Open Source Ecology FreeCAD Instructionals, 10 Oct 2020

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From YouTube: Here's How You Can Get an OSE FreeCAD Badge

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Learn basic proficiency in FreeCAD in one hour and get an OSE FreeCAD Badge by following the instructions at https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/FreeCAD_Badge.

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A

Okay, actually, it looks like it's staying on.

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Hi everyone, it's you again.

A

Okay, actually it does look like like I'm recording, so that's pretty good. um Okay, let's, let's try that again. So so global collaborative workflows and freecad is what this is about and we focus on collaborating between people who of different skill levels, different locations um using widely accessible tool chains. That's that's the idea so compared to compared to a normal organization. You have you have some proprietary cad. You might have some advanced architectural workflows, perhaps some architecture or design any any kind of cad workflow where you're designing with your team.

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But typically you don't really care about um expanding that, like beyond the boundaries of your organization, because your work is proprietary, you're, not designing, open source tractors or cars you're, not designing open source products. So the kind of questions we ask here are slightly different because we're saying how do you engage in a collaborative open process?

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That's also learnable doesn't really take too too much infrastructure in terms of computing power um or very expensive, cad and very advanced workflows where you really have to understand the whole workflow um explicitly and deeply uh as a professional cad person. So how do you simplify that? And so we we work on on that topic of how? How do you simplify this?

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How do you make accessible, make it accessible to more people and uh make it universally uh basically to to create the a platform where collaborative design becomes the norm that anyone can do without like right now, there's definitely the technical barrier where people cannot do that process on one the tools are coming along in an open source world, I would say blender and free, cad and open source architecture.

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There's uh the capacity to do a full collaborative workflow is just happening. There's the introduction of the ifc.

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um I forget what that that's a ifc format, where the architecture guys are saying: hey, let's create a format which is openable a universal open standard, that's openable by anybody, so you don't have like one cad version like whatever rhino or autocad or whatever that cannot. You cannot open the files from the other different packages. There's work happening right very actively, like I think the architecture is is leading that with, for example, ifc what happened to my video.

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I think yeah okay, I should be. I should be back here what video pumped out, okay,.

A

There we go um the the collaborative workflows I think are in in the infancy, including in a proprietary world. What I mentioned about the ifc format in architecture, there's definite movement and strong motion, for I was just studying this because we're getting into the architecture program hardcore next year with a seed home version two and we're exploring this. So how do we communicate all our cad? So if people don't have freecad, how can they also communicate to others? Well, there is a format in the architecture.

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World called ifc that does that there's bim, there's building information modeling, where open bim is becoming a prominent thing, open, bim and open ifc there's a lot of really good development right now, even within blender. I was just looking at some videos where you you can do open bim work, meaning do more advanced features of visualization cross sections.

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Different views, 2d to generating 2d from 3d, is pretty much well established um and getting the when, when we did when we're doing the cdca homework right now, we're noticing that okay, the the standard architecture, tools or cad tools are not available for us to generate those easy blueprints for for the building department right, you need all those elevations, the plumbing, the 2d, the the 3d whatever, uh so so we're exploring that in a very deliberate way right now now the the one aspect that I think is also missing quite a bit right now is: is the larger collaborative workflows and that's that's.

A

That's the kind of process we're developing. So to summarize it to give you this good overview of what's happening here, we want to make public design just commonly accessible. It's a thing you do like using computers or google, docs or email today. I think I think the same thing can happen with collaborative cad design.

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I think it's a matter of time. The tools are definitely getting better and better like free, cad, there's tons of active development. That's the open source cad package that we're learning today.

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Blender also is huge development going into open architecture community, where they're developing architecture workflows within blender, and you can take a look at. I actually want to show you one link, there's a good overview.

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If you go to my I just post this on my blog when I was looking at architecture documents, I ran into all these topics of how do you uh interoperate? So what are some of the issues like some of the issues that we face in terms of open? So you can take a look at the link I put in the chat box.

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Some of the issues are, for example, dwg or like autocad format. It's proprietary, like you, don't even know how to interpret the data. There's there's two-dimensional librecad, which is open source which just reverse engineered a way to import dwg files, so you can work with dxf files. That's awesome! That's true, but it's like if you look at that, like how crazy is that that that companies are actively preventing others from viewing their files, it's it's like.

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You want market adoption right, you don't want to be super limiting and having that scarcity mindset where you're just trying to control the whole thing. So that's not a way you're going to get to large scale collaborative design.

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What else is to be said about open workflows um for large collaborative workflows?

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You have two options, I would say in summary, it's like you either use a full uh hardcore, professional, expensive package like the companies use or you can try to simulate those workflows in an easy way, and that's what we'll talk about today. So how do you do collaborative design in a simple way?

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So the basic principles are that one you have to teach people how to be able to design things in an effective way, and here after I stop talking we'll go through the the free cat exercise, and I want to get all of you to be able to to do this feature on a feature exercise where, with that, you can draw just about anything and render it into 3d in a really rapid way.

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So that's coming, but as far as a little more perspective, there's the ability to design things, that's one side and also there's the ability to to download all kinds of files from various repositories right so believe it or not. There's a lot of resources available for that I'll paste in another link. So the idea is taking the the real environment that we have or we want to create real things and we want to digitize them. So we can share that across the whole world.

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So once you can digitize something you can make it abundant or non-scarce. You can share that design. You can have people modify that design. So on one side, you've got the ability to create things from scratch. On the other one other side, you've got the ability to get part libraries from available resources. So what are those resources?

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Let me uh give you another link, so you can get a good feel for what that's about. um I just there's a page called cad repository.

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So take a take, a read: there's the chat box take a look at the cad repositories, but basically um right now there there is a huge wealth of various resources where you can find cad so that you have you know some motor you're working with a piece of structural steel lumber, whatever uh pumps or whatever, whatever you're trying to design a lot of that is out there already, but you kind of have to search for it in various repositories.

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Manufacturers, size, personal websites this and that many different softwares, such as even sweet home 3d, comes with a full library of appliances and furniture. So you can actually extract those things out of there. The stuff is scattered all over the place and for open source ecology. The idea is that we we try to put it and organize it in into part libraries uh of useful useful objects, so you can treat that as a construction set for rapid design, rapid crowd collaborative design.

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So let's take a look at so the third and last link I'll point you to perhaps here is uh part libraries on the wiki okay.

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So that's the third link take a look at that, so there we keep track of various. So it's obviously part library across various projects. You've got uh what you have. There is a visual representation like a gallery within the wiki and you can click on each product project or product uh to get into the subparts and modules. So that's that's how it works, there's an easy way where you can simply.

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Document all your part, libraries, in an easy to access, visual way which links to the modular design method. Where you did when you're designing an object, you break it into modules, and then you break it into subparts and some parts of those parts.

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But the idea is: if you have access to all those subparts and smaller smallest atomic elements in an accurate way, then you can do meaningful, realistic design, not just like fake design, which is something that you just draw up and you don't know if it works or not or whatever no real technical design based on real, accurate cad. So there is a lot of resource on the accurate cad out there. We can generate it and we can now talk about collaborative design. Workflows where uh you also, the other missing link is for the design.

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Part is how do you design right so that would be the design guides. uh We're publishing a lot of different design guides. That's that's a direction we're recently getting into so, for example, how do you design a 3d printer, so 3d printer design, guide, tractor design guide that kind of approach where you're saying here's?

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How you put basic common elements together, according to techniques that we have proven, or we know that work and then the average person becomes a very powerful designer, and that's that's the basic idea, so in the future, uh as more well-organized repositories are created as more accurate cad is created by individuals as people learn collaborative workflows, using simple tools, not not complex proprietary tools, there's a hope that cad becomes quite manageable for many many more people, and also then the rapid prototyping, like with 3d printers and other machines that becomes much much more accessible.

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So, like 3d printers are like the wiki house, digital fabrication, style, stuff.

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Much much more power comes to the your fingertips when you, when you know how to use these tools. I think a lot of the the success of a of a modular open source approach, and I think that the good model is within like the open, ifc and bim communities. They do do talk about just like we talk about make available a lot of different, independent, interoperable tools that don't create that complex big package that cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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At your. uh You know proprietary design company, but instead it's a bunch of open source modules you mix and match. So all the issues of interoperability file exchange. How do you go from one tool to another? That becomes the important part and that's the way to think about it, because then you're not locked into this? Oh this tool doesn't work or it's expensive or you just got this way this canned way of doing it.

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No, it gives you all the freedom to be super creative and have multiple options for how to accomplish each thing, so it gives an open ecosystem for innovation that can generate better results all together, because we believe that- um and we've seen this, for example, just to give you an example with the brick press like when we published the first brick press and the civilization starter kit version 0.01 in 2012, uh we had a cad guy.

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Do the the brick press- and it was one of those very good examples where we noticed how uh the professional cad route or the proprietary tools are really inefficient, because you have one cad drafts person he's got the software.

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Nobody else has the software. This guy is a trained, well-trained, guy who's, a professional he might. He was a volunteer, so he wasn't that available. So it took us like two months to to do like after we had the brick press ready for publishing like it took us a bunch of time. It was about two months, two or three months where we were, depending on this one guy to generate that cad. Well right now.

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Instead, if we have the part libraries of all the individual parts, if we can gather a hundred people around a design sprint with people who know this workflow, you can do such a thing in like a day or a weekend. You know so so it's you can, by virtue of numbers and modular breakdown, get to more positive results, and that's why we're approaching like this.

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This way, because we're talking about everything about distribution of wealth and power and distribution of creativity and uh in a decentralized world, um and that means uh there's more access to everybody and every everyone participates. More less people are just the passive uh passive consumers and uh the world is in principle a better place. So that's that's how we approach this.

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We definitely believe in the power of the crowds where, by modular uh granular breakdown, you can get things done just so much more effectively to the point that right now on our radars things like say, we want to build like an entire community or a university or a research center or a building a workshop, a farm, we're developing tool chains and workflows where you can get a swarm of people and just do it, starting with a small example of the cdc home where, where, because we're designing the workflows to be very efficient, you can either do it like as a two people over many weekends or you can get 50 people in five days to do it.

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Things like that, so those kinds of workflows are really powerful because in the economic sense they're I like to now use the phrase that they're replacing the need for finance capital as the dominant driver of human development, because now you can distribute that process so that the human capital open source design more access is the new fuel. Because what does money get you money? Gets you the time of people and the resources and all of that?

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Well, but if you can get gain access to the resources more directly, that's a more accessible way to run a society. So, economically speaking, the the collaborative design route is a big deal in terms of shifting the world from finance capital and the basically the monetization or or what do you say, the financialization is the word financialization the whole world order based on money that basically the neoliberal order that kind of throws it upside down. Where uh then the end result is intended to be much more benign to to everybody.

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So that's that's the idea. So, let's uh with that little little intro there, let's uh get right into the the free cat workflow. So the first question is: uh is the tool chain degeneracy or does everyone have freecad 16 that they can run right now? So if you have.

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Let's, let's do this and and there's a little work doc. I was teaching somebody else to go through this workflow yesterday and we've got um a document where actually the okay go into this link, because I actually put some notes here so we were talking about.

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uh How do you teach so right now, you know covet makes us think that oh yeah, okay, we got to do this effectively in a remote way right, so we were looking into. How do you? Actually, if you want to learn this, and if you want to teach somebody else, how do you do that? Well, a useful tool? There is the remote desktop control. I think that does exist.

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I know I've used it a long time ago, timbuk2 on macs a long time ago, but you can do the remote control of a screen, so you can teach somebody by by helping them actually on their screen. So that's actually a really effective way to think about it, but yesterday, uh so we actually have this uh one guy in south africa who's uh an immersion fellow who's uh learning freak out here and we started the doc that was about the remote desktop control, and then we got right into the.

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How do you guys somebody over the internet to do this very effectively, but you can follow page two um for this basic workflow, where the workflow relies on this think of any uh imaginable shape in 2d extruded into 3d and then now you've got this 3d object now take any of the sides of this object which, if you drew them in 2d and extruded them, it has all flat faces right, but you can take any of those faces and now put a drawing on that face and then create another feature by extruding that drawing so you can continuously take this first from 2d sketch to 3d continuously add new features to it, whether they are extruded features or poked holes or poked.

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Those are called pads or or pockets in freecad. But if you just think about that, if you can get your head around that idea, then you can think that wow okay, now I can, I mean that's pretty powerful. You can get just about any geometry from that. So manually.

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Sketch it's like taking a p a pen on your paper and then turning that into a realistic three-dimensional object and keeping on doing that process forever. Until you get an object of infinite complexity, then you might say well what about? If the object is made of many many parts like a tractor or whatever you don't like draw it all in one, is one block: well, naturally, you want to create to draw the individual parts and then assemble them together.

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So after you learn how to create this 3d object, all you need to do is then how to import other objects into your document. So you got five of us working on a project together right now. Each of us can take one object.

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Then we can just simply import that object into our document and then move it around, and then you have relationships between objects that you can then put together into any complex shape and in our workflow, just as a final word on this workflow, because that pretty much summarizes all that we do like we don't even get into like for the great grand public process. I don't even want to teach anybody about constraints or like how do you mesh okay so face to face, or you know lining up in a corner.

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You can do that just by simply moving with that moving objects and you can see where they are and you can view it on any of the planes. But that's enough to get you know just about anything. So we deliberately avoid the actual processes of any more complicated things than you need just to do. Basic design where hundreds of people can be taught rapidly like in an hour can be taught rapidly to all collaborate in this workflow.

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So that's basically it so today, we'll we'll go through the the process of the uh creating any form of three-dimensional object, and when you can do that, you're you're set, then you in freecad the thing you use typically, is it's just called merge in the file menu. You merge another project into it and that you that other object appears in your document and you can move it around um and so forth.

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So let's get into this this workflow, that's that's the overview of it. If you can picture that in your mind, that is extremely powerful and I can also tell you that um for blender, like blender is supposedly like, I haven't really learned blender yet, and I will do the same thing for blender, but as far as I can tell the con the if you can get that conceptual idea of how a cad program works like what I just described for free cat as a workflow, then you can rapidly onboard to that new tool.

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Like a blender, like I haven't, touched to tell you the truth. I haven't touched blender like over the you know. I knew about it for a decade or two. I haven't really touched it. You know I maybe opened up some little thing here and there, but I can tell you right now that I'm just kind of getting ready for it, because I'm just trying to imagine like okay, what is the equivalent of that workflow that I just told you about within freecad what is the equivalent of that core concept in freecad?

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So this is like a mental training exercise, because if you can get your head around that basic nucleus of concept, then you can pick up then your mind will tell you okay. Now I need this. I need that you will like teach yourself in in rapid time how to pick up another tool.

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So I just want to encourage you to explore, because I can tell you that we'll be having the same session in blender, where I can show you this the same kind of a workflow that in about an hour, you can get okay, I I can feel comfortable about sculpting a shape into just about anything and then, of course, you've got all kinds of other functionalities.

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But then you ask yourself: what are the basic functionalities that I need and you just focus on learning those that's how we approach this, this collaborative design process, we're saying? No! No, you don't need this. All this I mean, if you want to know the insides of free cad they'll, take your whole life to learn it like, if you want to know it inside out, but the the question of sufficiency is a very important one.

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What are the things you need to know, then you ask those questions and learn those things um unless you make it your hobby to to, you know just play with freak out or your life, but no like we've got other things. We're talking about integrated diversified skill sets. So no you want to learn something, and then you want to use it to powerful ends and move on from there.

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The choice is yours, so, with the free cut workflow go into the document that I see everybody in there go to page two, so assuming that you all have freecad and a lot of it, I must must say, is.

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A lot of the the confusion or like the complexity of getting any program up and running is having that program available and pre-configured. So that's why we can we recommend the osc linux or having that as something that you can definitely view that you know every other person has is looking at the same thing, because they've got the same version. So that's that's a big part, but if you have that all configured then to follow the document, the google doc, I just showed you on page two.

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You should all see that all that all should make sense to you. So the thing is so you got the steps to to to do the feature on a feature exercise. So the end point of today's um presentation is feature on a feature. So if you can do a 3d object and then put a feature on it, a three-dimensional feature whether a pocket or a pad and then another feature on that feature.

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Then I'm pretty convinced you can do just about anything and and freak out in terms of generating complex, complex geometries. So let's start this process. So let's do that. So, let's start by doing the 3d three-dimensional object, so you start with a sketch and then you extrude it to 3d. So can you follow that? Can you start a new document and get a blue screen?

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Let's see or let me see if, if I'm sharing my screen, um can you guys also share your screen? So I see where all of you are at there's a button on the bottom left, the middle one. It says, share your screen next to the hand.

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All right, oh, let's see, let me see if that's working, okay, I got got, I don't have trevor trevor. Can you share your screen because this is actually pre and also justin? uh This is actually pretty cool, because what this means- and I have to what I'm noticing here is- I have to keep on clicking on the toggle, the view to tiled view, and now I see all the five screens and I see that you've all got it great, so, except justin hold on.

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Because I want.

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To so so here, what we're also doing is we're developing a way that okay, I'm I'm experimenting. Okay, can I teach somebody and actually give meaningful feedback to somebody in real time? And yes, this is possible. Let's see if justin can do it, because it's also a benchmark to see like if we can do it, then we can say: do it with uh 50 people, maybe because we really have to learn how to so so bottom left hand corner justin within the jitsi jitsi screen, uh everything's uh everything.

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Is frozen here.

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Well, maybe just just like click refresh on your browser button and just get back into the meeting and see if you can share your screen. But I see the nice blue screen and that's the first step so.

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Can you get into freak out and get the blue screen.

B

uh It seems like everything is frozen, like like every button on every window. I can't even.

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Well, okay, I think you might have to like restart.

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Okay, but we'll.

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Continue here and you will we're taking notes in a in a doc, so you're starting a new document as justin rejoins us there go to the part, design, workbench and as step number.

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um Sorry, where.

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Was the workbench yeah, so so in the workbenches there's a button. um Let me actually take a screenshot, but the button where you select all the workbenches is what we're looking for.

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Let me see if I.

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Yeah, so that's the the button, the workbench button, um yeah and let me actually so. This is absolutely clear to everybody. Let me just copy and paste what I mean by the the workbench.

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So that the workbench but workbench selection is where it says initially, it says start in there. But if you click on the start, you'll see that it unfolds a whole bunch of different workbenches. So select the part design workbench.

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um Yeah so yeah. If someone wants to edit that, uh but that's the.

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Go to part design workbench where yeah, that's, that's cool click on that that start there and you that allows you to go into the the part design workbench. So if you go on part design, workbench.

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And it's like in about in the middle there, so you click on part design, and it gives you a bunch of different tools. So that's the workbench. Those are the tools that are in there you'll notice that the upper left corner is the new page with, like the red, create a new sketch. If you hover over it, which is uh as shown in step three on page two click on it and then just select the plane just select the xy plane.

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And when you select the xy plane, what you'll notice now you're in the official.

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Drawing like the this is the 2d design window, where you have all the different two-dimensional tools available in there. Those are things like lines, circles and whatever you've got so you can click on any of those things. I would just recommend doing the one that is the create a polyline.

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uh You can do any one, but each of those will get you a two-dimensional shape. So, for example, if you do a the polyline.

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And then close the last point onto itself you're going to get a closed shape. Now, that's a shape that can be extruded. So that's step number one. So let me see where everybody is on that.

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So I'm I'm using ubuntu and I'm I'm opening there's different uh desks. It's called uh workspaces switcher, but then I've got the looking at all of you guys in one one workspace.

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I could look at the freak out in another okay yeah, so trevor's got a shape, um part design. Okay, that is, that freak out 16 for.

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Yeah, so you need um right, so you don't have a new doc if the screen is not blue. That means you never clicked on. The new document should be there. Okay right.

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George, you got it paul yeah just do that justin, yeah you're in so justin click on uh part design and start drawing a shape. Yeah there you go. That's it. um Justin yeah create sketch, select any plane, we're working on an x y plane. So now the thing is: go in the upper uh there's. All the information boxes so go into the model.

A

Well, after you've got the tasks hit close to get hit close on after you finish, drawing yeah. Where and at that point all the red stuff disappears. Although the red points disappear, and that's that's you're now in the you're not no longer in an edit window, you can rotate the things and move them around by navigating.

A

I like the navigation gesture style, but you can rotate and move whatever you drew. But the thing is you don't need to worry too much about moving rotating things around you. uh What you want to do now, since you're in part design workbench already, um you can simply in a part model view click on what you draw drew, which should be called sketch, so you're, selecting that and now you can operate on that with all the functionality of the part, design, workbench. So click on the pad one.

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That's like the yellow thing that looks like a pad coming up above the ground.

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There you go see so yeah george pat it up, justin, pat it up yeah. So you guys.

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Paul and trevor, you guys got it, you can rotate. uh I would select if you right, click uh in a free cab. I would go into navigation styles, gesture where then, the left mouse button rotates and the right mouse button shifts translates so moves back and forth, left and right up and down. um So that's that's easy because you got your mouse buttons. Allow you to do all the rotations and motions.

E

Yeah a small question, so um all my my pad button and all those um buttons are grayed out. How did you get to the navigation uh portion yep.

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Exactly so you're in the edit mode. So if you click on task here.

E

Let me go back to your screen, so I can see it so I go to test okay, okay, tasks.

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Yeah, so if you're, when, whenever you see the red that means you're in edit mode, that's the trick. If you can understand that part, if you, if you're still seeing the red, that means you have not quit not not said close in that window,.

E

Okay, so how do I um get out of edit mode.

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Yeah, so in in your task, okay, so what you should see in in your task window, you should have a button there that says close.

E

Got it got it got it. Okay, good.

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Got it and now go into the model view, so, okay, so in a task you closed it up, so so you're out of the edit window. So that's the critical thing you got to know when you're in the edit window versus you can uh you're not in it.

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So in sketcher, like the thing you just want to make sure you get out of that edit window and then you can do, then you can actually do things with this thing. So next step is you select the object. You've just created so go out of the edit mode and go into the model.

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So model view is where you can select objects that you have drawn.

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So I'm gonna put.

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On page three, so there's the critical distinction there there's the the model view and the task view.

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So you need to get into the model view in order to then be able to select the things that you have in your model. Simply by clicking on each object in the model is named, so you should have a thing called a sketch. There.

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Does everyone see that.

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So, on page three saw if you want to switch back to page three into work documents which I'm gonna describe it there.

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Allows you to select all the objects? Okay, so simply click on the sketch. So in your model view click on sketch to select sketch.

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And now you can up do the operations such as like padding it only thing you can do at this point is pretty much pat it because you don't have uh an object to poke a hole in yet for.

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Example, yeah, so the sketch click on it. Now you can you see it should turn green.

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Should turn green in the view window? That's how you know you're selected. If it's not green, then you gotta go back to your sketch. Now. Here's the other thing, if you double click on it, you'll notice in the in the model view you notice, you will get back into the edit window and that's the last thing you kind of need to know.

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If you double click, you are back to editing the object.

C

There we go, that's the thing, that's got it now.

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If you know that then you're, like almost on your way to liberation here, because I mean this little this little thing of how you select a thing that how do you know where you're in uh and model in, like your model view versus actual edit, uh that's like the critical thing to know. Okay, so if you click on it once you can now pad it, so that's that's what you guys have done. Okay, now you can click ok to get out of there out of the pad.

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So the thing you have to keep always in mind is okay or close that window so that you can get on to the next step. So now, if you've got the pad well, you can see that it already. It also has the sketch underneath it and you can still access the sketch by double double clicking on and stuff like that, but we won't worry about that too much right now. So the point.

C

A

For the feature on a feature, exercise select any face of the object that you just drew and then you can go through the exact same process that we just did, which is to make a three-dimensional feature and you're on your way to to two-thirds of the exercise. We need to know so, okay, so I'm noticing that, for example, justin does not have that yet so justin click close.

B

I've got I've got more than I seem to have more than showing up on my uh screen on the jitsi.

A

Okay, so usually I'm looking at your screen, you've got elements there scroll that bar up, so you have to notice that there's a scroll bar so.

C

A

C

B

A

Yeah, I can okay.

B

A

You're, the you're miss you're, not seeing the close button, because the button is above in that window so go go up in that window. You see the scroll bar.

B

I think uh what you're seeing there, what they see on your screen on the jitsi, is uh different than oh, it's different what I've got yeah. I think my your.

C

Yeah, it's, I think, a frozen.

B

A

uh Are you do you have your 3d shape.

B

A

B

A

Okay, if you got a 3d shape, then move on to the next exercise, which is basically repeating the steps we have just done, which is drawing a sketch and then turning it into a three-dimensional object. So, in order to select a face, you have to single click on it. If you double click, you're going to end up, selecting the whole object so.

E

um One one question: how are you moving um your camera around so easily, I'm pressing um how.

A

Am I moving the view in a view window so easy.

E

A

Yeah so right click and go into navigation style and do gesture.

E

A

Then, as I mentioned, left mouse button rotates.

C

E

The right mouse button.

A

E

Got it cool? Thank you.

C

E

Okay, I'm good now.

A

Is someone gonna document that is that paul.

A

Paul are you the ant eater.

D

Yeah yeah I'll try I'll try and capture that.

A

A

So a single click.

A

I'm going to capture that one, so a single click will select one face and that's what you need to do select one.

C

A

Oh, double click selects the entire thing. You don't want to select the entire thing. Just select just a face.

A

And then you can click on a new sketch on that face.

A

And then you can go through this. The same process, essentially that you did for the first.

A

A

A

Yeah um right so select yeah, so I see trevor did it um justin? Are you.

B

I I had that I had the program crash, um I'm at least getting press in uh starting new files.

A

George are.

E

You able to do it um yeah, so we click on a face yep and then we need so once it's once it's clicked. Do I double click on pad to edit it or.

A

No, so once you once, you, click on a face, go back to the button, which is create a new sketch, which is the red one.

E

A

Good so you're, basically the that's a really cool thing. I like about freakout, you basically take that that face, and you declare that to be your new editing when editing playing.

C

A

And that's just like: okay, that is super intuitive.

A

And that's it and then you can modify that place.

E

E

Gotcha there we.

B

D

I I didn't catch that what so you click I have the face clicked, but where do I go new sketch it? Okay.

A

So on slide number three new feature.

A

Click on create new new sketch, which icon is that the red one right here so do you see slide three.

D

D

That does not pop up as an option. It's a disabled. For me, let.

A

Me say that so when when I look at your screen use, you might be.

A

Okay, so what's happening.

A

Okay, so I see, can you rotate? Maybe that object to make sure that you're not selecting like two faces so you're, selecting the pad click on another face click on a side face there. You go.

D

A

Ooh, that's an interesting one.

A

Let's see you're in partners.

D

D

Asks, let's cancel this.

C

Okay, what happened there? What was that.

D

So in tasks I had something open, yeah, okay, I must have been in some edit mode inside, but I don't know what yeah and then now, when I click on just one phase, yeah.

A

D

Option is available.

A

Yep so learning from paul is there like so so say you selected a face and the actual create a new sketch is not showing up.

A

That means you somewhere, like you, must be like in edit mode, so go back to make sure you go back to the what I would do. There is double click on whatever you have trouble with and make sure you just click, ok or close out of whatever you are editing.

A

So if you can't find what you're editing just double click on that on the object, the suspect object in the tree view, it's called the model view or tree view, just double click on it, and then you should be getting into the tasks which has cancel are okay, so just click like.

E

Where do you double click? Sorry! Well, oh you don't.

C

E

Okay, the pad or.

C

Okay, yeah I'll.

E

Yeah, what's happening to me as well.

A

Right so, for example, I just did that myself and I'm not getting the it's all grayed out so yeah, because I I'm really in edit mode, because I didn't click. Ok in the tasks tab.

E

A

Right so I'll document that one.

A

Yeah, so it's really like it's really about understanding what you're selecting what you're, not selecting and whether you're.

C

A

Model versus task and edit mode, those that's like just about it. What you need to do.

C

E

C

A

So I'm putting in a slide number.

A

uh Number for troubleshooting new features, if you can't so, if, if you select the face and the new sketch does not show up, that means you're still in edit mode.

E

A

Solution: double click on.

A

E

Oh, what does it mean when, uh like the pad or sketch, is grayed out opposed to um a pad or sketch being colorized.

A

If it's grayed out, it means it's not selected.

C

A

If you colorize it, that means you've selected. It.

E

And is there like a deselect all button or.

A

E

A

Probably I don't even know what it is: okay, just click on the blue screen.

A

uh So so, well, that's a good question when something is selected.

E

Turns green yeah because I was just messing around: I put up a fillet or a chamfer on an object and it just seemed like it just deleted it and it was completely gone yeah. So I just undo everything until I got back yeah.

A

That happens, yeah that happens. For example, your edge was too thin and, like the chamfer was too large and it ate up the whole edge and that's that's a bug I think, but it it makes.

E

A

Object disappear, okay, so yeah. um So at this point we are at.

A

Feature on a feature, so oh man, justin's, got a whole bunch of them. Trevor george paul looks like he's on the way, but in essence that's pretty much it it's like. So now you can take whatever feature and the features could be like whatever: whatever it could be. Freeform drawn could be circles, squares, elongated holes, whatever any geometry, and you can work while you it's kind of like rectilinear, it's kind of like only at right angles, but the point is like: if you have anything, that's in your original shape. That's not a right angle!

A

Then. If you go to that face, then you'll be going accordingly at a non 90 degree angle. So it's like you can create very complex shape. You can't you don't just create like everything, that's at 90 degrees, because if you come off a plane, that's not at 90 degrees. Then of course it will be angled right. So so this allows you to pretty much create any geometry like, for example, on a 3d printer. If you take a look at the the 3d printed pieces for the axes, they were generated using this.

A

This workflow, how create a block punch in some holes in it, you know, punch the belt hole punch in the screw holes punch in the hexagons for the the screw tops and- and that's all that's it's pretty simple. um So if you, if you get a feature on it, then take your feature that you did and then you, you put another feature on it and that's that's the whole exercise. Now the trick is, if you really understand this process, that means you're you're, like you really get it, you can do it in one minute.

A

Do that whole exercise bam! You go from one place to another. You have. You know how to navigate from edit to to the actual uh three-dimensional functionality.

A

You know how to select between edit and tree view, and that's that's pretty much it and then then, on top of this lesson, if you, if you, if you create multiple objects, you import them into the document and move them around so.

E

um So how complicated would it be say you want to make a hole for a screw? Do we have to should we just like make a circle and like make it two millimeters or three millimeters wide um yeah.

A

Exactly yeah, that's it so the thing I haven't shown you, but that's actually a thing that like to make useful design. You want to know what you do have to do things like what are the lengths of sides and what are say the screw holes. So that's where you go.

A

If you've got uh any sketch that you want to edit, you will get so if you even on your 3d object, if you, the 3d object, still has the underlying sketch. So then you can actually keep editing whatever you drew here by double clicking on a sketch now now to make that easy to do uh the the other one important key is spacebar.

A

So if you're in a model view- and you click spacebar, you hide it.

E

A

Very powerful thing: that's it's! It's like wow great! Well, if you hide it, then in your blue screen, you might not see anything but then double click on your sketch and your sketch will appear.

C

A

So now you can re remodel your whatever you drew before and when you close it and make sure you unhide the thing you changed, then you have just modified it now. um But if you're in a double click of the sketch, you can now use only.

B

Yep mars- and I don't hear you.

E

Yeah, are you still there.

A

uh Yeah yeah, can you hear me.

E

We can hear you now.

A

C

Yeah, oh interesting, yeah.

E

You got to the spacebar part and then you cut out. Oh okay,.

A

B

A

Yeah, okay, can you guys hear me now or am I still cut out? We can hear you.

E

A

Don't see anything on your screen, okay, um can you guys see my screen now.

B

uh I do not see it.

E

Yeah, I don't see it either.

C

Oh interesting here, let me just cut in and out.

E

Okay, you're back I'll, see you.

A

Yep, let me share my screen, um so yeah, uh here's everybody, but on my screen here like if I double click on a sketch, this is now everything is in red. So this is now where all these other buttons like, if you select something like, for example, a side.

A

This is like the critical thing you want to know now. You'll see that a bunch of other things have appeared like in red.

A

You will see like the fatter, red icons and those are all the constraints, so, for example, for the line that I just selected there.

A

I can hit this diagonal thing, which says fix a length, so I can make that now it's like 125 millimeters, it's in millimeters, so see it gives you that dimension there. um If I draw a like you wanted the bolt hole in there, so I'm going to draw this bolt hole and now, if I click on a circle, I can go into this radius bar and it gives me I want a 15 millimeter or a 12.5 millimeter hole which is a one inch bolt hole there.

A

So if I close that and you see the pad- okay- that's that's a 12.5, millimeter radius bolt hole there.

A

So that's the thing, so you need to be able to access the constraints and those are con obtained not only by going into the the edit mode, but you also have to select something that you want to constrain.

A

So you you'll see that none of those everything is grayed out until you hit something like okay, I'm selecting the side and then the constraints have appeared. So, for example, there's a there's a per there's. A vertical constraint create a vertical constraint. So now that made it vertical: okay, okay and what you want to do is, after you select something just click just mouse over all the different constraints and find out what there I showed that pretty clearly in my freecad 101, the first video, because that's like fundamental stuff, how do you constrain things?

A

But that's basically, if you can constrain lengths, then then that means you've got lengths and dimensions and perpendicularity and angles. That means you've got a cool technical ability to design.

E

Where do you find that video.

A

Okay, so that's freecad 101 on the wiki, so let me put a link with me yeah, uh so look at so what I showed you today is lesson 3a and 3b on the link that I'm putting in so here's the last link, freecad 101, the first three videos go through all that I showed you today.

A

uh The first video is really useful for a blast. It's only like five minutes long for like how do you work with all the constraints.

A

So now that's that's pretty much it so so here's a challenge for you guys if you want to get a free, cad, uh basic workflow badge, uh we'll send you a digital copy. It's it's a little badge. It's just. We certify people who know how to do this, but if you want to do that, your your challenge is to send me a one-minute video to marching at open opensource ecology.org for info opensource ecology.org.

A

Send me a one minute: video where you go through the feature on a feature exercise.

A

That means you click record on obs studio or whatever some kind of a video recording software and open up freecad or you can start with freecad open and show how you go from opening up a new document to a feature on a feature and if you're a pro at this I mean it's pretty rapid, like you can do like with with uh this workflow.

A

If you can do that in a minute, that means you can literally take any id you have in your head and you draw it out and turn it into 3d like pretty rapidly, but first of all, of course start with something very simple, like a few blocks and lines and stuff like that, but just just show that you know how to go through that process.

A

So if you want to get uh the basic osc, freecad workflow badge basic freecad literacy, that's our basic basic literacy, but with that you can take, you can now like. If we had say some some design session, you could actually contribute meaningfully to design or say you know, we're make building a tractor and you want to uh design a bell spike for it.

A

uh You could you draw a rod and make it a certain length, certain diameter and so forth and print it yeah yeah, and so this applies now now you're able to to start designing objects for 3d printing, and to do that, you simply export you you now you double click on what you have created and then you select the entire object and then go into the file menu and then export sdl.

A

Then the sdl file gets you to 3d printing sdl for stereo lithography file and and you'll notice. That, like it's important to kind of understand, like I think, that's just not correct.

B

A

Have to understand, what's happening in your in your part, tree you'll notice that most things will be grayed out. The ones that are blue are the ones that are like the most recent.

A

Now, if you you can make all the grayed out things visible by pressing spacebar.

A

And if you, if you unhide them, then you'll see like the old versions of the thing. But then it'll start your your your image. Your viewing window will start looking funny. You'll get these uh because you'll be kind of like showing two things at the same time or for.

C

A

If you're, if you're, showing the white lines in your three-dimensional view, that means your sketch is still visible. So you have to press spacebar on that. But that's that's!

A

uh If you can navigate in your tree view show like if you're working on making features on features in that workflow. You probably have to have only one object visible for the thing whole thing to be very clear and don't have any interference with like the old versions of whatever you drew.

C

A

Yeah, and maybe the last thing I'll say about how powerful this very simple workflow is just with a part tree, uh you can actually so say, you've got. This is actually what we're doing right now, we're so we're designing houses right. So it's got a lot of pieces of lumber.

A

How would you get out a bill of materials from a complete, fully accurate drawing which got which has like hundreds or thousands of these pieces of lumber or or parts?

A

Well, if you put every part as a single object in your trivial just appear as an object as a solid object, you can actually run so. Freecad actually has a. It does have actually a a command line window. The python console. You can run a little script, which will get you a a file that it simply exports all of the objects that you have into a list now. So imagine you just design a house. You get like this list of a thousand things.

A

Well, you can use a simple piece of software like you can use um as long as you've got your naming. Like you name, things like this is a two by four piece of lumber. Two by four lumber like if you name everything, that's the same thing with the same name, um you'll be able to to to basically count the number of iterations that some word has appeared. There's a simple! You know you go on internet. You have a simple thing that counts the number of times.

A

The thing appears so basically using a super, simple workflow, you can extract the whole list of parts and count the number so you'll you'll get a comma separated, variable csv file of here's. The part here's the number of that part. So you can have this this. uh It's kind of a brute force way to get a bill of materials, and probably something easier is going to come up in the freecad, but that exists right now.

A

You can actually pretty much count all the parts, but that certainly saves you countless hours of work of trying to do that by hand. So I'm actually gonna put a link to that so freecad bom generation, um freecad bom generator. I describe, I documented how exactly you do this, because I mean it's so simple: anyone can do that. It doesn't require any uh kind of advanced ideas or workflows, just thinking about the very simple ways to do things.

A

So let me paste that in a chat box as well, um in fact I'm going to put that into the document because that's actually a pretty cool.

C

Thing uh slide, duplicate slide.

A

Bom bill of materials generation.

A

Yeah, the om general. I put that on slide, slide number nine uh or you can go to the chat box, but very simple you, um but that means that you've you've gotten mastery of over the the part tree. But what we showed you today shows you all that you've got. You can select things.

A

You can simply control c control v, uh actually within freecad too, so you can copy parts like if you're designing a wall of lumber made with lumber, you can copy and paste things, but basically as long as each each thing appears once and it's in the tree view you can spit it out of freecad and count it bam.

A

You just have to keep track of your file. Your the part names like make sure that you're, you know, say you're using a bolt just call it a bolt right so that when you, when you export it- and you count it- you can count by the word bolt simple.

A

So as long as you name, every single part in your tree view with a reasonable name, you can completely get a full bill of materials. So if you have a very complex design, you automate that in a couple of steps that save you countless hours, um yeah cool, that's a cool thing and it requires no. No majority is just a very simple thing to do so.

A

um You can look at more of that detail, so that's about it. So if anyone wants to so I welcome you to practice. This do the feature on a feature exercise and if you want a precious open source, ecology free cut badge. Send me that one minute video um that means that, why is that important?

A

Because that's uh you know that's a skill match skill badges are important for the fact that now we know like say you got this skill badge and we know that there's like a thousand people or millions of people that got that skills badge, and we know that if we call upon one of those people to engage in a collaborative design work project, then they could actually contribute meaningfully to it.

A

Like that, that means we have onboarded all the people to the basic technique already and as long as we inform everybody of like what are we doing, what are we designing today? Then? We can meaningfully meaningfully collaborate.

A

um I didn't talk much about how do you? Where do you save files, but the part library concept is what we use currently that's. That would be another lesson, but what you learned today, you should be able to generate any free object.

A

So any questions on this.

D

um I have uh some debugging. I think I constrain the circle to another point and I don't know how to unconstrain. ah Okay.

A

So in the task view, if you click on task view, you will have so tasks go up task. You will see all the constraints click delete and that constraint will have been deleted.

D

I know they deleted my uh circle.

A

D

Here, okay, so you.

A

Might have deleted not the constraint, so yeah go to tasks.

D

A

Let's see so you're in edit mode right now somewhere, because I see your so go back to.

A

Where did your hides that.

D

Okay: let's try again I'm.

C

D

A

Yeah, you should be able, by tasks to if you click on test.

A

Okay, okay, tell you what uh we know that you can get into the edit mode by double clicking something so double click on something in it in a tree view, like double click, say the sketch right so now close close that no go up close okay.

D

I think I need to create sketch again.

A

Okay, okay, so maybe um okay, so teach me that so! Oh I see I see so I think oh yeah. Okay, so do you have to be in edit mode of that sketch so double click on the sketch and then the constraints appear? Okay, let's! This is a good question because I can't explain it right now. I forgot how to do that. So um if you go to okay, say I've got simple skype.