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FreeCAD v1.1

blog.freecad.org

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Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#101

Post by chopin »

godelski wrote: post #62
Alupis wrote: post #11

Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference. I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measure…

A fun thing to do is take a picture and import it. Then you can trace it! This is best done on some kind of grid background but having a ruler (or two) is usually enough. One suggestion, print one or two layers first to check the fit. Iterate with that before you print the whole thing. Another helpful thing is to start drawing things parametrically. This should be familiar to programmers. You're using variables and y…

I started with FreeCAD a couple of weeks ago. Parametric modeling is pretty hard and a couple of things are pretty hard to understand (no easy reuse of sketches between parts for one, one cannot extrude a binder is another one).

However, without it fine-tuning models for technical use would be untenable.

Unfortunately , refactoring is nightmare stuff.

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#102

Post by godelski »

jareklupinski wrote: post #99
godelski wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tried it, but FreeCAD has scripting https://wiki.freecad.org/Python_scripting_tutorial Edit: Your website is quite confusing. Took me awhile...

ty for 'tearing through' ;)

I had to... rip it apart to figure out what it all meant! ;)

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#103

Post by godelski »

chopin wrote: post #101
godelski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fun thing to do is take a picture and import it. Then you can trace it! This is best done on some kind of grid background but having a ruler (or two) is usually enough. One suggestion, print one or two layers first to check the fit. Iterate with that before you print the whole thing. Another helpful thing is to start drawing things parametrically. This should be familiar to programmers. You're using variables and y…

I started with FreeCAD a couple of weeks ago. Parametric modeling is pretty hard and a couple of things are pretty hard to understand (no easy reuse of sketches between parts for one, one cannot extrude a binder is another one). However, without it fine-tuning models for technical use would be untenable. Unfortunately , refactoring is nightmare stuff.

I definitely don't want to say that it's easy, but it's not terribly difficult. Does take a shift in thinking though, but then it clicks.

For reusing sketches, you can. There's external geometry and subshapebuilder. Doing assembly can be a bit tricky at first.

I'll admit, FreeCAD is a bit tricky if you're coming over from something more professional like SolidWorks or CATIA but it does get the job done and you can't beat the price. It's also really improved over the last two years

https://wiki.freecad.org/PartDesign_SubShapeBinder

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#104

Post by fileoffset »

FreeCAD is great for small things but any time I tried a complex model I get performance issues, lock ups and crashes pretty consistently. There are still a lot of hard edges.

I switched to Solid Edge free community edition, much more stable and the workflow is less bespoke.

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#105

Post by prokoudine »

imtringued wrote: post #89
class3shock wrote: post #45

Is it any closer to functioning like Solidworks, NX, Creo, and all the other professional CAD software packages? Edit: After opening it up it seems better than before but still not a replacement. I can use the draw tool to create a rectangle but than immediately cannot apply symmetry or equal length constraints until I delete others which shouldn't overlap. Clicking to create a cut or hole opens up a window that does…

The entire FreeCAD development philosophy is to not compare FreeCAD with commercial CAD tools. That's a cardinal sin. Basically, they are completely hostile to feedback from people who've spent their entire career doing CAD.

> Basically, they are completely hostile to feedback from people who've spent their entire career doing CAD.

There's an entire working group in the project comprised of people who have spent their entire career doing CAD and now take care of making FreeCAD get on par with proprietary counterparts.

There are numerous discussions online where users have constructive conversations with FreeCAD devs and provide useful input to mutual benefit.

Would you care to point me to a discussion where an actual FreeCAD contributor is completely hostile to someone like you?

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#106

Post by WillAdams »

mastermage wrote: post #81
digdugdirk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inherently limited by its geometry kernel. Most "real" CAD suites use something like parasolid, usually with a bunch of extras slapped on top. Making a new one from scratch is a massive undertaking, but I'll remain forever hopeful that we get a new, modern, open-source kernel one of these days...

Not gonna lie I just hope the rewrite it in rust community takes a stab at it at one point,

There are already at least two geometry kernels being written in scratch in Rust (see fornjot.app for one) --- the problem is the first parts are obvious/easy, so initial progress is rapid, then one hits the difficult/intractable parts and progress stalls, usually to be abandoned.

There are a couple of doctorates available for folks who are willing to research and publish in this space --- the commercial products are all holding their solutions as trade secrets in their code --- even then though, the edge cases are increasingly difficulty to solve in such a way as to not break what is already working, hence the commercial kernels having _very_ large teams working on them, or at least that is my understanding from what Michael Gibson (former lead developer of Rhino 3D, current developer of Moment of Inspiration 3D) has written on the topic.

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#107

Post by class3shock »

adiabatichottub wrote: post #64
class3shock wrote: post #45

Is it any closer to functioning like Solidworks, NX, Creo, and all the other professional CAD software packages? Edit: After opening it up it seems better than before but still not a replacement. I can use the draw tool to create a rectangle but than immediately cannot apply symmetry or equal length constraints until I delete others which shouldn't overlap. Clicking to create a cut or hole opens up a window that does…

My impression of FreeCAD as a project is that for much if its life it has suffered from a certain amount of developer churn and lack of focus. It's like somebody builds a workbench and gets it working just good enough using a workflow that makes sense to them, but then nobody ever really bothers to flesh out the rest of it, so if you try to do things in a different way that may be perfectly sensible to you the result…

I hope. I only use Windows at this point because of CAD and FEA software and it gets worse every version. For FEA there are options on Linux but for CAD you have been SOL since most major CAD suites dropped Linux support over a decade ago.

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#108

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #62
Alupis wrote: post #11

Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference. I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measure…

A fun thing to do is take a picture and import it. Then you can trace it! This is best done on some kind of grid background but having a ruler (or two) is usually enough. One suggestion, print one or two layers first to check the fit. Iterate with that before you print the whole thing. Another helpful thing is to start drawing things parametrically. This should be familiar to programmers. You're using variables and y…

[deleted]

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#109

Post by elsjaako »

dmonitor wrote: post #49
bmicraft wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or don't and adjust it in the sketcher? If you name your constrains you can just reference them directly elsewhere. I think that's much easier as you don't have to go back and forth with a spreadsheet.

Tracking down individual values in the sketcher can get annoying too. Just depends on the complexity of your part

You can name them if you want, and the names will show up in the properties of the operation, and you can reuse the values in formulas.

There's a lot of options, and I think a lot of it is a matter of taste/experience what to use

Re: FreeCAD v1.1

#110

Post by elsjaako »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #74
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #8

I post this in every FreeCAD thread: If you're going to start designing something with it, use the spreadsheet tool to make everything parametric. You'll save yourself a ton of time as your designs get more complicated. Maybe this isn't anything new to experience CAD users. I don't know if other CAD tools do this as I started using FreeCAD after playing with 3D printing.

This seems like good advice. To this day I haven't explored spreadsheets or variable sets, which makes resizing stuff a giant pain in the ass. This is an area where FreeCAD really needs work: scaling stuff.

I'm not experienced with other CAD programs, but I think scaling stuff works fine.

If you want to scale your entire object, there's a scale part operation in the part toolbench.

But in general you wouldn't want to do this. For most real world part, the dimensions you set are based on real world requirements. E.g. These holes need to be M3 and spaced 30mm apart because that's what the part we are connecting to has, but the space to the next set of holes should scale linearly with the length growing, etc.

If you have requirements like that, you should build them into your constraints. If you do this from the start, it's usually pretty easy to make size adjustments to your model.

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