Recently one of the magnet holders for my window shutters broke, and I thought I'd take a crack at designing a replacement to 3D Print. I'd never designed anything in CAD software before, so I had no real reference.<p>I found FreeCAD extremely easy to use and intuitive. I watched a couple videos and followed-along with the tutorials, then started on my own item. It's a relatively simple 3-part component. I took measurements with digital calipers, and in a few hours was printing the first prototype.<p>A couple prototypes later (small measurement adjustments to account for plastic shrinkage, etc), I had the final model. Replaced all of the magnet holders since they were sure to go soon, too.<p>I had fun, and finally used my 3D printer for something "real". Pretty cool.
I post this in every FreeCAD thread: If you're going to start designing something with it, use the spreadsheet tool to make everything parametric. You'll save yourself a ton of time as your designs get more complicated.<p>Maybe this isn't anything new to experience CAD users. I don't know if other CAD tools do this as I started using FreeCAD after playing with 3D printing.
It's very common (Fusion calls it User Parameters, etc.) and indeed nice practice. FreeCAD has a few ways to do it, Spreadsheets but also free-form properties on objects. It's very flexible in this regard.
The Fusion implementation sucks. A spreadsheet is a far more natural way to do this, Im surprised FreeCad is doing it better than the paid variant.
The only issue I have with the Spreadsheet is that I need to add an alias for every value I want to use in the Sketch or Part Design workbench. In practice, this usually looks like<p><pre><code> A B
width 2mm
length 3mm
</code></pre>
and for every cell in B I add an alias with the same value as in column A. Is there a way around that?
<a href="https://wiki.freecad.org/Macro_EasyAlias" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.freecad.org/Macro_EasyAlias</a><p>EasyAlias macro maybe?
Hmmm - I seem to recall there was at least 1-2 scripts or macros available to help with aliasing.
The Fusion implementation is awful - you can adjust one variable, one time, then you have to reopen the dialog to do another. At least for me it's always become non-responsive after a single edit, for years now. I've always assumed I'm just holding it wrong, but I don't know. I've moved on.
Super flexible. I love being able to use Python to manipulate spreadsheet data.
You can also use VarSet[0], which I think is easier than spreadsheet since you don't have to switch the workbench.<p>[0]: <a href="https://wiki.freecad.org/Std_VarSet" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.freecad.org/Std_VarSet</a>
Some CAD systems, i think NX for example, let you give it a reference to an actual Excel (or csv?) file, that you edit in Excel.
Other cad tools do support this but in my experience it's always pretty awkward to use. I haven't tried the FreeCAD implementation.
Slightly unrelated to this story, but I’m curious if anyone has good resources for learning FreeCAD. I have quite a lot of experience with SolidWorks, AutoCAD, OnShape, and similar software, but FreeCAD has always been hard for me to pick up.
I often recommend <a href="https://youtube.com/@deltahedra3d" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/@deltahedra3d</a> - some good tutorial videos and other excellent FreeCAD content.
MangoJelly on YouTube was my primary learning source, and a few other channels - but his "gelled" with me the best.
Oh wow - over on Reddit, someone mentioned that the Deltahedra YouTuber has started using his own voice, rather than a generated one - and - well, his content is now far more watchable than it was previously!
YouTube was very effective for me to learn FreeCAD. I just searched for some FreeCAD tutorials and followed-along. I had zero prior CAD experience though, so I was a "blank slate" in a way.
Highlights reel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9biWv_M8p8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9biWv_M8p8</a><p>Release Notes: <a href="https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.freecad.org/Release_notes_1.1</a>
To add to this. MangoJelly offers very good tutorials, as well as a full course on Udemy. He released a 4 minute overview: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSwvnZ1jsXg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSwvnZ1jsXg</a><p>DeltaHedra, another great YouTube channel, also released a good video that shows the previous and this version next to each other: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYdobpjTypg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYdobpjTypg</a>
Thumbs up for both of them, but I must say that DeltaHedra has become my new favourite FreeCAD content creator. Especially after he started using his own voice. His old content was good, but his current his magnifique! The quality of the content he pushes is above and beyond.
This is awesome! Kudos to the developers, they really went above and beyond for this release.
Congrats - the release video is very impressive !
I was not expecting so many improvements in this version alone, I'm impressed. I was already using it for 3d printing but now it seems it's getting actually good, makes me wonder how I was able to use the previous version.