Who is FreeCAD for?

Have some feature requests, feedback, cool stuff to share, or want to know where FreeCAD is going? This is the place.
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Bernhard
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Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by Bernhard »

Hello together, i teach CAD in Germany and suggest an additional answer to the Question from the Frontpage:

The teacher. You will teach your students a free software for their whole life. They don't need to purchase it after leaving school.
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bejant
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by bejant »

Greetings Bernhard, and welcome!

You're right, students and teachers both could benefit from the use of FreeCAD. I read your post in the German forum, and I think it would be great if middle school children learned CAD, particularly FreeCAD.

With 3D printing becoming more and more affordable middle school children could create models in CAD and print them too. Along the way they'd get introduced to keyboarding, CAD, slicing software, rapid prototyping, maybe a little coding too.

When I first started using Creo and later FreeCAD, I looked in mechanical drawing textbooks and tried to create models of some of the drawings. I'm in the United States so the ones I used are dimensioned in feet and inches, but there are textbooks by K.L. Narayana (one is titled "Machine Drawing") that have illustrations with metric dimensions. I just did an internet search and a used book is not expensive. But I don't know if that would completely suit your needs.

I don't know of any good printed or .pdf texts for FreeCAD instruction, but maybe someone else here on the forum does know and can point you in the right direction.

I have a couple of tutorials on YouTube that are aimed at beginners, although they are in English and I'm just beginning to add audio to them. They're here, and they are suitable for viewers of all ages, but you'd have to decide if they'd be helpful or not. Not sure if middle school children in Bavaria are proficient in the English language...

Edit: fixed the "They're here" URL I had goofed
Last edited by bejant on Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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NormandC
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by NormandC »

Hello Bernhard,

Welcome here. This a great suggestion, I can't believe we didn't think of it when we set up the website!

I'll add it to the FreeCAD-homepage github repo and ask Yorik to update the website :)
keithsloan52
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by keithsloan52 »

bejant wrote: I don't know of any good printed or .pdf texts for FreeCAD instruction, but maybe someone else here on the forum does know and can point you in the right direction.
Don't know what it is like but there is a printed book http://www.amazon.co.uk/FreeCAD-How-Dan ... 1849518866
It has mixed reviews and overall 3 star review.

Probably way out of date if one is using 0.14.
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bejant
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by bejant »

Sorry, I forgot all about that book. It's the only one I know of though.
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Bernhard
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by Bernhard »

Thank you all!

Video-Tutorials for my audience should be in german. They are fully challenged in beeing new to CAD. Maybe i will produce some. At first i will have to get some experience. Tutorials from Beginners often lack in quality.
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Bernhard
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by Bernhard »

*push*
:)
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sgrogan
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by sgrogan »

Welcome Bernhard

You may be interested in this link
http://sliptonic.com/cad-is-hard/
"fight the good fight"
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NormandC
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by NormandC »

Oops, we did forget about this. :oops:
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Bernhard
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Re: Who is FreeCAD for?

Post by Bernhard »

Absolutely no problem. :) Thank you for your work!
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