Open Source Ecology Development Team, 7 Sep 2018

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From YouTube: Basic FreeCAD Workflow

Description

A lecture on the basic workflow in FreeCAD that allows you to produce any 3D design. The workflow involves the Sketcher, followed by extrusions and pockets - followed by more sketches on faces for creating complex geometries.

You can see more notes at https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Microfactory_Boot_Camp_-_FreeCAD_Workflow

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So, let's look at let's boot up freecad the open-source parametric modeling software in terms of what's out there. That is the option. I would say it's an active development as far as the functionality goes, there's other ones that are out. There are openscad, which is parametric, it's more from command-line, there's other ones, for example, blocks CAD which I like, and that is basically an interface on top of the openscad. So it's actually very easy to drag-and-drop. I want to show you, maybe if I can mmm take a look at that, it's called so blocks.

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Cad I do want to show you this one, because this one is very useful for 3d printing kind of stuff. If you have a STL file which stands for stereo lithography, you can modify it in this and it's you can go either free CAD or this it's a web interface. So it's very it's very user friendly. Don't need to install anything here and.

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It's got three shapes, so you basically the idea. Is you drag and drop things and you can add them one on top of each other, the visual programming environment.

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So you could do like take a difference between two shapes or some and such, but you got a render in there, so you it'll show up whatever you're rendering and then you export it very useful because you can like you know, so you got to modify something you want to poke a hole and the thing and your coupler that you don't have a hole and you want an extra hole. So here's an example of something that just got rendered. You can increase that size and all that so I just so.

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For example, if you drag in you know a cylinder like.

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Say 50 do that you gotta render. So that's the only thing you just got to update the rendering, but other than that very good recommend it so yeah. It gave me this cylinder here so or that maybe that one in the middle someone yeah, that's whatever so, okay good to know other than that freak out is our main programming main CAD platform. It's useful because it's open source we can make any modifications to it as we like. If a functionality doesn't exist, you dream it up. We can do it.

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You can also do WebGL, which that functionality is not great with in free CAD or you could do WebGL imports where you export a code that can be embedded readily in 3d inside a wiki for example. So WebGL is a language that allows you to render things within a browser, so you don't have to have any software and then you can manipulate it in 3d, which is very useful. So that's a fully open source route to do that.

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One guy on our team is also doing a WebGL explosions for a lot of our things like, for example, the universal axis itself. It's been exported to WebGL, so let's go to universal access to show you what Universal sorry to show you what WebGL rendering looks like within the wiki and what we're doing there is. We have a little slider. So that's a little bit of programming. On top of that, we've got a slider that explodes the things or hides parts and annotates.

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The rendering I want to go to the rhetoric, that's a snapshot of the rendering, but here's the rendering okay WebGL right. It's gonna take some time to load our people succumbing on the internet here, because it's not showing up it may show up it's. This is just wanted to show you how you can rent just manipulated in 3d, and you have a Slyder to explode it, which is a great teaching tool if you've got a complex thing and you want to see it's all its insides, the exploded. Part diagram is a very useful thing.

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You can label things.

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Well, we'll come back to this. It may load up here, but now, let's dive into free CAD, so click on the free CAD. This is version 16 I'm using here and I'm, not using OSC Linux, because most people aren't using it or half half and half so I'm, also recording. So that's how the start page looks like so so you just need to know a few things in order to manipulate work with free cat effectively. So, first of all, you got to start a new document, so click the plus.

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It gets you the nice blue screen. So that's step number one to remember. Sometimes you might come to this like hey, where what I do here well start with a screen. Let's start with a new document. What you have in the left hand, side is a project tree.

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Where this is just an there's, nothing in there, so the workflow within free CAD that I'd like to describe and I'll just stick to. This is there's many functions in there, but just stick to this one thing and you'll be set for very many things and it's the sketcher followed by padding and making holes like so sketcher, followed by extrusions, extrusions, either positive or negative negative extrusion means you poke a hole in something, so you can draw things in 2d and then take them into the third dimension simply by taking them.

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Sketcher, so sketcher is gonna, have your basic functionalities of all kinds of different different thing. So, but first you need to start a document, so this is the key like okay, none of these are highlighted. Yet you got to start a document. It's gonna ask you for a plane, so select X, Y plane, so you're gonna be drawing on X Y. That means extrusion is gonna, be into Z there.

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Now you see all that the buttons here showed up. You've got points lines, curves circles, polylines squares, polygons, so, like a hex, remember the little hex driver to the little black tool handle.

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You can draw that directly with that that hex right there.

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These are the stock choices triangle square, Pentagon, hexagon, heptagon octagon. But, of course anyone who goes into Python can add more here. So free cat is fully extensible programmable. This is running in Python, so, like you, can readily add, decagon or whatever, and make that work. Okay, so.

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Very simple things: whoever's got it whoever's running it. No points points and I show this in my my 5-minute super-dense video just for reference on that there's a page called free cat, 101.

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Okay, since things may not be loading, there's free cat, 101 page there's two five-minute videos that I did I go through all this. Just a very quick five-minute summary of what we're doing here, but here we're just gonna, go a little slower pace. Okay points, nothing to it, draw a point: okay lines, nothing to it. You can draw lines.

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Don't worry about arcs, let's do circle for now circles, so it actually allows you to draw a circle like that. So you can do like a partial circle or you can do a regular circle like Center and a trim point which is gonna, be just a plain circle: okay, polylines useful! So you know you got whatever you got to draw your shape and then you close it on itself. So you got this.

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Sketchier workbench new document plane. Do you remember those three things you can get to here? But since you have to remember those three things, that's impossible for some people already, so you got. If you know this you're good, then you select, whichever shapes this so simple, zoom in and out with the mouse. So let's say number four: let's talk about navigation, so.

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Navigation Styles fit selection, I think I got it. This is in sketcher, where I'm active, editing right so to get out of that. You've got a hit close now. These are not. You can select them, but she cannot edit them. So now the sketch appeared in your tree view. So this is object oriented. So everything that you do appears in a as an item now, because I did it as one edit that all went into that one sketch. That's my sketch I do a new sketch, so I got a click again.

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The XY plane do another sketch I'll do another one. You know put my square here, then close. Then it goes to this. To this other sketch I can I can edit the name.

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You know I went to edit sketch rename so square. That's useful! If you want to do things label things keep track of things. You can do a lot of organizations through this tree view and you can also export Bills of materials. So if, for example, if you you put a name there with like even the price, you can one cheap way to do a bill of materials so that you can export readily from a project, is to put the name and maybe like source and price right as the name and then there's a functionality.

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There's a there's, a spreadsheet workbench here that allows you to do the spreadsheet of everything that you've got in there. So you can generate a complete bill of materials just like that. That's one way as a lowbrow way to get a bill of materials. You've got a thing. That's got so many parts. Typically, it's a big process. Take it one by one going to a spreadsheet that can get you that whole spreadsheet right there. So tree view is very important.

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Let's go back to the sketcher, so well, let's not create a new sketch, that's just double click and they'll. Let you edit that sketch now the other sketch you're not gonna, do anything to it, because you you haven't selected.

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It I selected that one sketch here, okay, so close, it I, want to show the navigation Styles though, so you can access navigation Styles when you're not not selected anywhere so you're out of this, but click right mouse button get you navigation, Styles I, like gesture which left Mouse right mouse button is moving things middle mouse button, zooming and the left and the other one is rotating. So now, you're in 3d or you're rotating things, cool.

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Yeah yeah I wouldn't even try this with a mouse or anything I mean some people claim they could do it. They're not efficient I mean so we kind of you know where the plane gets all jumbled up. So you have these boxes here that show the different views like so depending on which view you select those those cubic things up there. This third one actually happens to be the XY plane, so you can look at it from any plane. That's useful.

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So there's these blue buttons, these ones the cube cubic. Looking things up there, you do the different different views any plane. So that means, if you want to edit this on this side, you can do that. If you want to look at from the side, you want to look at another side. You do that now. Measuring tape is cool too, so measuring tape, a very simple tool, just click between two objects and somewhere did that into the page.

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It gets you that the distance you know- and you can remove- that you can remove things just by hitting delete on them. So let's go back to a couple more things on on a sketch just to show you so there's the polygon, there's like elliptical things so good for, like bolt holes very useful. Now nothing is constrained here. So you can move things around still. You can grab that you can grab that side and then unconstraint sketches. You could do anything to them so we're gonna move around on you, like I, grab this corner here.

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It's gonna move, I grab this side. It's gonna move the entire object, I grabbed. At one point, it should move those two sides: no it actually in a square. It moves everything, but if I do it, for example, a polyline just observe the behavior, because the sketcher tool is very useful for motion analysis. Like say you got a backhoe and you have a sketch that shows okay, an articulation for a backhoe.

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You can do things observe the behavior like, for example, if I grab that point, it should move those two lines attached to the point, because nothing is constrained. So let's check that see that that's cool that actually can get you very cool motion analysis in a sense like let's constrain that line, for example, and let's constrain that line by saying okay. How do I fix that so I selected a couple of things there.

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I, take that point. That point is a point constraint that fixes that point: okay, for example- or let's say no I'm gonna, say I- want to fix this line, and that point you, when you select something these are all all those light up after you select something they're not gonna appear before. So you have to kind of be aware where you are so for awareness. Where are we now we're editing a sketch and we got into constraining of a sketch?

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So, let's close out of here, so you know where you're at because sometimes it's like okay, how do I access that? It's not those buttons aren't showing up or I, can't edit this guy. So so, first of all do the sketch edit, the sketch you want to. You want to add it that one has like all those points there. This is our second one here, so you're selected the constraints.

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The behavior is, if you select it, the constraints all appeared, but if you I clicked on it, they disappeared so be aware of that they just disappeared on you're like well. How did I constrain this there's? None of these things? Well, you have to select something you want to constrain. So let's take this one line and, let's I, guess and probably fix those two points select two or more vertices from the sketch, so it okay, that's what it told me. So, okay I want to constrain. Let's just constrain that point.

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To two more vertices from the sketch now the point constraints, I'm, sorry, the point constraints takes two points and makes them into one. So, for example, if you, if you draw two lines, the point constraint.

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I got two points selected points: gonna connect them well, so I guess I had the third one selected, so they all jumped over there.

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So like say you got, you know you drew something and you want it to touch right next to somebody. That's useful there. Okay, let's look at more more constraints, so very useful ones are, for example, make it vertical. Okay, that I got a vertical on those two that I selected.

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Okay, let's get this one vertical here, I just got that one selected vertical okay, so we've got guy that vertical. Let's make this one horizontal, so this is horizontal, so it straightens that out now what happens when I hit that point, that everything is still moving moving around so how do I fix, for example, let's say I want to fix that line, equivalent perpendicular symmetric, there's, there's a bunch of different ones.

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My short video talks about more of these I want to show you like, okay, so that this line here got fixed by the sum see see how well I'm dragging this yeah.

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Point is that when you get into simulations of things like say, you got a backhoe that you want to design and you're wanting to see how it moves. If you fixed two lines. So let's maybe do like a polyline like a polyline out of two lines. That's my or like say three lines.

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Let's take that point okay, so this is just a different behavior you have to get used to, but on that polyline you can't move it or I. Don't know why I'm not being able to move it around, but let's take a look at that.

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Now, I'm not able to move them around and I. Think it's because I got this somehow I, don't know how I got this vertical constraint here by myself, selecting that constraint, so you can delete the constraints here point. My point is not moving.

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So this might, we actually might have run into a crash alrdy because I'm not able to move things right now, yeah, okay, so keep it clean like once you get enough jumble and I just put a bunch of random stuff. Maybe some constraint here, that's a crash alrdy. So let's, let's close that, let's close that file.

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So the key is that you just play with a whole bunch of stuff, observe the behavior and understand that you can draw lines and then constrain them in various ways. So to give you a you know like a simple example: if people want to follow this, no cancel that so I'm gonna just cancel out of the air close without saving. We don't need that. It gets you to the start. Screen start a new one.

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So let's do let's design the you know the bit holder that we did yesterday as a simple example: let's get into extrusions, so first of all do XY plane. Yes,.

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Let's very very important thing here is measuring less, like you got to draw an object that you know the dimensions of like, for example, you've got some of the 3d printer pieces. You want to draw it. You know it has certain sides. So let's, let's do that I'll say: let's start with a polyline thing, so you know you can draw freehand like this or you can draw a square, but freehand everything is mobile here so say so say we drew it freehand.

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First of all like make them horizontal that one I already kind of drew horizontal, make that one vertical make this one vertical, and now we want to constraint some lenses. Now these points. Okay, these points still move, so you can constrain them by selecting a length. So now look at there's also there's a little tab here, so see, there's more stuff there. So you want to move it. So you see them all. You kind of kind of drop, drag and drop things.

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So these here, okay, so the lock thing was well and that's I mean I, got confused. I didn't see the lock thing. I wanted to lock a point so that you can move things around that point. So let's actually show you that for the backhoe simulate ctrl z to delete oh I'm, deleting that constraint so now I can move it again. It's not observe that behavior.

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So if I lock that constraint, if I move that point now that point moves parallel, so there's a lot of power to these very basic constraint: things: okay, let's take a look at length, so I select a line because that's for length- and this is the horizontal length- so it takes you, okay, let's make it five inches.

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You can edit that length. So what issue did you run into? So when you move that point, the whole whole square should move, or at least those parts, because that length is constrained.

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So the workflow that we proposed for this is to keep things as simple as possible because of the bugginess, but also to keep you'll, keep a very clear workflow based on parts. So as soon as you, what I like to do is is use the workflow where, as soon as you have something like say, we do this thing. You know say we got a three-dimensional shape, save it as a part in a part. Library and I'll show this and then there's a workflow where you simply merge.

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It's called merge, but it's under file, so under file, there's import/export, merge project and it's not appearing because I'm in edit mode. So once again, this is awareness where you are before you do anything close that so I go to file merge project, that is the key workflow merge means you're merging another free cat file, not not exporting or importing.

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Separate but the way to keep a document clean and get away from troubles like because just for your, like own sanity to and freak out, gets confused very easy, because if you don't have things constraint properly, the the thing that they recommend is constrain. Absolutely everything. So once you have a drawing, there's zero degrees of freedom and it'll show you in that that box. It shows you how many constraints you have which things you can move, which means a degree of freedom, so go ahead.

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You well I mean you can open that thing. You merge right there by clicking on it or yes, a useful thing is, if you're designing, say a 3d printer and you replaced the extruder. That's where the merge functionality is very useful because you drew up say you have the CAD from elsewhere. Just merge it into the document. That is key. So don't try to do like okay, I'm gonna. Do this one master big file for the 3d printer, because first it's gonna get heavy.

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It's gonna, get many megabytes depending how you do things so merging individual parts is a very much recommended. Workflow and I do would say it's consistent with the modular design principles. Lets you keep track of things. If you want to borrow that part elsewhere, you already have it in a library. So please do that.

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Export and import- those are two things you want to know so: STL files or step files, for example, as I mentioned mcmaster-carr, has step files for everything that it carries mostly mostly everything in carry. So you can get borrow like a like a valve 3-way valve or something you're using that in your tractor or something borrowed that export import. It import it as a step file. Let's see if the let's go to McMaster car, just to show you that.

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Because mcmaster-carr is where we get a lot of parson, and that said, like a big general supply, industrial supply thing so I would say like if you're looking to build something look at mcmaster-carr. First.

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So say you know you search a product like a valve like a where's that search box. They can't see it there, so you know take a valve of some sort. You you want to add that to your CAD, okay, so on/off valves hmm I mean it has ton of tons of stuff.

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So when it has this CAD symbol there, it says it it. You can find that as a CAD model, you kind of have to know how to navigate you. So, for example, go to this specific quarter by quarter inch valve for $8.00, and then it goes into product deked detail with a CAD symbol and there it's gonna, be it's gonna have the CAD drawing so, for example, you can take this CAD drawing you can actually import images into free CAD. So, for example, you can put that in your background actually draw over this.

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In freecad, let's not get into that, but here what I wanted to show is that okay, 3d step-step file is what you want. Free cat imports it so the different choices you have. Our D draw: iges PDF, the SAT SolidWorks SolidWorks step. So SolidWorks is a proprietary format. D sad I, don't know what that is. Pdf is gonna, be probably this PDF drawing iges is gonna, be three 3d you drawing out on what that is, but step is a three dimensional one step.

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Our GES are imported belen to freecad readily like that, so so simply download it save it. So it saves.

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That do it there. No so so, then you can import it into free CAD, and this is for various sources, as various online repositories like grab. Cad is a big repository of open various designs on the different licenses, but yeah any decent manufacturer should have a full CAD file. If they don't, you should call them up and say: hey where's, your CAD file. Some will give it to you.

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Others who are more proprietary will not like you, probably we'd, love to have a full engine file from Briggs & Stratton, for example, for the power cubes, but they probably will not give it to you, because if it's a full file it allows you to replicate it. So it's a powerful thing. A fully detailed CAD file is very valuable because it took that design digital, which means that it's infinitely replicable, if you have the means to replicate it, but here mcmaster-carr has all these. These are stock of the shelf industrial parts.

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So, let's, let's say I want to import that file. Import.

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Import select a file so that this is the one I just downloaded here. This ball valve so open that and it should get you in there and it's probably got the threads in there, which you're, probably gonna, take a lot of memory. I mean it's taking a little bit to import it, so that thing is probably sizable like probably a megabyte or more I just want to get the info on it. Just to show you, because you have to pay attention to memory size like okay, so there's my valve die just imported.

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Isn't that great and that's it so it's fully! You know you can now 3d print it. For example, you can go to file export and you can do STL file as a selection. So that's how you would you select it export it as an STL and that's ready for 3d printing, so he could do like a if you want a 3d model, your power cube. Well, we could do like a little scale model of this and print it out and use it as an actual model.

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You can even print the threads and probably even thread in stuff. Like that, so it's very powerful. It's a full full reverse engineering workflow, so I won't go into that, but I just want to show the memory size of that properties and that thing is yeah exactly one megabyte. So that means, if you've got a few of these in there the file is gonna. Get pretty heavy really fast, like limit. That I would recommend is like 10, 20 30, maybe 30 megabytes. But after that you, you know it starts to slow down quite a bit.

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Unless you have a more powerful computer like with a GPU or something where then it will probably probably still work really fast, but on a regular laptop like this.

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The practical limit for what you want to work with is like I would say: 10 megabytes, so everything is really fast beyond that you just you know it takes time to render and stuff like that, so I'm not recommend it, but what we like to do is after we have a like say: we got a file like this and it's 1 megabyte and we know we have 5 of these in our power cube.

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We say: ok, I, don't want to put like 5 megabytes right into these little valves when there's hundreds and they say, there's a hundred components. So we would.

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We would do a file simplification procedure actually, so we would just take this and just draw it in freecad like so so what we could do, for example, you know you take it to a do proper view like from this head-on part right, so I would just reverse engineering and freak odd, I would say: okay, let's draw it in freak out it because I'm freaked out native, for example, there's probably threads in there. If you look in there there's threads, they take a lot of memory strip, the threads. So what I would do here.

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You can basically draw it using that as a template, so you go into that plane, whichever that plane was and then so that's the XY plane actually I lost myself where am I, so I want to go to that. Sketch was in that that direction. I think I need, like I, think I probably need an XY plane, so sketch new sketch XY, that's right. It got positioned on the on the XY plane, so I would go here and I just take my you know.

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To make it look nice out, I'll just go well, I mean we. The polygon is easy to do so. I would start at the center. You kind of have to know how far you went. So you I'm gonna go to that corner about okay there. So close it and I'm gonna make this. This thing disappear by hitting hitting a button. So the cool thing about a basic workflow freakout is you can hide and unhide things by clicking on something and pressing spacebar you can literally so so you know you've got this valve here.

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You can select part by part to expose the build structure of an aviary complex thing. That's one way to do. Instructionals is when you just hide hide part by part like, for example, with a brick press. We did that to do a fabrication procedure on it. We would just take, you know, put it in the first part or like take the whole brick press take off one part, the next part next one until your to like one part and then reverse the order of that and that's a build procedure right.

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So that's one way to simply do that if you, for example, if you video record that procedure of stripping one part after another then played in Reverse well, that's like a built procedure.

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Okay, so I just want to show like so that's one megabyte, and so we're talking about memory issues and that's part of the memory issues is you're in a design, Jam environment. You can't be waiting around two people for people to get frustrated. You want it to be snappy and clear. So in this case, I would definitely turn this from one megabyte to like 10k 5k.

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So, just to show you that, as an example, so the of the sketcher workbench I'm gonna go back to my sketch here that I did I'm gonna hide my hide my Val, so this sketch. So let's talk about the extrusion, so that's that's sketch number two right, let's start getting into the extrusions, so the Edit ability of those dimensions. Yes, you should be able to click on a dimension like in our former sketch, wherever that was okay, like this five inches double-click on it, make it eight inches.

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That's all editable and that's useful because you can edit all these kinds of things. I can still move this because it's not so constrained to constrain it I would go. The lock thing select one vertex from the sketch other than the origin. So so the lock works on vertices. So take that sketch lock it okay, so you just locked it now. You probably can't move this anymore, but can you move these points? Yeah? You can still move these points because that side isn't locked. Just that.

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One point is locked so, but I like to like when, when you get into a complex design, you know it's right, I, just erase everything just to keep the simplicity in that design and also takes less memory. So like really strip it down because say because you don't you don't delete it, you save the source file, save save the source. You've got the full file with all the dimensions. If you want to now mess with it, don't get confused. If you know it's right, just might as well strip all the dimensions.

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If you want to modify something or if you want to, if you want to modify a Sai parametric ly, add that dimension and then he can double click and change that dimension, so he can add all the dimensions back to it anyway, I like to strip things too I like to keep things as simple as possible, no fluff in a design, so here I, would go into all my constraints. Like say somebody did a complex design, so I'm talking about here everything from the point of collaborative development. You just picked up somebody's file.

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Ok, they got like a hundred constraints, you're trying to modify it. I, don't know what to do like just go into the constraints, just erase everything click on it. Backspace!

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Ok, now, you're right! Let me erase in mind these are my elements, so don't erase your elements erase your constraints, so here's your constraints, so just you know get rid of them, get rid of what you don't need all.

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So that's that's flexible! Now everything is back to unconstrained. You can modify it even the lines. Split! Oh yeah there. You know splitting it apart completely. Ok, but let's go back to our so once again like ok, where are you here well scroll up to close it? So you can make sure you know where you are. It goes back to the sketch there's a Model View and a tasks view so make sure you're in the Model View. That's another item you have to remember. That's the tree view. It's got all the parts in here.

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Ok, so I want to reverse engineer that valve I just drew over the the one face and that's sketch number two there so close out of there go into then part design, so the workbench selection is that button up there. You can work in various different work benches, which will have different tools on top you're, still working with the identical same design. It just allows you maybe to do different things upon that design, so in a part, design workbench.

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It now gave you all these other tools of which the two relevant ones are this one which is pad a selected sketch and the second one, which is called create a pocket within the elected sketch. So let's extrude, so this is extrusion you're making something three-dimensional. So now, let's take our primitive of this valve.

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So once again, so do this we close out of there but select it don't double-click it but select it and double click. You're editing it. You cannot do these operations upon things that are being edited and probably those symbols should disappear. They got blanked out. You got back into sketcher, which gets you all the constraints and everything so close out of the edit mode, but select it so you're selecting things here select sketch now: let's Pat it.

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Ok, it started a pad. Let's make it 5 inches long for length. Okay, there you go so you just created a three-dimensional thing. Well, I could keep working it. I can do the cylindrical part and so forth. So let's do the cylindrical part. So this is the power of freaked-out. You can take any side now and you can draw more things on it. More features on it say you want to put a handle on. It say this is a representation of your valve and that thing, let's hide, hide the other thing yeah.

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So that thing appeared from mcmaster-carr and multiple pieces like that handle opened up as multiple pieces. Sometimes it gets you like one one chunk. Sometimes it gets you multiple pieces depends who did the file how they exported it? Ok, so we've got our our thing, so I'm I selected that face and.

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It's got face tools here.

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I want to go back to so. The workflow is that now you can put a sketch on any face to do more stuff and make this into a complicated, much more complicated thing. I select that face what happens asked me to do various face tools. That's not a pair, so I got to go back to sketcher.

A

This is where we know we can do all kinds of sketches. So if I'm in sketcher I can select the face and now it should, let me see part design didn't have the did. You see the difference? What happened when I went into sketcher?

A

That thing appeared, which is to put a new new sketch, and you can put that new sketch anywhere. There's this other one. That's that's map a sketch to a face. We don't need to do that. Just use use this one, that's getting a little a little more advanced just use the face. That's still too, you can still put a okay.

A

Draw shape, you got a shape, select it with entry view, don't double click then go into part design and click the pad tool. Part design workbench is the key, so that's got it there. Did it extrude there, so this is. This is easy, so click on any face. It gets you the the sketch item, so it automatically takes you to that face when you clicked on it. So we that looks pretty long. Why is it that long?

A

A

Okay, no that's good! So so! Okay! Now it asks you what plane, if you don't specify a plane, it will ask you what plane do you want to put it to now here? It only has three planes in the actual CAD it has more than three planes. Any face is a plane. So if you select it like I did and it turned green there. You can see that I'm gonna put a sketch on it, so it aligns you right to it, get you right on it and now, let's poke a little hole through that.

A

So let's do our say. We need like put a big bolt through that through this shaft thing. Okay, close it just did it I did this new sketch to sketch, for which is selected. So let's go back to part design now we're gonna do the path the the pocket creates a pocket, so I'm gonna click that that's it, and then it tells you what kind of length like if you want it to be all the way through it just got me here. It got me a little bit. I want to be all the way through.

A

So let's take like three inches or two inches.

A

So this is cool stuff, like you can start doing all kinds of things you can draw features anywhere. You can draw features on internal parts like if I, if I do another, say a square. So let's do this thing well, actually, let's do a bit bit holder, so the big holder was essentially this with a smaller thing on the inside. So let's draw on that face. Don't select the whole object. That's two clicks. First click selects that face which is green now, I'm gonna put a actually this part design has that same tool there.

A

Actually it showed up so now. It took me to this face. I'm gonna, put another hexagon to put in a hexagonal bit, make it a second little bit holder. So once again, do your hexagon started at the center.

A

And hardly see it there, so if you can hardly see it, you want to, you can do things like hide the thing you just drew, but sometimes the color scheme might not be good. So once again in the tree view just hit the space button. Now we want to make sure that this is if this is gonna fit a quarter inch bit. Let's make this quarter inch size, but let's do maybe things like in the constraints.

A

Let's do make that vertical, so I want to go into edit of that sketch, since its kind of at an angle make that vertical. So once again that that thing, so there I lined it now. How do we make it point to five inches? Let's take two points across and select a horizontal distance between them.

A

A

A

0.25 inch, so we got that there you go so that that would actually hold the bit now close it so now, I want to pocket so I know, that's sketch number five I want to pocket what I had before. So, let's make the other thing up here. Let's cut this whole out, so I'm so I want to just select sketch five. It appears there it's off offset a little bit. We can go to sketcher and move it, but I want a pocket. So I got to go back to part design. Do the pocket operation?

A

It's gonna, get you a little pocket, but you want to go all the way through, so it will be in order to make it go all the way through select the length to be like ten inches, whatever it doesn't matter, so it poked it all the way through and it's poke poke through that hole. So you see you get very complex geometries now now the other thing I want to show is orthographic view versus perspective view.

A

Perspective is looks, looks better, but it's harder to it's actually harder to get things like on one face, because if you say you look at it from a particular angle, it doesn't look flat to you like from the other orthographic view. It looks like a square thing now, for example like look at that thing, but this is perspective view. If you go into orthographic view, that's gonna, look like a square, so it's easier to kind of like analyze it or hit a corner, or something like that, so that's kind of like the basic workbook.

A

So if you have this understanding of this basic workflow, I mean this is really powerful. Already we can make features civil. You know, let's just show another one. So select that side put another item on it like.

A

Some irregular feature.

A

Okay, that didn't close up on itself, so I want to probably go edit into that sketch.

A

My screen is kind of small, so I don't have a lot of space here, but that was the last sketch I. Did this sketch number six? So let's edit it actually but I want to hide this other thing. Cuz I can't see things so those points are not aligned like you can't pad this thing because it's not closed so one way to do it. Select the two points make him make him constrained so hit the point.

A

Select vertices from the sketch, so I did that so there and there and it went to the first point I selected. So now it's a closed shape. It's not constrained or anything like that, but that thing I can Pat out.

A

So we can close that select that sketch number six and make a make a pat on it, make it like one inch. So how does my thing look now? You know we have just created that on the side, so you can now. As you see, you can start doing all kinds of crazy stuff. If you have the ability to draw any shape within a sketcher, you can draw just about anything.

A

You can draw like a floor plan of a house that you can then extrude like with all the rooms or whatever and do a lot of things, but it is kind of its limited in the sense that you're only going up like one direction, but you can go in different directions depending on as long as you have a face. If you want to do more irregular things, only other thing, I can say that's quite useful and very easy, as in the part workbench, you have primitive shapes like a cone, a sphere.

A

So you know like let's draw a cone where to put that cone. I put it like a small cone right in there that cone there you've got some basic things that are just one click, but there's still parametric. So you can change the sizes of all the sides and everything like that, but that's the basic workflow that I want to show you and with this like, for example, the. If you take a look at the 3d printed pieces for the axis, you can do this with this and you can try it yourself.

A

What would you do there start with a square? You know you've got the bolt holes for the hole, so that would be holes. You know you've got the nut catchers like they're hexagonal, so you can catch we're actually using round screws, but if, if we used hexagonal screws, we could do that our folds are hexagonal there. So you could do that. You can do all the magnet holes just by little holes where the magnets are so take the carriage piece. Well, how do you do the holders for the bearings in there?

A

How would you do that.

B

A

You do you do it. It depends on what you're doing like. If you want something- and it also depends on your printer, if your printer is sloppy and it might print a little bit in if you draw a quarter-inch ball tall, you might not fit a quarter-inch bolt in there, so you might want to do a quarter-inch plus like 1/16 or something. So you have to consider how well your printer is printing. If your printer is printing with the like a one point, four millimeter tool head extruder, then that discrepancy might be might be large.

A

So it depends what you what you want to do, if you want press fit things, if you want something to be really tight, like a coupler like, for example, with uh when I printed, the hex tool holder I, could not get those in easily by hand, so I actually went to a vise and cranked down an advice, so it suppressed fit against it.

A

If you wanted it to be like a loose thing, I can come right on and off another piece just make it a little larger and you have to experiment with it a little bit because, depending on say the shrinkage of the material that you're, printing or various physical factors, you might get different results and the production engineering means documenting all that, so it's transparent for everybody else doing like, for example, if you say, okay, we've got D 3d version, 18 point eight point: four millimeter nozzle this certain temperature, this material, you say: okay, this is the exact result, we're gonna get and we can take data like that.

A

We can say: okay. This is exactly what we get when we do that, that's something that's worth documenting for a production engineering. You want to know exactly what the results we have like. For example, we had issues with a one of the bolt holes where the square square nuts we're rotating within a square hole. That means somehow the hole got printed a little too large. It may be that it's possible that, because I printed it so fast, it got a little bit inaccurate because of course, if you print slower you're gonna be more accurate.

A

If you're, printing, you a two-by-four, you definitely want to print on your the speed because you got a lot of material to print and the dimensions aren't critical that you're one millimeter off. So it depends where you are and that's that's the thing that makes you can say, 3d printing a little bit challenging because a lot of times you can't just say oh I'm, just gonna download this file, it's gonna work.

A

You have to understand what your printer can do like, for example, if you have a fan, you can bridge overhangs, so you have one one thing: you're printing two sticks, you're printing. You want to bridge over then like to make a table. You know how far can you go? What is that overhang that you can do in theory? If you go super super slow and you got the fan blasting. It's not a reason why you can't extend that till as much as that. Back to your mechanical strength. That is solidifying as it's going.

A

Okay, you can theory, you'd, be printing in midair and that's something.

B

A

Yeah yeah so just like, when you do the 3d print printed with a welder thing, I mean you can once the weld solidifies it's you can start like that. Then you can print vertically like downwards, against gravity, of course, because you're attaching it to something. That's already frozen things like that. So you have to understand some of the physical features so so and that's the kind of stuff we record and document it's what makes the hardware much more complicated than software, because the compiler includes gravity. You know gravity like gee like.

A

Are you on the surface of the Moon or are you on earth? You're gonna have different conditions. That would be your fork. This is our fork for lunar printing. You know it's literally like that, and this is also why I say every build has going to have different conditions that you have to document and why that would take a lot of memory because you have to package all that up into one one power ball.

A

Yes, it does so, let's talk about that one, because when we do 3d printing, we work with meshes which are STL files and STL files aren't handled well within freecad like because they're made of multiple surfaces, you can't just like modify it easily. So, typically, what you do is you convert it to a solid first there's some STL files that you can do that readily and I explained it in one of my two five-minute videos: how to go through that process. So I've got the two 5-minute freecad 101 videos you select that object.

A

Then you basically turn it into a solid through a few steps in the part workbench. But without that, for example, you cannot do these operations like select the face and poke a hole through it. You're gonna have to convert that mesh file into a solid file first, because the mesh, the way it appears in free CAD, is essentially I think a lot of times it's empty on the inside and it's just got a bunch of surfaces. So it's not a solid, it's it's a bunch of polygons and it's treated differently.

A

So the way to do that is, you can operate it within. As I mentioned blocks CAD you can definitely modify it in block scale. You can poke holes and things do the boolean operations boolean, meaning like subtraction addition intersection blocks cat. Does that well and free CAD? The requirement is that you convert it to a solid first before you do that kind of stuff, but not all you can do. You cannot do the the padding functions, but you can do boolean operations within freecad in the Park workbench. If you have two shapes within.

A

Words that part design- no it's in part, but if you have so say you drew up a couple of things: I just clicked on them. They appeared like at the origin there they're, probably superimposed against one. Another yeah is that ball that I just drew here. Let's select that yeah that ball well yeah here the boolean operations start appearing, so you can join things like this.

A

One is I, think addition, but if you, if in a tree view now you got so say you got the sphere and the cone that you click shift to select both of them and all your boolean operations now have appeared. So you can take, for example, an intersection of these right here now, I'm, not sure what happened there, but something happened. Oh yeah! What happened there was I ate the top of the pyramid with what the ball intersected with it. So you do boolean operations you can do like.

A

If you have a cube, you can, like you know, cut that off with a boolean operation by doing a subtract so that you can still do it's more complicated with in freaked out, because you have to select the proper thing and once you select the two things you have to select make sure you know which operation out of these it's easier in blocks cad to do that. But that is a common workflow say we got the extruder. So, for example, extruder we got STL files from the Pusa printer. They did not have open-source cad.

A

They do not have SDL's sorry step files. Most people do not use free CAD, except for lulzbot like which is my favorite company. That's that's the 3d printing company. It's a fully open source company Lowe's about they provide free, CAD files for everything, so the Lowe's about printers any parts that are on that printer are in full CAD within freaking because they care about it. Just like we do. They understand that if you have free CAD now anybody can do it for the most of the other, guys like, for example, for the extruder.

A

We don't have that in free, CAD or step file. We have only STL's, which means we cannot do the various operation. We can only do like the boolean 's here, but we can so the way I did that screw hole cuz that screw hole that little tiny screw hole for the back mounting plate, I put that in there and that's simply subtracting that hexagon from that shape and that did work within the boolean operations here. So that is a common workflow.

A

So, with that said, like any questions on that, where we are on I mean that basic workflow you can, you can definitely design the carriage pieces. You'd say: okay, how do I do that a cylinder in there? Well, how do you do that? Well, if you look at the short side, you can draw on us face of that a circle and the circle will eat all the way through to make a partial cylinder. So you have to think kind of think about.

A

Well, how did what are the primitives inside there and how do I logic that out to make it happen using simple operations and it's kind of like creative exercise, but I mean you know elementary school children can do that blocks. Cat is designed for people like down to like elementary and stuff question.

A

Yeah yeah, you can do just about all of them and it depends where you are so you have to play with it, but but in a hexagon. What do I need to know? I need to know that it's gonna fit my bit, and you know the sides if it's to design constraints there, where I want the sides to be parallel for a small hole in a big hole, so I I did that. So what were all the constraints?

A

One, the dimension of it? So just the dimension across the two points before that I already drew the hexagon and a hexagon had all equal angles and everything. So that's already there and the only other thing I need to Center it. So that's gonna be a constraint where the center of the my hexagon is the same as the other Center and what else the angle I did by making the sides parallel. I'd made the side vertical so three constraints.

A

Essentially, if you don't need to do anymore, don't do it, however, sometimes there's and I'm not sure, because I typically erase my constraints, don't have enough experience with it, but they say that unless you've got every single thing constraints, if, if there's degrees of freedom- and let's look at look at that- so say we take a look at the model and take this sketch. It has.

A

This thing called like I, think solver messages here, I think it says there I read that it might say like fully constrained or there's there's missing constraints and I think the way the free CAD works is when our missing constraints, it can crash easier. But then again in my sketches like if you do a simple sketchy extruded as long as you do the merge workflow, where you're putting one file into the next, the merge, never crashes. If you get like a one single file, that's got all these parts in it.

A

It tends to crash more so you want to separate it, but do minimal constraints whenever possible and if you really needed- and it's crashing on you just get rid of all the degrees of freedom and constrain it, because sometimes, for example, one thing where it does come in okay, you did a perfect, complicated shape. You want to Pat it and says: error.

A

It'll actually tell you like not point. Maybe it tells you points. Aren't it's not a closed shape, but it might not so one just the other day, I was doing stuff and stuck okay, wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't extrude out I'm like what's going on. All the points are visually everything looked okay, but it's I think what was happening. There was one point wasn't close done to the last one, so that failed.

A

So that's where you want to have okay make sure everything is like, but two last points are constrained: definitely because that could either just not work or maybe crash, or something like that. So in theory setting all the constraints is good and practice. I mean if you've got a complicated shape like the hexagon or something that you drew up. I mean a free-form shape that you drew up to constrain. Everything is a lot of work.

A

Why do it if you don't have to so I would say for practical purposes, avoid it if you can and if we're doing reverse engineering work like say that Valve and we want to draw that, handle we're just tracing over it by looking at the imported image and we're just redrawing it. Yeah you're gonna have a bunch of lines. You can do freehand, but you don't want to constrain all of them. No need to so takes a lot of work. So.

F

A

Yeah I'm like I, did it doesn't take a lot to do. Control save I like to do that. Every few minutes like if I, if I just did something it took me like 30 minutes or a minute to actually draw up intently, just save it control us I, don't wanna lose that minute.

A

It's at that level like it's just for safety, it does do autosave, I I think you might be able to set those settings I'm not sure, but my workflow is just ctrl s every time, I've added something that's worth keeping which I mean if you've got a complex design. You might be thinking about it for a long time. So, typically it's not an issue. It's a okay! You figure it out. You draw just click. Control, save right!

A

After make sure you you don't crash, because for one thing you can be okay, you're trying to work out another detail. It takes you a bunch of time, so it might be like a long time before I actually do something in a cat, so yeah any other questions.

C

A

Not so much there's a thing called macros in here, you can actually record a sequence of steps to do something. Yeah, don't really want to get into all that, but you've got macros and ability to write little programs and make new work benches here, like the workbench that we have here like part design, sketcher we're working on one it's for the 3d printer which what it does is you click on that and the icons that appear here.

A

That's that will be in our next release of the OSC Linux, but we have a thing where you click on 3d printer workbench and has the icons the frame the axes and you simply click on that. It'll drop that into the picture. So you can do that very easily. So bhakti was working a little bit on that. We've got some people on a team that have begun that process. We actually did a complete PVC work bench. You can generate any kind of PVC pipe or whatever corner like T's like crosses elbows.

A

That's actually very useful I mean nobody has that out there. So we did it because we use a lot of PVC and we want to have any kind of variation we need so that that workbench exists and that's something in programs. So that's that shows you how useful packages like freak out to be. You can put a design library for anything any single thing. As long as you have the the parts that are admissible parts, you provide also a design guide that tells you okay, this is how things work and how they go together.

A

Any person then, can start designing real, meaningful objects and that's very powerful, so that's a capacity that we have and it's not not happening because it's a capacity that exists, but we need to generate those part, libraries and resources that make it practical and first is like learning, free, CAD making. You know free cuts, improving constantly it's getting better and easier, and so there's a lot of power to what we can produce for the general public on that front and reinvent local production.

B

A

And there's actually a mesh workbench within freecad and it's got things like that to simplify things that are STL files. It does it's kind of beyond the scope of that, but yeah it's of this. This talk here, but you do have a dedicated mesh, workbench yeah yeah.

A

Other people have done things like, for example, there's a shipbuilding workbench, some shipbuilding guy decided to put in tools for building holes, ship holes and stuff. So so you can do it for anything like car building, workbench. You know as long as like a lot of it is you don't know which parts to use? But if someone already told you what's admissible, when you have that, then you say: okay, we know that's engineered to work. We can now use use that as a construction set.

A

So that's how you democratize production, because right now, all that knowledge, all your special engineers and professionals have that and not a lot of them. Think about sharing that to the public. So that's a big gap in society, that's there, but we can definitely address that to make life easy for everybody. So, like you know like with the 3d printed fittings, there's actually a group in the Solomon, Islands or Australia that they're 3d printing fittings are high-pressure fittings hundred to hundred psi.

A

You know that kind of stuff where they did it, because they don't have easy access to do fittings in the Solomon Islands. But that's the kind of stuff you can be talking about. You know save our trip to the to the store when we're in the middle of building the CD qahal need plumbing fittings. We missed one part just printed right there. What you do want to have a good printer, fast printer. You want to have experience with it. You don't want to just say: oh, like first of all, you got to have the file.

A

You gotta know how to print it, what you need all of that. So so you got a you got to be aware of that, but that kind of awareness is readily achievable so that when we have our crazy builds you we can be just having running you know we can have a wall of our printers, not producing all the aquaponics parts, all the plumbing, as the other team is doing other stuff, and that saves a whole bunch of time but to develop the kind of infrastructure takes effort to do and that's exactly what we're doing.

A

So. That's why we all here.