I am trying to create a cutaway view of an assembly in #FreeCAD.
It doesn't work at all. It sections some of the parts but not others in the assembly, so I can't use it to make a cutaway view.
Probably I'm doing something wrong. So I searched for "assembly persistent section cut freecad" and saw a forum result that looked like exactly what I wanted to know. "Persistent section cut inconsistent behavior in assembly" felt exactly on target.
Guess who posted that question to the FreeCAD forums in 2022?
The noise in my head would be significantly reduced if I mastered CAD. Because so far, I’m doing the Smart EV conversion battery case design solely in my head, in 2D and in a spreadsheet. Going from 2D design proficiency to 3D is surprisingly frustrating. #FreeCad makes me want to crawl up in a corner. Now trying #OnShape, #tinkercad and #Fusion360.
A little bit of @FreeCAD this morning, Going to try and #3Dprint some TPU toothed belt experiments. Super trivial to make this using the FreeCAD Gears addon.
@f4grx@concretedog@FreeCAD I wonder whether the worm and worm_gear modules in this library work in the OpenSCAD workbench in #FreeCAD and whether it might help add support for them to FCGear? 🤔
The #FreeCAD Part Design Hole tool is amazingly versatile. I wish, though, that its Size parameter could be driven by configuration. I'm designing a part where I'd love to choose different size threaded holes as part of the overall configuration, but I can't do that. Small configurations would take M2, medium M3, and large M4 or M5. #fc3d
So, I'm designing a system to produce 1:4 scale keyboards that are as close as possible to the look, feel, and sound of the full scale originals. The first version will be used in miniature VT100 terminals and I hope to reuse much of the work for other designs and scales.
This is the head of a threadlog about my process, goals, mistakes, and progress. #miniature#keebs#retrocomputing#vt100
/cont
For #Ingenuity's rotors to hit (leveled) ground, the heli must have a tilt > 60° (it is 70° in the image below). If a rotor hit an inclined ground at the lower side with a, say, 20° slope, the tilt would have to be 80-90°.
I saw a comment on a recent YouTube video about #FreeCAD that said there was a lot of "toxic positivity" among FreeCAD users. Apparently, this prevents them from seeing glaring flaws when compared against other CAD
I'll fully admit that FreeCAD isn't perfect, and some tasks aren't as convenient as in commercial software...for now. It's getting better thanks to efforts of a small group of unpaid developers
It's a lot easier to improve software when you pay more people to spend the time doing it
The reality is, #FreeCAD is extremely powerful CAD that has most functionality of its commercial counterparts...FOR FREE
In so many cases, the workflow is literally the same.
Companies like AutoDesk and OnShape are paying YouTubers to promote their products so they can generate sales to continue development. FreeCAD can't afford that, so it's getting better more slowly.
It is completely unreasonable to expect all of the polish and features of paid software from free counterparts.
I am designing a set of replacement parts for a game that I believe to be more than 50 years out of production. This includes game pieces with different inscriptions, and different numbers of different game pieces.
Tonight I worked out how I can use #FreeCAD variant links to drive not only the content of a game piece but also how many of each kind, through a single configuration table.
I have a lot of plants 🍃. So I decided to build a small shelf for them 📐. This is my result from last weekend 🛠️. I used only "old" materials that I already had.
as someone who doesn't do 3D stuff at all, what's the easiest way to edit a step file? I have a model of a button, and essentially all I need to do is drag the vertices at the top of the button over by a millimeter, to make the button stem taller. This feels like it should be easy and yet I feel completely out of my depth.
Using #FreeCAD and my #3DPrinter to make an extremely specific clamp for a laporoscopic repair on a broken plywood #mandolin. This one will go through the f-hole to clamp a loose brace to the top. The holes accommodate an M6 bolt and cross dowel.
I hope this works, otherwise I'll have to take the back off, which is way more hassle!
I've had browser tabs open to a few Hemingway #machining kits for I think over a year, thinking about buying them but wondering about cost to ship metal stock overseas. A few weeks ago it hit me that I had some UK colleagues about to visit my office, and I asked if they maybe had a few pounds worth of freeboard in their suitcases.
I have some wonderfully kind colleagues, and shipping to our UK office was quite inexpensive.
I spent a few hours watching youtube and reading blog posts about making various sorts of rotary broaches. I now have a bunch of ideas about this process that are a bit different from the Hemingway kit, and understanding that goes beyond the instructions.
While designing my own rotary broach in #FreeCAD based on what I learned, I toyed with using ACBs, but two ACBs would be far more expensive than two radial bearings and one thrust bearing. However, compared with the Hemingway kit, I'm going to try making the tail bearing captive at the back. I like this better for assembly, and it's a tiny bit more leverage. You could argue that it's worse for replacing that bearing, but honestly once the set is trued and turned concentric, recovering the position is just dropping it in the vice with the slot/tab horizontal and tightening the screws.
My goal is to make a robust parametric design that can take different diameter, overall length, stickout, and bearing sizes, with some likely ones set up in a configuration table.
I don't see the "Persistent section cut" option in the #Ondsel version. I used their Assembly workbench that they are proposing as the default #FreeCAD assembly workbench to show this assembly.
I still haven't added the actual broach, nor any of the screws, but I like this design better and plan to make it after all the 4140 has arrived.
3D Design tool for needy kids, the search continues.
We have old laptops to loan out to kids from poor backgrounds. They don't have internet. 2D design we have covered with #inkscape, and the laptops run #linux well (but not Windows). What I need is a 3D design program. Suggestions welcome.