This is such a helpful video. I have made a large number of parts but never understood the purpose of bodies etc. Understanding the workflow is extremely helpful! This will speed up my work. Start of a good book ;)
You make it all look so easy, it’s very impressive to watch a master at work! I’m very new to 3D modeling so I desperately need this kind of advice on workflow and best practices. There are a thousand and one ways to do everything and it’s not always clear which way is best from a general CAD perspective, from a FreeCAD feature/bug perspective, etc. Do you use this master sketch design pattern for your personal projects? I’d love to hear about your approach so I can copy it. :) So far I’m doing roughly this: 1. Separate parts for all things which move independently. 2. Separate bodies for each major element of a part which I may want to operate on. 3. Separate sketches for each body. 4. Spreadsheet values drive all key dimension constraints. I think extending this to include the master sketch and cloned / external linked geometry like you’re demonstrating is a good idea too. Do you have any general advice along these lines for a newb? I wish you and yours all the best, take care!
Great to hear your progress and thank you for your kind comments. Yes I do use this workflow when I am creating multi body builds especially when the position depends on each other. It is timely you should ask for an example as I am looking to release a project based video for lesson 3. If you think of anything mechanical such as cam followers, mechanical arm linkages, a wish bone suspension assembly etc then you have multiple parts that depend on each other. These parts position can be plotted in the master sketch from a profile view, even if it's just simple lines and circles showing attachment point, top and bottom edges etc. This gives you an idea of where everything should fit and design in the necessary clearance when you have moving parts i. e the forks of a bike need to clear the top of the wheel but the attachment of the breaks need to be in such a way that the break pads can sit on the rim. These points such as the wheel can be just lines i. e top, top rim, central etc. Some things that I wish I knew about when I started is the standard part and that they can be nested. These are the yellow body objects that you can group bodies in, they are mearly a grouping tool but allow you to move and hide all objects within at a click of a button. Even drop the whole group into techdraw. Also what you build doesn't have to be all in one document, use the link feature to link in your master sketch from another document and you can build each part separately. Also there are many tips and tricks but really learn how to use the selection tools such as box element selection and even the selection panel. Is great that you shared what you are doing, you are on the right tracks. Thanks once again
@@MangoJellySolutions thank you so much for your ideas and encouragement! Just yesterday I modeled a empty cylinder with one end closed and a shaft down the center (it’s just as simple as it sounds). I added an angled fin an then tried to use the polar pattern feature to create 3 more around the inner diameter of the cylinder. When I do this I get an error that’s something like “shapes do not intersect support”. It seems this is a known bug already being worked on for 0.20 (some obscure issue about coplanar surfaces?). I’m sure there is another way (many ways!) to model the other components that would avoid the bug, and so it got me thinking I’d like to figure out how experienced pros use FreeCAD because I’m sure they have adopted a workflow that automatically side-steps various limitations (topological naming issue, etc). I look forward to your next video - keep up the great work!
Thank you so much; Very helpful - straight to the point - I appreciate all your efforts... I'm practising all your tutorials one by one - and learning much more from each tutorial...
Many thanks for the video, very well explained. Shows again how awkward and burdensome FreeCAD is compared to Fusion360. In Fusion you would just make a single sketch and from this you can directly select the areas you want to extrude into the different parts. Takes 30 seconds to do. In FreeCAD you make the sketch, clone it for every part, import the features you need, then re-draw every feature you need, and then extrude it into a body. Repeat for every part. Awesome...
Awesome video. I used fusion 360 a lot to build then export as a stl file and then 3D Print anything I wanted. I drive and build Dirt racecars for 33 years and would mock up parts for my car. Yes just like everyone else I was not able to use fusion like I used to. I was grateful to Fusion for the use of their product but times change. I loved the P for project and used it a lot. Just have to go about it different in free cad. I just had back surgery, a heart attack and 3 days ago my right shoulder was totally replaced I have some time on my hand or I could say my but. I truly would chip in for a few cups of coffee but at the present I am down not for good I hope but down for sure. Thanks again and God Bless.
Thank you for sharing your experience with switching to freecad. Really glad your liking the videos. As you say freecad is pretty capable of most things it just does it in a different way. I wish you all the best in your recovery and hope you achieve full health soon. Many thanks and take care.
Definition of inefficient is subjective. If they are working for you and they are not holding you back then you have to ask the question are you fixing something that isn't broken. But if you want to rebuild it because you find it fun and not a burden then your making the right choices. 😊
Very clear and useful! I tried the mastersketch concept about 6 months ago and at the time, the forum recommended using shape binders and sup-shape binders. I never could wrap my head around how to use those properly and ended up just manually recreating the sketch. This looks much simpler.
Thank you for your comments, great to get feedback. I will go into the shape binder and sub shape binder in another video and towards the end show how to use this with master sketches comparing the technique with this video. It's one of those that's hard to explain but it's much easier to see it in action.
Thanks for the comments, It's a great workflow and I have a practical example of how it can be used in next weeks video, which is a 4 parter. Thanks once again for the kind words 😊
You are to FreeCad, what David Gilmour is to the guitar, a MASTER. You seem to have increased the pace of execution in this video, thanks RU-vid for the 5 second rewind key. Again, a very handy video, especially for a novice like me.
Lol, thank you so much 😁 Great feedback I did for a second think I was moving a bit too fast, sorry about that, I need to remember that for future videos, thank you for pointing that out.
@@MangoJellySolutions Don't be sorry, this is absolutely not a blame. The pace is fast, but it's still easy to follow you. Even for a novice like me, who in addition is French-speaking, I manage to follow you perfectly. I certainly wouldn't want to be the one slowing down the pace of the whole class.
absolutly fantastic watching your videos. i will have to do each lesson more than once till i fully understand why i´m doing what i`m doing. but following your videos is really really great. keep it up. awesome
@@MangoJellySolutions I will donate soon and become a member! I need to learn for my 3D printer. I want to be able to make my own stuff. And I think you are the one to help me! Cheers
Funny... This is what i made last in freecad. A big bobbin to hold wool for a power loom... Just getting the metal cut today. Would have been much harder to design without your help in freecad, So a big thank you for your help (:
I am pleased I had a go at Freecad before watching your videos. Having a grasp of the layout and basic commands means I can concentrate more on the workflow and also see where I was going wrong. I was able to do (almost) the same things but in a long winded way and sometimes settled for a compromise when I got stuck. Thanks for these eye openers! great !
Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed. You made me realise I really should of said at the beginning of the course that participants should be comfortable with layout, navigation and mouse controls.
Really good video! I love the way you clearly explain the concepts and take the time to explain multiple ways of getting to the same tool or achieving the same result. But I got completely lost at the end when you started talking about the workbench and the A2+ since I'm learning CAD from zero, like a real beginner, I have no concept of what the workbench or A2+ you talk about even mean 😅 Again, thanks for the informative video! I will be back after researching what this workbench and A2+ mean.
I am very new to CAD, and FreeCAD but I am learning. Love this series. But some things, that you make look extremely easy, have cost me hours. Many times I have tried to delete a constraint and it simply won't do it. In other cases the whole of the sketch goes orange. Sometimes I have no choice but to start over because I simply can find no way to recover. I have spent half a day working on a sketch of what appears to be a relatively easy almost rectangular gasket with two holes and one side at slightly off 90 degrees. Many times tangent constraints created by the polyline tool did not work properly. They were not connected the rest of the line so it never became fully constrained even though it looked just fine. Try to fix one thing and it would complain about another constraint. One other thing I should mention is that occasionally when I delete something the whole sketch seems to dissapear. But I found that somehow it had zoomed out to the point where the whole sketch had been reduced to one dot on the screen, actually off the screen. To be honest, I think FreeCAD, under Linux, was just not working properly on my laptop. I tried it again under Windows on a desktop and it worked fine on the first try. Eventually I got it done on the laptop too, but I almost think that was pure luck. This series is great and will no doubt save me a lot of headaches. A video on what is going on when things DON'T work as expected and how to recover would be a wonderful thing. Thanks!
Another way of "cloning" without linking (if you don't want it linked for some reason) is to use the standard "Copy/Paste" method. A pop-up window will allow you to pick and choose which body-items you want copied, and then it will drop those into the main project menu area (in other words, outside the bodies). You can then drag and drop what was pasted into whatever body you want for further, independent modifications. This is a "long way around" method, but it can be useful for decision-making processes (say, if you aren't sure what size you want the flywheel to be, so you're just visually making comparisons between the original size and a new size), or perhaps you're designing two different sizes at the same time and want to show them side by side once they're complete, as part of the same overall file. It can also be useful for backup purposes (especially for beginners who may make mistakes that are difficult to "Undo"). Also, F2 (for those who have that available) is a default FreeCAD shortcut for "rename." Saves a bit of time that way. I like to use "F2" then "End" then "Backspace" (over the numbers after "Body") then "Space" then "Hyphen/dash" then "Space" again, then I name it whatever I want. This way "Body" always shows up first in the list. It's a good way to make it easier for a beginner to navigate and to remember the FreeCAD "layer/sub-layer" conventions. Something else to note is that when creating an arc from an underlying circle, the 3-point arc doesn't work as well. If you zoom in very close, you'll see that it doesn't actually match the radius of the circle perfectly - there are gaps and errors, even though the circle highlighted in yellow. Using the "Center and endpoints" option will work better. You can pick on the point at the center of the underlying circle and then the two tangented endpoints of the two lines, then use the "X" Constraint tool to ensure they align and snap together perfectly. You can also use the radius and angle tools to ensure that the arc and circle have the same numbers. Another way is to use the "=" tool to fix the radius and angle of the arc to match it to the circle (that only copy/pastes the radius and angle info to the 3 point arc though, it doesn't snap it into place over the circle). When you added the horizontal constraint to the line between the two tangent lines, something that would be helpful would be using the symmetry constraint on the endpoints of that horizontal line, to keep it from drifting to the left or right when being moved around. The part at the end where the file is duplicated and then assembled seems redundant to me. I don't know if there's a need for file duplication in the 3D printing or other manufacturing processes. If not, then it seems like copying and pasting the Sketch from the SupportBody Pad layer into a new Body (maybe SupportBody2), turning off the SupportBody (maybe renaming it SupportBody1) with the spacebar, and then moving the contents of the original sketch (I think there are multiple ways to do this), then using the "X" constraint tool to snap everything together so it all lines up perfectly, would make a lot of sense. This way there's only one file to have to work with, it's a bit smaller than the total file size of two complete and nearly complete files, and the "X" constraints can be turned on and off as needed. If two files are needed, then nevermind about this paragraph!
This is magnificently-useful, but it also seems like a bodge around a limitation in FreeCAD. It would be far more useful if in FreeCAD there were an option akin to "Create and Edge Linked To External Geometry" but which simply, with one click, created that duplicate inside the sketch, rather than requiring the user to then go and draw it all over again.
I really appreciate that Flowwie that's so kind of you, thank you I know how appreciated you are in the freecad community. I will be doing the same, (once I found it on youtube, all quite new to me still)
@@MangoJellySolutions I could click on my "edit channel" page and then add a new column there and created a column called "Great FreeCAD channels". I really like your work. All the best wishes for you to England! Maybe we can even connect by audio-video chat anytime soon and have a conversation about collaborations on youtube. I think we FreeCAD RU-vidrs need to stick together!
Thank you for showing me that, I will set up that soon. This sounds good regarding a collaboration, I am in the middle of changing jobs so once I have settled in we should talk. 😊😊 Best wishes to you too and thanks once again.
man if I could just remember all this stuff...I hated freecad mostly because I was trying to import stl's and modify them and it's really really bad for that, but now that I have created a few parts and watched some of these videos it's really powerful once you learn all this stuff, but I feel like I just can't remember all this stuff when I need it. Part of getting older I guess.
Ooh yes, you did take the hard root at first with trying to modify stls! Don't worry, it's not getting old. Freecad is not the easiest to learn but you will find one day, it will just click. You can't learn everything at once, the subject is way too vast. But the more you use it the more you will remember. I am trying to learn a new software package at work, been at it 2 weeks now and nothing is sinking in, but I know that at some point it will just click.
mango your videos on freecad are great. have you ever used construction geometry in sketcher to rotate parts of the sketch? ive use this method to create aluminum profiles and complex things like say a quadcopter with multiple arms extending from each main arm. i use a 3 lined construction cross with each 3 ends connected perpendicular to a outer circle and then restrain the sketch using length constrains and angles at where the circle/cross meet ( it makes use of many construction components typically boxes and bisecting lines that constrain the sketch) after that you can copy the "master" sketch and each copy from the master (and only the master) can be point constrained to the center point of axis rotation (which has to be another point), then you constrain one side of the cross with the previous copy, so if its a perfect 4 sided arm in 90 degree intervals you can just set hor and vert constrains on each of the applicable cross lines and save a lot of time doing so. I've hoped that ive made it clear.
Thank you for your comments, glad you like the videos. I've used construction geometry for mechanical movement such as cam followers and linkage arms like a skeleton. But I mostly use constructible geometry for normal static sketches. I was drawing what you describe as I was reading your post and I see exactly what you have done and I think this may help me start to tackle something that I am looking to do so I may borrow your technique. Thanks for the description.
First time I have heard of Block Constraint. Have you a video explaining it? The magic it did here is not self explanatory. Add to the information above might help others.
Thank you, Which preferences are you interested in? I have increased the size of my icons and I have turned off the report view showing on error. I also use the touch pad navigation rather than blender or cad navigation. Out of the box that's about it. Oh and freecad 0.19
Great explanation again. Q: is there a way / command to bring in clones of the master sketch into all bodies in one go? For tutorial reasons its obviously better to explain it the way you did, but creating all bodies first and then bringing in all clones (if possible in one go) seems more efficient. Look forward to hear :)
Thanks for the comments, glad you like. You may be able to create a macro to do it but I know of no way out of the box to do that. I can see how much quicker that would be.
@@MangoJellySolutions actually, thinking about it a bit more, a master sketch on a dedicated “plane” that can be referenced to from any sketch in bodies in a document could be a “master addition” to FreeCad. Much better than a macro. But I have no idea if it possible.
Good video. But is there a specific reason why you are using the clone command from Draft instead of a shapebinder to refer to the master sketch? With that method you can just stay in Part Design. Saves a few mouse clicks (and for newbies, it eliminates some confusion).
Thank you glad you like, Yes, that's actually is in another part of the course where I go into shape binders and towards the end I go back and compare this method with a sub shape binder method. I was in two minds to do it this way but I wanted to get into bind modes and some of the other options so thought it was a bit early in the course to dive straight in so used the draft clone instead. I found it quite hard to plan when and where I want to talk about certain features, trouble with Freecad there are so many ways to do the same thing.
Thank you for a really good video, I just started with FreeCad. I have one little question; in the end about 27:50 in the video when you select 2 edges I'm only able to select one at the time. It took me a while before I noticed that I have to hold down ctrl-button when I select 2 different edges. Is this some settings I have to change or is this normal?
Great to hear that you found this video useful. No that was my fault, I should of said that I ctrl selected the edges, sorry (I normally do). I have tried screen button overlays so if I do forget viewers can pick it up but running on Linux there are limited ones and some of them just don't work. Again apologies.
in version 0.9.24366 on mac when I try to import the parts into SpoolAssm via A2plus it only lets me import them one at a time, that 2nd icon even says import a single shape, can't find a way to import multiple parts at once. not really a problem but would be better, I think, if it did still allow multiple selection.
I've got Freecad V.21.1, I select the master sketch, click Draft, Modifications and sometimes the clone command is greyed out. Nothing brings it back. Second problem is I've finished the Spool, Pad and then create Body001, Sketch(2D), Sketch002. I also rename Body and Body001 but I can only get Edge Geometry in Sketch002 not Sketch(2D) like you do in the tutorial. Also in Sketch002 when I get Edge Geometry, I can't select the 50mm circle, it's disappeared! I can select everything else but of course it won't Pad. Is this me? or is there something wrong with this version.
hi, i watched a video yesterday where someone made one sketch an did multiple pads from that one sketch. I am still at the very beginning of freecad and i am copying all your videos and still dont understand what im doing....LOL. but the multiple padding from one sketch for my 3D-Printing would be awesome instead of making 20 sketches. even then i can't pad each sketch. i get an error that its not possible! sry for all this text.
