Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

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Fran_iii
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Joined: Fri May 28, 2021 12:54 pm

Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by Fran_iii »

Part or Part Design or What?
Thanks.
PS I see that "Part Design" is basically for designing "solids" while "Part" is more general purpose... And, maybe there is another "Workbench" specifically for sheet metal... so I thought I would ask.
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M4x
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by M4x »

Care to read the wiki or thebig red banner at the top or what?

SheetMetal_Workbench
Fran_iii
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by Fran_iii »

M4x,

Regarding the comment "Care to read the wiki or the big red banner at the top or what?"

I read the banner days ago. I've read the wiki on the Part, Part Design, & Draft Workbenches. I've watched videos until my eyes are rolling back in my head. If I read the entire wiki and looked at all the online videos and read all the former posts and responses, I would never get to the starting line.

Let me sum it up for you this way:

Virtually all the answers to everything are already somewhere on the internet.
So why do we even need forums any more?

Here's the answer:
- Having worked in engineering groups for years, I've observed some very smart engineers who, after receiving a new product development project with some new (to them) requirements, will sit in their offices for days and days, researching and informing themselves about the new (to them) subject.

- And while this may sometimes be necessary, often times all they had to do was walk down the hall to the guy in the next office or out into the lab, and ask if any of them had any experience with the requirement...and have a conversation about it.

- Results to the former...project gets off to a late start and gets further behind and over budget, as the project engineer insists on ignoring available resources and taking the time to dig out all the answers on his own.

- Results to the latter...project engineer gets up to speed faster and is simultaneously building a resource network.

- The former results when the project engineer doesn't want to let his co-workers know that his assignment includes a requirement for which he is currently clueless, and therefore he fails to use the available resources to expedite his coming up to speed.

In my view, forums are a conversation platform for people with similar interests to share their experiences and be helpful.

Rarely, if ever, on a forum or in a real life product development group should the answer to a request for help be "Read the Book."

Rant done.

That aside, thanks for saving me a little time and providing the name and link for the Sheet Metal Workbench.
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papyblaise
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by papyblaise »

That aside, thanks for saving me a little time and providing the name and link for the Sheet Metal Workbench.
it would have been so easy to just say that
when you will have read it, a member of the forum will know, I do not doubt, answer you
drmacro
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by drmacro »

Fran_iii wrote: Tue Oct 19, 2021 1:47 pm M4x,

Regarding the comment "Care to read the wiki or the big red banner at the top or what?"
...
I, of course, may be wrong. But, I don't think that was meant to be a RTFM comment.

The Banner link suggests that the asker provide information about their system and version by going to Help>About, clicking on the Copy to clipboard button. And then pasting the contents of the clipboard in their post.

Why? Because that information will help the people who offer their assistance, free of charge and on their own time, to help you more effectively.

The FreeCAD version could possibly determine if you can even install the Sheetmetal workbench. It may indicate with your OS and hardware another version of FreeCAD may provide a better experience for you.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
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M4x
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by M4x »

That shouldn't be a plain RTFM ;)

Your initial post was very brief, lacking the basic things we're asking for around here (big red banner at the top). I figured, if you haven't payed attention to the big red banner and didn't figure out that there's a sheetmetal workbench, you couldn't have been checking out the forum or the wiki. = "I'll just ask and the nice payed people around here are going to tell me anything I need to know". Yes, there're a lot of nice people around here and you can find top notch CAD-skills around here. But we're expecting some initiative (= at least paying attention to the big red banner at the top and explaining where they're at the moment. I've used the forum search and checked the wiki but couldn't find anything can be valid!).

I don't expect you to read through all the complete forum and the complete wiki (as your project engineer would've done I guess). Nevertheless, I expect you to have a look at least. Some things are hard to find - I'm happy to help with that. Getting a basic idea of sheetmetal within FreeCAD isn't one of those things.

This is how it looks if you're putting "sheetmetal" in the forum search:
Forum
Forum
Screenshot from 2021-10-19 20-49-38.png (163.2 KiB) Viewed 803 times



And this is the result of the wikis search:
Wiki
Wiki
Screenshot from 2021-10-19 20-50-19.png (137.13 KiB) Viewed 803 times
Fran_iii
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by Fran_iii »

Once again, I sincerely appreciate the help provided.
I'm a long time user of internet forums and newsgroups and email list so I generally, but not always, do my due diligence before posting... unless I'm under a deadline, bone tired, or just plain frustrated.
And, finally, thank you for letting me vent on one of my pet peeves.
Thanks.
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M4x
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by M4x »

Okay, I guess we had some kind of misunderstanding than. Sorry if I made this harder than it should've been :)
Fran_iii
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Re: Best Workbench for Sheet Metal Design?

Post by Fran_iii »

M4x, We are good. Thank you for spending time helping others, including me, as we struggle to master this great piece of software.
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