export them to other software.
The platform that I used to model my stuff is FreeCAD and I usually export my projects in .OBJ format for slicing them and print using PronterFace.
This time a friend asked me a copy of my project to work together on it, but he is a Mac user was requesting .DAE format to use with the SketchUp or Autodesk.
Once I selected my objects to export in .DAE format I saw on the bottom of the screen the error: “pycollada not found, collada support is disabled”.
I tried to understand what pycollada is and I discovered that it is a Python COLLADA library. COLLADA? Here Wikipedia did it’s work perfectly.
Ok now, I identified the problem, let’s solve it.

How to fix
First check if you have Python and GIT installed. I was surprised to discover that my system didn’t have it by default. If you are not sure, run the following command on your terminal:
python --version
git --version
If the replies are the Python and GIT versions you are done. Otherwise install Python and GIT before.
Then install all the proper requirements as superuser:
apt-get install python-setuptools python-lxml python-numpy python-dateutil
Now copy the pycollada library on your local drive running the command:
git clone git://github.com/pycollada/pycollada.git pycollada
Go to the just downloaded folder:
cd pycollada
Now install pycollada as superuser:
python setup.py install
Restart your system and you are ready to export .DAE file from your FreeCAD installation.
Details
Publication date | 06/01/2021 | |
Software | FreeCAD | 0.18 |
Environment | Linux | Debian GNU 10 (Buster) |
Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA