mobile power supply

[Solarman]

Hello.

although not entirely modeled in FreeCAD, i'm very impressed of FreeCAD and especially Assembly 3. The model is in full detail (including internal wiring of the solar cell's, etc.) and was giving a headache on Solidworks (same hardware: MacBook Pro 15 retina 2014 - GT750M, 16GB). FreeCAD got a laggy UI (better with RealThunders latest release) but i wanted to know the limits and left all parts visible. no frozen assemblies, etc. I will play a little with the eGPU (Razor Core II with Vega 64) and OpenGL frame buffer to see how performance will improve.

ES5G-YwZ.png (824.48 KiB) Viewed 3391 times

old rendering in Modo3D (replaced with Blender 2.83)

Ij7AsKrv.png (928.45 KiB) Viewed 3391 times

The model is a mobile 24/7 solar tracking power supply for mining, military, rescue, etc. it has the footprint of a standard 6m shipping container and a truck-interface for transportation. solar panels are standard laminates with active and passive cell-cooling (the system is designed for hot areas, deserts, etc.).

FreeCAD crashed twice during saving. no data was lost. I'd like to animate the constraints of the wing-mechanism to show the "unfolding" sequence. Is that already possible in assembly 3?

Cheers

[jmaustpc]

Hi and welcome to FreeCAD.

I edited your post and added you images directly since the links were not displaying properly. If you are not happy with that then you can now edit your post and remove them if you want? If you do want to remove the images and can't work out how, then let me know and I will fix it for you.

i'm very impressed of FreeCAD

and was giving a headache on Solidworks

I am childish enough to really enjoy reading that!

Your work looks good.

I keep thinking that one day I will install a large solar array and batteries, then either go totally off grid or at least be independent and produce more power to the grid that I use. I live in the Australian outback, so we typically get heaps of sun. Although over the months of the recent 2019-2020 bush fires, the smoke was so thick most days that my neighbour's solar output was considerably reduced. Some days the smoke was much thicker and darker than the heaviest overcast day and also low like fog. One day we got a dust storm at the same time as the smoke so it go so dark and red that I could not see my neighbour's house only 400 metres away since visibility that day got down to about 200 metres, all the cars on the highway slowed down and turned on their lights in the middle of the day. I spent most of that day inside my house (with my lights turned on so I could see my keyboard properly, that is how dark it was) and had to wear a mask when I went out to feed my cows. But solar panels are certainly the most reliable power source and even during the fires my neighbour's system still produced some power. Of course if you really need to, you can always fall back on a diesel generator for a few hours every 3 years or so, during the very rare times that your batteries could not cover you.

Jim

[Solarman]

...thanks for editing, jmaustpc. I couldn't figure out how to upload directly.

I have to say that it was easier to rebuild the assembly (once gotten used to the constraint solver) than to load the existing assembly with a new release of solidworks. As well i tried different other cad apps like Siemens NX, etc. even worse. Those commercial apps are sort of "sabotaged" (LOL) by their own developers to keep all others out. After 1 year with onshape i started to miss SW and decided to try with FreeCAD once more. The performance of FreeCAD is impressive. No Quadro-mafia required and now i can construct the system-& product - configurators and simulators directly within FreeCAD. Good bye Dassault.

I'm currently working on a compact and modular modular scalable version (1 - 6 solar panels) to build smart grids on high voltage DC network. The energy flow is logged permanently and bi directional and thus, battery capacity is optimized for all nodes. No diesel required. That might just be perfect for you

Thx again

Al

[Kunda1]

@Solarman this is really impressive! Do you mind adding your About info to the OP as well ?

FYI, (off topic) check out Creating a new workbench for photovoltaic. If you feel compelled to discuss this, please do so in that thread. Cheers!

[Solarman]

@Kunda1: thx - i'll add that info.

i've checked the thread but couldn't access the GitHub page. I think i have exactly what is required there and i'll post later on. a link between the spreadsheet wb and libreoffice calc would be great to start porting the simulation models.

[jmaustpc]

a link between the spreadsheet wb and libreoffice calc would be great to start porting the simulation models.

I am not sure if by that statement you mean you think it can't be done or not, but it can in a few ways. Start a Help forum topic if you want to discuss it further, but there are two different ways that you can connect them with software and the third option is that you can save as "csv" format and then FreeCAD can open that csv file in Spreadsheet wb.

[Kunda1]

a link between the spreadsheet wb and libreoffice calc would be great to start porting the simulation models.

I am not sure if by that statement you mean you think it can't be done or not, but it can in a few ways. Start a Help forum topic if you want to discuss it further, but there are two different ways that you can connect them with software and the third option is that you can save as "csv" format and then FreeCAD can open that csv file in Spreadsheet wb.

Not to hijack the thread but here is a relevant thread integrating LO and FC via python
How much interest is there to integrate LibreOffice into FreeCAD?
Any now back to the current thread

[Solarman]

thx for the input. i believe i saw a clip on youtube using libreoffice to control FreeCAD but i couldn't find it again. i'll check the links.

while playing around with the assembly, i learned how to simplify certain constraints. i remember that it took more than one day with SW to build the main assembly. The main problem always were those crappy constraints flipping and switching unmotivated around. Nothing like that with FreeCAD.

added another screenshot for entertainment...

[Solarman]

a link between the spreadsheet wb and libreoffice calc would be great to start porting the simulation models.

I am not sure if by that statement you mean you think it can't be done or not, but it can in a few ways. Start a Help forum topic if you want to discuss it further, but there are two different ways that you can connect them with software and the third option is that you can save as "csv" format and then FreeCAD can open that csv file in Spreadsheet wb.

Not to hijack the thread but here is a relevant thread integrating LO and FC via python
How much interest is there to integrate LibreOffice into FreeCAD?
Any now back to the current thread

...this is perfect. i'll try to connect the simulation models directly to a template assembly (i developed a 2d cad to edit and visualize solar arrays years ago. now i can have that automatically modeled with the original 3d parts). pysolar for the simulation of the sun & tracking. there's not that much left open for a solar-wb...

This is a great piece of Software!!!

[Kunda1]

pysolar

IIRC yorik has deprecated pysolar in favor of ladybug tools. Again this is sort of off topic. Just wanted to let you know