FreeCAD

I would just like to say thanks to all the devs and users giving feedback for making FreeCAD such a great tool.

I've been using CAD professionally for 25 years, mainly AutoCAD and Solidworks, but have been a Liinux user at home for about 20. As an engineer I've always been looking for a solution for home use, but nothing has ever come close to what I'm looking for. Closest was possibly Onshape, but the public file limitation on the free tier has always rubbed me the wrong way. I would also much rather prefer an FOSS solution.

I've tried FreeCAD on and off over the last couple of years, but just couldn't get the hang of it, until now. It being Easter weekend I had a couple of days off and decided to follow a couple of tutorials on Youtube. Mostly Deltahedra and MangoJelly. It has finally clicked. Yes, it's different to how I'm used to working, but it works. My biggest pain point is probably assemblies.

There is obviously still some pain points, but compared to even just a year ago it feels like a completely different program.

I'm seriously considering starting a monthly donation to the FreeCAD devs as a way to show my gratitude.

Finally managed to actually design, CAM, and post process something all with just FreeCAD! Just a simple sign for a library patron. This finished item obviously still has lots of issues but they're mostly user error and I think I know how to fix them. HUGGGEEE thanks to clsergent for designing a postprocessor for Snapmaker machines, since the company hasn't bothered to maintain theirs for like years and years lol.

Overall couldn't be more satisfied, 10/10, FreeCAD is amazing 🔥

I think opened a debug console or something.

I mean those like that, i did this one manually, but it was quite an annoying process, is there any tool in freecad that can help with these situations?

I have equality between all these lines, but it was still not so pleasant

The .stl and .fcstd files are at the link. All the test joints I printed fit together really nicely, but I'm worried the overall design might have issues that I'm too much of an amateur to identify. It'll need a LOT of filament... Good wooden marudai cost hundreds of dollars, whereas 1500g of my preferred filament is only like $45, but I'd still hate to waste that much of it. The printing itself I'm not too concerned about, it's easy stuff. Just a little bridging and no support. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the finished/assembled object will be functional. Thanks in advance if you have any tips!

PS: This is also my first use of the spreadsheet function, I usually just rely on named constraints from prior sketches. It's really neat. FreeCAD rules!

after bashing my head in my table for a bit, i finally managed to make something "salvagable"... i think.

this is meant to be a vesa adapter, from 200mm to 100mm; the idea is that 6mm metal screw-posts are melted into the holes

the sketch is quite a bit of a hellscape... i will see if i can figure out symmetry on the next iteration. Do you have any advice on how i can use better this program? it's been quite a bit since i haven't seen such a steep learning curve on a piece of software

And here the real deal:

Only crashed once :)

I’ve tried the dev branch of FreeCAD for a while now, but backed off due to how unpolished it felt. But when I saw FreeCAD V1 RC2 pre-release on GitHub Id thought to try it out.

My first impressions didn’t blow me away, sure there were nice UI touches here and there. But nothing really stood out to me. But that changed when I started cading.

It’s not a major overhaul to my eyes. But the nice touches are everywhere. Like adding a TinkerCAD navigation controls option for beginners, and smart snapping and auto constraints enabled by default. So, so nice especially for noobs who don’t know that >.< is a centre constraint in the tool bar.

But I had a quick project, tonight. Redesign an older model from scratch to add in new parts. My original designs were some of the first real work I did in FreeCAD so it was nice to see the improvements. Out side of legacy bugs like attaching a 3 point arc to a line still being present, the process was smooth, not as pain free as Fusion, but better.

Then at the end when I was adding text to my part. I got to see the best update of them all. If you aren’t aware, adding text to a model is annoying. Especially if you want it a distance from a side or in the middle. You needed to use the measuring tool to get deltas and re measure after every change. I was using the new measuring tool like that too, and thank you devs for adding manual controls and deltas. But at the end, I left the measurements on the text, updated the values, and noticed the numbers updated on me… OMG best feature of all time 10/10 best CAD software in the world. This makes my life soooooo much easier now.

If you haven’t already try the RC versions of FreeCAD do so. Sure there is still some open source jank in it, but it’s so much more polished than before that I feel this upcoming release deserves the V1 moniker.

I love FreeCAD (I use the daily build, 1.1.0dev), but there are two limitations with it that are driving me crazy. Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong:

• How can I select hidden features? By that I mean, features that are stacked on top of each other or hidden behind another feature. For example, 2 lines sharing the same space in a sketch, or like in the assembly in the attached image, something inside the box.

  In SolidWorks, you can hold Shift (IIRC - I haven't used it in 15 years) and it cycles through the elements that occupy the same space where you click, I can't believe there isn't a similar feature in FreeCAD because it's so essential. But I can't find it for the life of me.

• In an assembly (new 1.x default assembly workbench), is there a way to manually "grab" parts that aren't fully constrained and move them with the mouse?

  Again, in SolidWorks, this is trivially easy to do. I used to use that all the time to quickly see if my parts moved as they should. It's really hard to get a feel for whether the design is correct when nothing readily moves in FreeCAD.

  Not to mention, very often, the constraint resolver doesn't quite understand what I want and I'd like to manually locate the parts close to where they ought to be to "help" the resolver, if that makes sense.

  Can you do that in the new assembly workbench? That too seems so essential I can't believe it's missing.

It was a pleasure using it. I wanted to switch from Fusion to Ondsel and tried to learn it as an alternative.

Did you use Ondsel?

I'm designing a case for a dew-point ventilator controller to be 3d printed. The controller is implemented using arduino on an esp32. The project is based off of the code and HW implementation by Make Magazine Germany: https://github.com/MakeMagazinDE/Taupunktluefter. When starting out I was thinking this would be an easy project but it turned out that especially the lid with its lip and groove design and the parts fixations were not that easy. I'm excited to finally print it.

The file is parametric to some extent and the main footprint is based off of a master sketch. Many parts were imported as step files from grabcad. I used FreeCAD 1.0-rc1 which works like a charm for many things. Next thing I would like to do is to use the new assembly workbench. What do you think?

Manual "Exploded view",

Opaque view.

I was thinking about trying some sewing for headphone covers and a strap. I can easily disassemble the existing materials and reverse engineer them. I would rather try to learn parametric iterative design of textiles and alter the fit of the pads based on a pattern. Anyone have any experience with this application?

Maybe there's something I don't understand here. I'd love it if someone told me how to do the following.

Let's say I have some really complex shape in a sketch left of the Y axis: it takes me forever to get it just right. Then I need to mirror it on the right side of the Y axis and connect the two halves.

In SolidWorks, it's trivial: mirror the stuff, done. If you change the master shape on the left, the change is reflected on the right.

In FreeCAD, the best you can do is make a mirror copy of the left-hand side elements - which also makes copies of the constraints which are completely independent from the original constraints on the left-hand side - delete the stupid new right-hand side constraints and slowly, painfully constrain the right-hand side copies to the original left-hand side elements, trying to dodge the dreaded orange over-constraints all the time. It's long, it's painful, and the end-result is usually so fragile that if you change anything significant on the left-hand side, the sketch turns orange and then it's back to hunting broken constraints again.

Surely it can't be that painful. Am I missing something obvious?

Thank you FreeCAD for not pay walling the ability to create technical drawings.

So what I did to make this was to create a technical drawing of all the designs I wanted and I made this photo in Inkscape.

Was designed to be a banner for my social media, but loved it so much that I'm just using it as my desktop wallpaper.

Hey everybody,

After a few months without using FreeCAD (but keeping up with the daily updates) I need to model a quick something today.

And I realize there seems to be a new feature in the 0.22.0-dev version that prevents me from orbiting around the model when I'm in the sketcher:

I use OpenSCAD-style 3D navigation, which means I left-click to rotate the model. In the sketcher, left-clicking is used to do a rectangular lasso selection, and that prevents me from orbiting around the model. I tried with shift, ctrl, alt and all combinations thereof, but there seems to be no way to disable that selection feature.

Fortunately I also use a 3DConnexion Spacemouse, so I'm not completely stuck, but it's kind of annoying to have to use that thing when I'd rather not move my hand away from the keyboard.

Anybody knows how to disable the lasso thing?

I'm working on a tray drawer (for the curious, it's for the Tesla Model Y front center box). Using FreeCad 0.22 dev, the model will be 3D printed.

With your help I could made it how I wanted. However as I'm a beginner with FreeCad, there's a lot of ugly things. So I wanted to work on this new iteration and clean it up as much as possible, mainly to learn the software.

I have 1 major problem: I can't make a loft between my to sketches to create the separators. And I don't understand why.

Another point I do not fully understand is the construction lines. Should I use the External Reference or a Carbon Copy ? I don't really like the carbon copy as there's to much things displayed and sometimes I'm lost and don't see my original sketch anymore. For example, my bottom separator sketch must be linked somehow to my bottom box sketch, so if I change the position of the bottom of the box, the separator will adjust automatically.

Here's an image of how the model should look (my previous iteration) https://imgur.com/a/H8on1MZ

and here's he file I'm currently working on. license CC0 1.0 (you can do whatever you want with it) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WSgCSVhF1Io7ynhOXDkcO1hc8piln_mg/view?usp=sharing

I'm new to freecad, so far I made it this way :

Sketch a rectangle for the top surface, pad it, add filets for the corners. Then select to bottom face, make a new sketch, another rectangle, then a datum plane 40mm below, sketch another smaller rectangle, and make a loft between the two to create the bottom of the tray.

Now for the hole I made a rectangle on the top face and made a pocket with an angle.

Downside of this, the thickness of the walls is not equal. Ideally I'd like a 1.5mm thickness everywhere. And I'm not really sure how to proceed to make the separators inside the tray.

What is the most efficient way to do it? thanks

Anyone aware of a target date for when FreeCAD 1.0 and/or Ondsel 2024.3 will be released?

I am trying to design a simple case for a laptop motherboard, and thought to get around the distortion happening with my pictures by taking a 3d scan of it with Kiri Engine.

Everything looks fine in the preview of it and everything, but when I import the OBJ into FreeCAD it is just grey and I can't distinguish the mounting holes from the rest of the board.

Thanks in advance

Hey, I've just finished my diploma of mech eng and them and my new workplace use largely solidworks. Solidworks might have the most annoying subscription service integration I've ever seen, but also I've clicked with its interface.

Any guides or tips for switching over?

Hi c/FreeCAD, totally newbie here! I'm having a ton of fun learning FreeCAD, but I have a small question. I know the toponaming problem is going away soon, and maybe that makes this kind of irrelevant, but I'd still like to know.

Sometimes when I'm watching or reading guides on avoiding the toponaming problem, the person will say something along the lines of: "actually this technique is also more professional/proper/correct anyway, real engineers do it this way." Basically that the methods that avoid the problem are also just best practices in general. But they always say that as kind of an aside, and I wish they'd say more! What makes those methods better? Does anyone have any suggestions for articles or videos about this?

For one example, there was one guide that suggested you should use a datum plane instead of referencing one of the object's surfaces. I understand the toponaming problem well enough to get why referencing a surface can cause it. However, the person in the guide used the same surface that would have been referenced, as the attachment point for the datum plane. Why does that not produce the same issue?

I got sent a bunch of lenses that are too small for the old frames I have. I thought it might be fun to try 3d printing my own frame arms out of ABS.

Modeling a lens is a bit challenging, or I'm just a bit rusty with freecad. I need a way to wrap/unwrap/flatten the curve to create the contours. For my purpose here I can get away with a rough lens shape that is simply mirrored and lacks some of the complex curves. It just bugs me when I can't model it properly...

The lens is not uniform thickness. The center is 1.8mm thick while the edges where the arms mount are 1.4mm. I want to try and make a nose piece because this is the one part that fails on these cheap glasses.

Anyways, sharing just because I can.

I wanted to try out the FreeCAD beta/nightly builds, and found on the website that you could get it from the flathub beta repo.

After installing though, it is just the same exact app? Did I do something wrong?