freecad

49 Articles

Come For The PCB Holder, Stay For The Tour Of FreeCAD

November 26, 2023 by 10 Comments

PCB holders are great tools. Not only is the PCB Solder Fren from [PistonPin] a nice DIY design, it offers some insight into the parts design process with FreeCAD.

This design nicely demonstrates FreeCAD’s workflow for designing parts.

The PCB holder uses 3D-printed parts, M5 hardware, a length of 2020 aluminum extrusion, and one spring to create a handy and adjustable design that accommodates a variety of PCB sizes and shapes. If the ends of the extrusion are threaded, the end caps can be screwed in. Otherwise, a little glue ought to do the trick.

Want a little more insight into what making a part like this involves? [Jo Hinchliffe] at FreeCAD reached out to [PistonPin] for more detail and has a blog post explaining the workflow and steps involved in this part. As a bonus, STEP files and the FreeCAD project file are all included!

Not only is FreeCAD simple to use, but it’s also flexible enough to accommodate custom, niche extensions like a Rocketry workbench, so be sure to give it a look for your open-source CAD needs.

Throw FreeCAD Some Curves

August 12, 2023 by 43 Comments

[Mango Jelly] got a question from someone trying to model a phone box with a complex curved roof. We have to admit that when we saw it, we knew it would be hard to model well. Naturally, there are several ways it could be one, but [Mango Jelly] used the curves workbench in FreeCAD to produce a wireframe of the shape, and you can see how that works in the video below.

The curve bench didn’t sound familiar to us, and that’s because it is an add-on workbench. He starts with a sketch of a curve, constrained to be symmetrical. Then the draft workbench allowed a rotation to convert the curve into a nice skeleton of the curved roof.

The curves workbench can create a Gordon surface over that skeleton. You can extrude that into a solid object. There are still some details to add, though, and you’ll see how each part of the roof takes shape.

Watching videos like this reminds us that we use a small fraction of what FreeCAD can do. You’ll probably pick up at least one tip from this video. If you need a quick basic tutorial, try the one from [NovaSpirit]. Or, try a longer one.

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ChatGPT, The Worst Summer Intern Ever

July 26, 2023 by 71 Comments

Back when I used to work in the pharma industry, I had the opportunity to hire summer interns. This was a long time ago, long enough that the fresh-faced college students who applied for the gig are probably now creeping up to retirement age. The idea, as I understood it, was to get someone to help me with my project, which at the time was standing up a distributed data capture system with a large number of nodes all running custom software that I wrote, reporting back to a central server running more of my code. It was more work than I could manage on my own, so management thought they’d take mercy on me and get me some help.

The experience didn’t turn out quite like I expected. The interns were both great kids, very smart, and I learned a lot from them. But two months is a very tight timeframe, and getting them up to speed took up most of that time. Add in the fact that they were expected to do a presentation on their specific project at the end of the summer, and the whole thing ended up being a lot more work for me than if I had just done the whole project myself.

I thought about my brief experience with interns recently with a project I needed a little help on. It’s nothing that hiring anyone would make sense to do, but still, having someone to outsource specific jobs to would be a blessing, especially now that it’s summer and there’s so much else to do. But this is the future, and the expertise and the combined wisdom of the Internet are but a few keystrokes away, right? Well, maybe, but as you’ll see, even the power of large language models has its limit, and trying to loop ChatGPT in as a low-effort summer intern leaves a lot to be desired.

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FreeCAD Is Simple, According To This Tutorial

July 5, 2023 by 44 Comments

Remember learning to tie your shoes or ride a bike? Like many things, that’s easy once you know how to do it, but seems impossible before you learn. [NovaSpirit] asserts that Freecad is simple, and provides a simple walkthrough to create a part in the video below.

If this were riding a bike, this tutorial would be akin to watching someone ride a bike to pick up tips. You’d probably still want to have someone explain details to you before you attempt it yourself.

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Using FreeCAD To Replace OEM Parts

June 10, 2023 by 46 Comments

As much as we might all like it if manufacturers supported their products indefinitely with software updates or replacement parts, this just isn’t feasible. Companies fail or get traded, technologies evolve, and there’s also an economic argument against creating parts for things that are extremely old or weren’t popular in the first place. So, for something like restoring an old car, you might have to resort to fabricating replacement parts for your build on your own. [MangoJelly] shows us how to build our own replacement parts in FreeCAD in this series of videos.

The build does assume that the original drawings or specifications for the part are still available, but with those in hand FreeCAD is capable of importing them and then the model scaling to match the original specs shown. This video goes about recreating a hinge on an old truck, so with the drawings in hand the part is essentially traced out using the software, eventually expanding it into all three dimensions using all of the tools available in FreeCAD. One of the keys to FreeCAD is the various workbenches available that all have their own sets of tools, and being able to navigate between them is key to a build like this.

FreeCAD itself is an excellent tool for anyone repairing old vehicles like this or those making 3D prints, designing floorplans for houses, or really anything you might need to model in a computer before bringing the idea into reality. It does have a steep learning curve (not unlike other CAD software) so it helps to have a video series like this if you’re only just getting started or looking to further hone your design skills, but the fact that it’s free and open-source make it extremely attractive compared to its competitors.

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How To Model A Twisted Part In FreeCAD

May 6, 2023 by 84 Comments

Quick references are handy, but sometimes it’s nice to have a process demonstrated from beginning to end. In that spirit, [Darren Stone] created a video demonstrating how to model a twisted part in FreeCAD, showing the entire workflow of creating the part as a blend of surfaces and curves that get turned into a solid.

FreeCAD is organized using the concept of multiple “workbenches” which are each optimized for different tools and operations, and [Darren] walks through doing the same jobs in a few different ways.

This twisted bracket is a simple part that is nevertheless nontrivial from a CAD perspective, and that makes it a good candidate for showing off the different workbenches and tools.

The video below is also pretty good overall demonstration of what designing a part from a mechanical drawing looks like when done in FreeCAD. As for mechanical drawings themselves, we’ve seen FreeCAD can be used to make those, too.

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ChatGPT Makes A 3D Model: The Secret Ingredient? Much Patience

May 4, 2023 by 44 Comments

ChatGPT is an AI large language model (LLM) which specializes in conversation. While using it, [Gil Meiri] discovered that one way to create models in FreeCAD is with Python scripting, and ChatGPT could be encouraged to create a 3D model of a plane in FreeCAD by expressing the model as a script. The result is just a basic plane shape, and it certainly took a lot of guidance on [Gil]’s part to make it happen, but it’s not bad for a tool that can’t see what it is doing.

The first step was getting ChatGPT to create code for a 10 mm cube, and plug that in FreeCAD to see the results. After that basic workflow was shown to work, [Gil] asked it to create a simple airplane shape. The resulting code had objects for wing, fuselage, and tail, but that’s about all that could be said because the result was almost — but not quite — completely unlike a plane. Not an encouraging start, but at least the basic building blocks were there. Continue reading “ChatGPT Makes A 3D Model: The Secret Ingredient? Much Patience” →