FreeCAD

I've tried using a B-Spline, using eliptical arcs, and making a polygonal approximation and then filleting it but none of them worked well and both were very hard to figure out how to measure for.

Hello, Solidworks refugee here, with some questions on navigating FreeCAD's feature tree.

Example: I want to make this:

Step 1: Sketch on XY, draw rectangle, pad

Step 2: New sketch, draw rectangle, pad

Accidentally forget Step 3, which would have been to sketch and pad another rectangle

Step 4: New body, sketch on XZ, draw circle (or whatever), pad

Step 5: Cut 1st body minus 2nd body.

Step 6: Explode the resulting compound.

Step 7: Realize that I forgot to do Step 3.

What should I do at this point?

In Solidworks, the standard workflow would be to use the "rollback" tool to suppress the boolean operation, add the missing Step 3, then "roll forward" to reapply the boolean operation.

What is the equivalent "best practice" workflow in FreeCAD?

Newbie here. FreeCAD is v1.1.1

Is there really no way to do simple manual vertices manipulation?

Coming from Wings3D. Found the Fase feature (PartDesign_Chamfer) which is a good start for my usual extrude/bevel workflow but I can not for my life find out how to manually select and move vertexes manually / individually.

I learned about converting a part into a mesh but even here I seem to not have the option to move vertices around freely?

Do I really have to go down to a 2D drawing first and work from there?

I use archlinux GNOME. I issued the problem almost 1 year ago, without any solution. Help me to solve problem.

I'm following this tutorial and following it exactly. I've made the exact same drawing so far, exact same constraints, and getting the exact same results until now.

At 13:22 he uses the Pad tool to extrude a ring, and then confirms it. The result is that he has basically built a flange with a hole down the middle.

When I confirm the extrusion, everything disappears. It still shows up in the model box, but I can't see or interact with anything in the main window, and I don't get any errors or notifications.

I can keep sketching, but everything I've done up until now is basically gone. Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

I have been playing with FreeCAD since before 1.0, but I couldn't say when I started. I hated it. I come from Siemens NX, and the workflow made no sense at all. It couldn't do what I considered simple tasks I use all the time for work. I want to make one base sketch that I can make multiple features or bodies from, it was super frustrating not to be able to do that. Arrays didn't make sense. I needed to 3D print a replacement part for something of my daughter's, and didn't have my work computer with me. It took me 2 hours to make this part that would have taken about 10 minutes in NX. Or even SolidWorks (which I am also not a fan of, but used it professionally for several years). I could have driven to my office, picked up my laptop, come home, and designed it faster than FreeCAD 1.0.

I tried 1.1 yesterday after watching some videos on it recently, and most of the major problems I had with it seem to have been addressed. Sketching was better, making features from those sketches was better, things just seemed to make more sense. I made another rather simple part in about half an hour, and I think that time will come down as I get more familiar with it. I wish I had my SpacePilot Pro hooked up for it, it's been a while since I've had to rotate things with my mouse. But I have previously had the 3DConnexion driver working with FreeCAD, so I'll be doing that in the future. Fun fact, you can also do anaglyph 3D with FreeCAD if you want do design with those old-school red/blue glasses.

Anyway, here's what I made. It's a base for a Lundby doll house chair for my mom. Originally, it would have had an Eames style base, with a central metal post and legs coming out like a desk chair. I made a tulip-style base, and inserted a metal pin down the center for stability. It was super easy to design and modify in 1.1, with one main sketch revolved. Then, I created a second sketch for the angled top, extruded that, and did a boolean subtract. Super easy, and actually pretty fun to make. Completely different from my previous FreeCAD experiences. I will be coming back to it again, for sure.

Here's what the original would have looked. She doesn't have the footstool, so I figured I could take some design liberties. The Eames's work is fantastic, so is Eero Saarinen's. Why not mash them up?

If you wanna print it yourself, the model is here: https://www.printables.com/model/1348194-4n-threaded-flat-head-screws-and-nuts-10-32-equiva

Design to be a drop in replacement for 10-32 screws with a much, much higher pitch. These screws are extremely easy to print, is reliable enough that it can hold some weight.

If you wanna print this yourself, you need to make sure that the screw is sideways, so if it breaks it's no on the layer lines.

Using them in my own prints which had metal screws and they are holding quiet well.

The Subtractive Helix is broken and very buggy. But it is the most reliable way to get a screw and nut in the software.

I have to design several wood boxes who will be bases for acrylic showcase boxes. They have all different sizes but the construction is the same and quite simple. So what I'm looking to do is to design a generic construction with constraints once, and then be able to change a few variables like the boards thickness, the thickness of the acrylic and the width height length of the box and I would get the dimensions of my wood boards to do the cutting.

I never used the assembly workbenches, can they be useful in my cases?

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.