FreeCad suitable for Free Form design?

[S.V. Honorio]

Hello all. I am a PhD student starting research on merging parametric and free form design into a unified experience.
I want to build a sandbox for my experiments and prepare a plugin with my results. Do you thing FreeCAD is a good foundation for such integration? Will it be comfortable to code in?

Thank you all

[openBrain]

IMO, basic FC isn't really handy for free form design. But there is somewhere in the forum a thread about Inkscape integration, which could be a nice combo to mix parametric & free form.

[chrisb]

FreeCAD can very well occupy the parametric part of your plans. This includes with external workbenches like "Curves" possibilities to create objects which look like free forms. As your wish is to combine both worlds, I can well imagine something which allows to define free forms and translate them into parametric design. Similar to vectorizing an image.

[S.V. Honorio]

Thank you both. I have been diving into the guts of the software and am still trying to modify the interface. Ill get back with results.

[yorik]

In theory, a free form is parametric too, so there is no reason why FreeCAD couldn't be used for it.
However, when we think free-form, we often think organic forms, like copying the shape of natural objects with great detail.
For this, meshes are more suitable. points, triangles, and that is all. With such a simple structure, you can easily have millions of points.
FreeCAD can work with meshes (and also display millions of triangles). But it's not its focus. Other apps, such as Blender, have much more and better tools to work with meshes, included advanced things like sculpting. I would definitely go that way for free-form modeling...
And further there are many, many possibilities to bind Blender and FreeCAD, and create bridges between a free-form mesh model and a full parametric FreeCAD model...

[carlopav]

have also a look at this: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36299

[epicflunkie]

Parametric is a fuzzy word that doesn't always mean the same thing in every context.

Usually when people reference parametric design as opposed to freeform design, they're referring to a strictly history-based solid modeler with editable features and rich user expressions versus a NURBS or subD surface modeler that does not remember or respect the model's history but is also less restrictive for hammering out aesthetic geometries quickly. (And then you have semi-parametric, which preserves feature parameters such as arrays and distances between objects, but little else.)

The former would be something like FreeCAD itself, or SolidWorks, Inventor, and so on. The latter essentially boils down to Rhino and Alias (and I guess Mol as well, but it's super basic). And AutoCAD can reasonably be called semi-parametric, though Rhino is headed in that direction too.

Siemens NX does have a history-free mode, as well as a convergent modeling system based on subD. To my knowledge, it's the only package that bridges the gap on its own. But NX is big and clunky, and takes a long time to master. Solidworks can directly import Rhino, so you can have something of a convergent workflow there, and at a much lower cost than NX, but your ability to move back and forth is limited.

In theory, there's no reason FreeCAD couldn't have a freeform workbench in the same style as Rhino or Alias. OpenCASCADE has everything required to represent such models. But, effort would need to be invested in the tools needed to actually build them. FreeCAD is a bit rigid and not very sculpty, so I can't imagine it would be very quick to implement.

[vocx]

Hello all. I am a PhD student starting research on merging parametric and free form design into a unified experience.
I want to build a sandbox for my experiments and prepare a plugin with my results. Do you thing FreeCAD is a good foundation for such integration? Will it be comfortable to code in?

Thank you all

See these threads
* Can I move vertices, edges, or faces similar to polygonal modeling?
* Freeform surface manipulation through interactive movement of nodes

[microelly2]

There are a lot of opportunities to model freeform objects
have a look at the shoelast thread
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=20525

[S.V. Honorio]

Thank you for your answers! Im currently working on the FreeCad Gui.