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I'm using FreeCad for simple 3d-printing, and it mostly works, has all the features I need, but you have to struggle with everything. The dependencies between
by ajuc 6y ago
I'm using FreeCad for simple 3d-printing, and it mostly works, has all the features I need, but you have to struggle with everything.
The dependencies between sketches break when you change anything earlier in the chain (like drawing a circle for a hole in a wall that was 6 polygons and now that wall is 8 polygons and the circle jumps to another corner or somewhere) because automatic naming of stuff isn't consistent.
You can work around this by always using datum planes as the basis for each sketch but it's very inconvenient and makes editing sketches hard because datum planes occlude other stuff on the sketch. There's a display mode that renders only lines, but the planes remain semi-transparent and mess with selecting points behind them.
Parametric modeling is possible but it also breaks very easily if you edit anything up the chain because of the above problems, to the point it's almost useless.
You also can't export to anything used by 3d printers other than .stl, and the tesselation configuration is weird (you have to change configuration of minimal angle between faces generated from round surfaces in totally unrelated configuration tab - it took me a long time to find it).
I haven't tested 90% of the features, including the motion joints.
Also it crashes sometimes (like once a day) - you have to save often.
But it's free and it mostly works and I didn't had to deal with the licencing and registration, and it runs locally and I can use git for backups, so that's good.
- dekhn 6y agoI also noticed that sketches can be messed up if you make changes earlier in the chain. BUT: if you get in that state, you can use the 'Map to Sketch' feature to repair it. It's a bit clumsy- even after mapping, you have to click on the sketch, and the object made from it, to get it to recalculate. But this has saved me a fair amount of rework when fixing something earlier in the chain. Also, when you're working on a sketch you can go back to the object tree and use SPACE to disappear objects temporarily if you are having trouble selecting. I don't know what you mean by tesselation configuration- ah, well that explains why I had undersized holes (I print a lot of parts with shaft holes, or holes for bearings). v0.19 is a lot more stable than any previous version I've used- I still have a crash a day too.
- ajuc 6y ago> you can use the 'Map to Sketch' feature to repair it Thanks, I'll try it. It still kinda defeats the purpose of parametric modelling when you have to do additional steps after you changed the parameters :) > I don't know what you mean by tesselation configuration CAD can represent continuous curves, .stl format only has flat polygons (triangles?), so they need to tesselate the curves somehow when exporting. The defaults are such that on a pot for a plant I've printed you can see the "faces" of the cylinder - like on these pipes in Super Mario https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4BUAAOSwj69ZdDw8/s-l400.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4BUAAOSwj69ZdDw8/s-l400.jpg To fix that I had to increase details, and to do that I had to select completely different task and go to configuration of some other (non-stl) format and change maximal angle error or sth like that. I don't remember but I remember it was far from obvious.
- dekhn 6y agoThanks, that's very helpful.