Std files not well oriented

[Andreas L]

Hello,

I'm new to FreeCAD, it's my first post here .
I am making a open source heavy quadricycle based on the OpenMotors Tabby Evo platform (https://www.openmotors.co/product/tabbyevo/) which provides all the std in Creative Commons.

Initially, there is one big (100~200Mb) std files and french students did a great job by creating one std file per piece :
https://github.com/BootCampOSV/bcosv/tr ... VO/2_seats

That's really great, but I want to print some technical drawings of those pieces and they all seems to have a mixed orientation (as the original std file BTW). Front is Top with a 90° rotate angle as you can see here :

Capture d’écran de 2021-06-01 14-56-31.png (10.4 KiB) Viewed 1294 times

.

Here is a link to the file : https://github.com/BootCampOSV/bcosv/bl ... 34_ASM.stp

I tried to use the rotate tool, but it seems to be a bit difficult to properly do the rotation around the center, and I need to do it for all the pieces !
Is there a way to reset or redefine piece orientation ?

I'm a software developer, so scripting is OK for me, can I create a script to do that on all the std files ? Will it be possible to do that inside FreeCAD or will I need to create a shell script or equivalent ?

I have other questions regarding all those std files : since they are a copied parts of an original file, is it a good idea to center each part in 0, 0, 0 ?
Is this common practice to have multiple files for each parts or people tends to have just one big std ?

Thank in advance for your help,
Andréas

[heda]

hi,

welcome to the forum, seems like you got yourself a longtime hobby with ev's, so all the best with that.

anyhow, it is not fully clear to me at least with what you mean with "rotate around centre".
regardless of that, any feature/solid in fc has a Placement, and that is what decides location and orientation.

hopefully this will take you where you want to go.
placement is in the dataview of a feature/body, to get to the dialogue in the picture below, mark in treeview and menu edit/placement.
then it is just to explore that dialogue.

place.png (62.53 KiB) Viewed 1270 times

[thomas-neemann]

very cool project.

I would try to record macros and use them to automate recurring situations

Greetings Thomas

[Andreas L]

Thanks for your replies,

@heda : the Placement tool with the "Use center of mass" checkbox was what I was looking for .
@thomas-neemann : will try to do that if needed.

Regarding our project, I still don't know which is the best approach ? Having multiple std files and link them into a file that will "assemble" all, or having a "big" std and manage pieces visibility and hierarchy ?

At first, we wanted to use the tabby evo platform, but it doesn't fit all our needs, so we may start from scratch or from another open design.
This one is also really interesting : https://www.instructables.com/Electric- ... platform-/

Do you know about other EV platform open design ?

Greetings,
Andréas

[thomas-neemann]

Do you know about other EV platform open design ?

hallo andreas

if it doesn't necessarily have to be 4 wheels, this could fit:

Bildschirmfoto_2021-06-02_21-22-07.png (533.75 KiB) Viewed 1190 times

https://newatlas.com/krysztopik-ez-ev-o ... kit/25891/

[Andreas L]

@thomas : I know about this one .
Unfortunately, it doesn't fit our need, since we want a 4 seats vehicles with maximum of places to be able to use it as a "van" if needed (by removing the seats).

I found this one which is really interesting : https://www.instructables.com/Electric- ... platform-/

I you have something similar to share, I'm very interested.

Andreas

[thomas-neemann]

could that fit?

Bildschirmfoto_2021-06-03_08-38-46.png (172.67 KiB) Viewed 1108 times

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/2010 ... 17547.html

[Andreas L]

Sorry for the late answer.

It could have been great, but I can't find any information about where to find the schematics.
And this type of chassis is more suited for industrial process. What we want to achieve is to create the vehicle in a "simple" workshop, with standard tools and pieces.

For our prototype, we decided to start with a Renault 4L chassis which is has "platform" shape and offer a lot of possibilities. It's also really basic, reparable and fit the vehicle requirement in term of dimensions and weight.



We will create the upper part of the chassis and certainly design it with FreeCAD, so I might ask a lot of questions here .

[papyblaise]

the idea of using a Renault 4 chassis is good to take advantage of torsion bar suspensions, but the technology is old
you should have chosen a more modern one for example Peugeot 104 or 205 , Citroen saxo or Talbot Samba which are more modern with anti-roll bar and front disc brake , 4 bolts whels(there is even more recent)
there would be to reinforce the frame by a tubular upper structure easy to achieve with 3 or 4 basic tools

[Shalmeneser]

If you want to use TechDraw, the drawing use the orientation of the object at the time you select this drawing.
You turn your object (just visualization, not placement) to suit your choice of the future drawing.

No need to modify the object, just its visualization. What you see is what you get !
Use the orientation cube (upper right of the screen).