week one of learning parametric CAD

[Cekuhnen]

Rek

I teach SketchUp in my interior Design course and Fusion360 / Blender in my industrial Design course.

As a professional also working in the field I have to say this:

SketchUp is overrated - yea it is very easy to learn because it is also very primitive and basic units abilities.

FreeCAD on the other side offers a drastically more extensive tool set and that makes it automatically more labor intensive to learn.


Knowledge form SketchUp is not so easy to be transferred to freecad to be honest.

In my furniere design course students after two weeks ask me why SketchUp does not have the modeling abilities of Fusion - they had me in architecture interior modeling with SketchUp before.

I do agree that freecad is a tick harder to learn because of its philosophy naming convention and general approach. To be Fusion360 is a good example to show a consistent workflow that is easy to grasp as a designer.

But in the end with practice and patience you will see the logic in freecad amd how it wants you to model. The wiki is extremely important to study carefully.

[batt]

Good day

Have been using a well-known cad software for many years ... I was the third person to purchase a pc base 3d cad sys in Australia , so been going a long time ... just finishing a motor engine design for a prototype with 385 parts.

Anyway, I am finishing up work at Christmas time and am 82 years old ... so I thought I have a go at a cad sys that let you do the animations by code.
Well ... I must say Freecad is not easy ... by the way my first cad sys hardly had much of in the way of help files but I taught myself.

Take this morning, wanted to make the whole solid one colour ... found where to change the face colour but not the whole solid ... put up a video on youtube but the menu was different as it was made in 2017 and I have loaded the latest version ... ended up finding it under view ? not by right-clicking on the part name in the menu as you can only change a face colour there ( I do not understand the philosophy of face colours )
This whole process to change the colour was probably 30 to 40 minute exercise.

I have just uninstalled Freecad and reloaded it because when I first imported a cad my sys to Freecad I was able to rotate the model with my mouse ... do not know what I did but I could rotate for some reason ... but some how I must have done something ... anyway after reloading Freecad I still cannot do it ... ??? ... help file not much help with this.

Well, I will battle on ... by the way if you type in the help file colour ... colour change ... part colour ... the answers or references you get back are pretty hopeless.

Batt

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Take this morning, wanted to make the whole solid one colour

You can change the color in the View properties: Switch at the lower left to the "View" tab and edit the ShapeColor.

I have just uninstalled Freecad and reloaded

To reset everything you don't have to remove the program. You can try to reset the configuration with the button in the preferences. or to reset everything delete your config files or move them in case you want to restore them.

[Syres]

when I first imported a cad my sys to Freecad I was able to rotate the model with my mouse ... do not know what I did but I could rotate for some reason ... but some how I must have done something ... anyway after reloading Freecad I still cannot do it ... ??? ... help file not much help with this.

You've most likely just caught the pop up menu and accidentally changed the mouse navigation selection shown in the red ellipse below:

MouseNav.jpg (178.91 KiB) Viewed 2086 times

OS: Windows 7 Version 6.1 (Build 7601: SP 1)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.25645 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: 37d9757399b4c2ec30318eb88d7cd7c508246345
Python version: 3.8.6+
Qt version: 5.15.2
Coin version: 4.0.1
OCC version: 7.5.0
Locale: English/United Kingdom (en_GB)

[batt]

Thank you for your replies

Wrote a previous email but the post disappeared when I tried to do an attachment ???

Batt

[batt]

Good day

I find it a bit strange in trying to understand parts and body ... have been drafting for 65 years started out with pencil on paper...then ink on plastic ... and now computers.

A part in my world for 65 years was only a compleated single entity ... several parts made up a part assy or assy ... or many part assy made up an assy.

So I really have a hard time understanding what is meant by a part is a container they hold bodies ...

Got me

Have read a fair bit of the documentation but I still do not understand the philosophy ???

Not getting there very quickly !!!

batt

[batt]

Good day

found a post that explains part and body

Re: Difference between Part and Body in Part Design WB?

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Postby bejant » Wed Sep 26, 2018 11:09 pm

Well, that is a revelation ... so different from the real world of design and drafting as in the use of the word part ...
I have been using to using entities ... wire frames-2d sketchs ... extrusion ... booleen to create a part.
So Freecad uses so-called parts to make a body ??? Well, you could knock me over with that one.
Not trying to be critical. but trying to understand the thinking behind it all.

I suppose I will have to get used to the terminology.

batt

[batt]

Good day

Just started reading the documentation about std part ... I think I will leave that till tomorrow after roughly reading it ...

Need a clear head for that.

batt

[M4x]

Wrote a previous email but the post disappeared when I tried to do an attachment ???

If you've tried to attach something by draging it.into the browser window, watch out for the changed mouse pointer! Or use the buttons for the attachement dialog and navigate through your files from there. (I'm always a bit scary to accidentally delete my posting if I'm draging the attachement files into the browser window )

Regarding the body part it seems lime you're a bit of track / more confused than you should be. Maybe you should strictly follow the basic PartDesign tutorials and if you like the basic Part tutorials here and ask in the forum if somethings not clear / not working.

[batt]

Good day
Not use to freecads usage of terminology.
batt