Moving A Sketch

[ccx004]

I am struggling to do the simplest thing in Freecad and I have to say on the point of giving up but I thought I would make one last effort.

I have watched countless videos of people doing things in Freecad but there doesn't seem to be any good training material. Is there a proper book on the subject?

Anyway, how do you move a sketch? It seems to be virtually impossible or a matter of luck. However, it would be a pretty useless cad package that didn't have such a facility. If I explain what I am doing perhaps it will make more sense.

I create a new document, create a body and create a sketch. I draw a square on the X-Y plane. I then draw a circle on the Y-Z plane and, apart from giving it a radius, I do not constrain it in anyway. In the Model view the circle is called "Sketch001". I click on it and expand "Placement" and "Position. I can see values for X, Y and Z there. They are all 0.00. This is strange for a start as I drew the circle at some random point on the Y-Z plane and certainly not at (0, 0, 0). Even though the circle's position is not constrained, I cannot change the values for X, Y or Z. This seems incredibly counter intuitive to me. I use KiCAD a lot and in that I can click on a component and move it around as much as I like but Freecad doesn't seem to allow that whether the component is constrained or not.

Any suggestions for a book or for this particular problem will be very gratefully received.

Best wishes....
Colin

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

In your case the sketches are attached on the planes, and relative to this Attachment the origin of the sketch is at (0,0,0). If you want to move the origin of the sketch, move its Attachment Offset - or attach it to something else.

There are more bad than good videos out there, and even more are very bad. Have a look at e.g. drmacro's tutorials which you find in his signature.

[thomas-neemann]

hallo colin


is that useful for you? (also works with older versions)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HVsQ_jq6CU

phpBB [video]

Greetings Thomas


OS: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (XFCE/xubuntu)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.25997 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: 77b198048a63f1e9ca15eef64c8042d599a14cf3
Python version: 3.9.7
Qt version: 5.12.9
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.2
Locale: German/Germany (de_DE)

[ccx004]

Hi Thomas and Chrisb,

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at the link you sent tonight and also have a search for the drmarco's tutorials. I agree about the quality of a lot of stuff on Youtube. Sometimes they look more like people showing off than trying to explain what they are doing. Still, they can do it and I can't so perhaps that's why they annoy me.

Best wishes....
Colin

[drmacro]

Hi Thomas and Chrisb,

Thanks for the replies. I'll have a look at the link you sent tonight and also have a search for the drmarco's tutorials. I agree about the quality of a lot of stuff on Youtube. Sometimes they look more like people showing off than trying to explain what they are doing. Still, they can do it and I can't so perhaps that's why they annoy me.

Best wishes....
Colin

See the link in my signature below.

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[ccx004]

Hi Drmacro,

Thanks for the Freecad guides. I'll have a look at these tomorrow.

Best wishes....
Colin