FreeCAD: General Tips

The first step, after loading a previously saved file or creating a new document is:
Select workbench.
In middle of top icon bar, there is a box with drop-down arrow. On a new project, the box will say "Start".
Click the dropdown and select the workbench desired. I often use Part Design.
The workbench is just a collection of tools (icon bars below this bar) that you might want to use in your project.
You can change back and forth between different workbenches as needed during building your project.

Units/Dimensions:
It turns out that, since the underlying coding of FreeCAD is mm, and since development is not complete, some things, for example the grid, stay calibrated in mm regardless of choosing inches in the "Units" tab of General preferences.
Click Edit > Preferences
Click Units tab; select Standard (mm/kg/s/deg) and the number of decimal places desired, then Apply & OK.

Navigation:
Scroll wheel: zooms in and out
Middle+Right buttons: rotate
Middle button: pan

Set snap-to parameters:
If the cross-hatch icon is not visible, View > Toolbars > select Draft Snap
(the option may not be available in the workbench you've selected. Not sure how to juggle this, but if you go to the Draft workbench where Draft Snap is available, and make settings there, they appear to persist when you then move to a different workbench)
click blue padlock icon to enable snapping. Padlock background will change from white to gray.
Other icons will turn blue.
When an icon (snap mode) is activated, its background will be gray.
Hover mouse over icon to display label of snap mode function

Hide Constraint dimensions:
In Combo View, Model, when you have double-clicked Sketch and are in an edit session, the Constraints block will have a line for each constraint that's been defined. To the left of each line is a small checkbox. Un-check it to hide the constraint dimension on your drawing.

Escape (or right-click) to clear your drawing selection ("line" or whatever).
If you hit escape twice, it will take you out of the edit session.
Re-enter edit session by clicking "Edit the selected sketch" (3rd icon from left in bottom-most menu bar)
[presumably if you have more than one sketch in the project, you'll need to go to Combo View - Model and select the one you want to edit]

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