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Unfortunately, FreeCAD has a steep learning curve, with an opaque workflow for beginners. It would be awesome if the FreeCAD developers worked on usability, do

Unfortunately, FreeCAD has a steep learning curve, with an opaque workflow for beginners. It would be awesome if the FreeCAD developers worked on usability, documentation, and tutorials. I believe the popular route is Fusion. (Decidedly NOT open source)

m0zg 6y ago
> opaque workflow for beginners Here's an example: say you want to punch some holes to mount components on a chassis. Say, furthermore, that you want to mount those components at an angle. Here's what you do in Fusion: 1. Draw a sketch. 2. Rotate the component on the sketch about its center. 3. Subtractively extrude holes through the chassis. In Fusion this is trivial and natural. Believe it or not, FreeCAD does not support #2. Want to mount several components at different angles? Fuck you, you need to draw each one of them pre-slanted already.
- bambax 6y ago
  What? Maybe I don't understand the problem, but of course you can rotate elements in FreeCAD whichever way you want. Select the object, set orientation in Placement / Axis / x,y,z
  - m0zg 6y ago
    3D? Yes. 2D in a sketch? Nope. It's all parametric, everything has to be defined through constraints, and there's no way that I can see to define such a constraint.
    - bambax 6y ago
      To extrude a complex shape from 2D I usually first draw the 2D design elsewhere (Inkscape or Affinity Design) and import to FreeCAD as SVG. This works very well.
    - bchanudet 6y ago
      Easiest way I've found is: - Create a square via the CreateSquare[0] icon - Put the lines as construction line - Constrain the holes to the corners of the square. - Add an angle constraint on one side of the square as you need. It's easier than constraining your holes on a rectangle on which you have to replace the horizontal and vertical constrains afterwards. And you get to keep all those parametric variables that make changing something afterwards so easy. [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sketcher_CreateSquare https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sketcher_CreateSquare
- friendzis 6y ago
  I don't know FreeCAD specifically, but #2 SHOULD be very hard. You do not want to rotate the part, you want to draw the sketch on an already slanted plane. Your sketch (and resulting solid) should be agnostic to reference plane orientation, otherwise the whole parametric model becomes "spaghetti code"
- jononor 6y ago
  FreeCAD 0.18 (releasead March 2019) supports such constraints. There are now many "Map Modes" for a sketch besides just "map to face" (the default, and in previous versions the only one). Unfortunately there is not really much intuitive UI available to start that workflow. You have to make the sketch with some/no mapping. And then in the Property editor for "Map Mode" click ... - from that point on there is a pretty nice dialog for chosing the modes etc. In your case one can for example use use the NormalToEdge map mode, specify the degrees of Roll, and then use a Pocket operation on the sketch to make the holes at that angle.
  - jononor 6y ago
    There is also quite little documentation on these features, unfortunately. But here is an overview of some of the mapping modes. https://wiki.freecadweb.org/index.php?title=User:DeepSOIC https://wiki.freecadweb.org/index.php?title=User:DeepSOIC

m0zg 6y ago

> opaque workflow for beginners Here's an example: say you want to punch some holes to mount components on a chassis. Say, furthermore, that you want to mount those components at an angle. Here's what you do in Fusion: 1. Draw a sketch. 2. Rotate the component on the sketch about its center. 3. Subtractively extrude holes through the chassis. In Fusion this is trivial and natural. Believe it or not, FreeCAD does not support #2. Want to mount several components at different angles? Fuck you, you need to draw each one of them pre-slanted already.

bambax 6y ago
What? Maybe I don't understand the problem, but of course you can rotate elements in FreeCAD whichever way you want. Select the object, set orientation in Placement / Axis / x,y,z
- m0zg 6y ago
  3D? Yes. 2D in a sketch? Nope. It's all parametric, everything has to be defined through constraints, and there's no way that I can see to define such a constraint.
  - bambax 6y ago
    To extrude a complex shape from 2D I usually first draw the 2D design elsewhere (Inkscape or Affinity Design) and import to FreeCAD as SVG. This works very well.
  - bchanudet 6y ago
    Easiest way I've found is: - Create a square via the CreateSquare[0] icon - Put the lines as construction line - Constrain the holes to the corners of the square. - Add an angle constraint on one side of the square as you need. It's easier than constraining your holes on a rectangle on which you have to replace the horizontal and vertical constrains afterwards. And you get to keep all those parametric variables that make changing something afterwards so easy. [0] https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sketcher_CreateSquare https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Sketcher_CreateSquare
friendzis 6y ago
I don't know FreeCAD specifically, but #2 SHOULD be very hard. You do not want to rotate the part, you want to draw the sketch on an already slanted plane. Your sketch (and resulting solid) should be agnostic to reference plane orientation, otherwise the whole parametric model becomes "spaghetti code"
jononor 6y ago
FreeCAD 0.18 (releasead March 2019) supports such constraints. There are now many "Map Modes" for a sketch besides just "map to face" (the default, and in previous versions the only one). Unfortunately there is not really much intuitive UI available to start that workflow. You have to make the sketch with some/no mapping. And then in the Property editor for "Map Mode" click ... - from that point on there is a pretty nice dialog for chosing the modes etc. In your case one can for example use use the NormalToEdge map mode, specify the degrees of Roll, and then use a Pocket operation on the sketch to make the holes at that angle.
- jononor 6y ago
  There is also quite little documentation on these features, unfortunately. But here is an overview of some of the mapping modes. https://wiki.freecadweb.org/index.php?title=User:DeepSOIC https://wiki.freecadweb.org/index.php?title=User:DeepSOIC