[RFC] Rocketry Workbench

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roguex
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by roguex »

Groovalicious. I just lit up his Twitter notifications...

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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

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roguex
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by roguex »

I read that last night. I am going to let the kids, (both under-grads and grad students), at PSAS know about FreeCAD and this workbench and hopefully entice one or two to jump on in ad assist in these endeavors.

I have FreeCAD .19 installed on both a Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 boxes. Rocket Workbench is install on both as well. So, I guess I will start my Level 3 certification rocketry project using FreeCAD and the Rocket Workbench. Time to start finding the bugs!!!

I have been developing a SolidWorks addin called RocketWorks™ and RocketWorksHPR™. RocketWorks™ is a basic addin using OpenRocket for optimization and RocketWorksHPR™ is RocketWorks™ on steroids using Jupyter/MATLAB to assist with design and optimization.

I have been following OpenRocket's development for quite some time now. I use my own build with IntelliJ IDEA Community. Java JDK 11 & 13. If anyone would like a copy of the .jar file for OpenRocket v20-11-alpha-16, let me know and I will send you the link to the file in my OneDrive account. I use the 11 as the default JDK.


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grandcross
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by grandcross »

I would love to get more developers on board!

We should probably talk offline and divide tasks so that we're not working at cross purposes. I have a lot of as yet uncommitted code in multiple branches. Send me a DM here, or on twitter and we can sync up :D
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roguex
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by roguex »

Dave,

I DM'd you thru Twitter. FYI...

JP
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grandcross
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by grandcross »

Twitter had you hidden from me for reasons only Twitter knows. Should be golden now.
concretedog
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by concretedog »

roguex wrote: Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:30 pm I read that last night. I am going to let the kids, (both under-grads and grad students), at PSAS know about FreeCAD and this workbench and hopefully entice one or two to jump on in ad assist in these endeavors.

I have FreeCAD .19 installed on both a Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 boxes. Rocket Workbench is install on both as well. So, I guess I will start my Level 3 certification rocketry project using FreeCAD and the Rocket Workbench. Time to start finding the bugs!!!

I have been developing a SolidWorks addin called RocketWorks™ and RocketWorksHPR™. RocketWorks™ is a basic addin using OpenRocket for optimization and RocketWorksHPR™ is RocketWorks™ on steroids using Jupyter/MATLAB to assist with design and optimization.

I have been following OpenRocket's development for quite some time now. I use my own build with IntelliJ IDEA Community. Java JDK 11 & 13. If anyone would like a copy of the .jar file for OpenRocket v20-11-alpha-16, let me know and I will send you the link to the file in my OneDrive account. I use the 11 as the default JDK.


JP
Hey! Excellent stuff, be great to see if some of the PSAS people get involved or use the workbench. I'm tinkering with models for a L2 rocket on my FreeCAD rocket wb! I'll L3 one day.. although thats hard here in the UK as we run out of range quickly! I'd be really interested to hear what you have done on your personal development of OpenRocket? I'm also on twitter @concreted0g, not sure if I follow you!
altertalk
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by altertalk »

Hi,

As a novice user of FreeCAD for 3D printing, and a rocket scientist for NASA, I am very interested in this workbench. I recently purchased a FoxAlien LE4040 for laser cutting fins from balsa wood, but quite frankly, am lost as to how to get the gcode I need to provide to the GRBL software that runs the cutter. Will the workbench generate the gcode or is that something I have to go learn with the "path" workbench? I have the designs of the fins I need to cut, to rebuild a Comanche-3 and other rockets I have lost or have damage. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
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grandcross
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by grandcross »

altertalk wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 2:28 am Hi,

As a novice user of FreeCAD for 3D printing, and a rocket scientist for NASA, I am very interested in this workbench. I recently purchased a FoxAlien LE4040 for laser cutting fins from balsa wood, but quite frankly, am lost as to how to get the gcode I need to provide to the GRBL software that runs the cutter. Will the workbench generate the gcode or is that something I have to go learn with the "path" workbench? I have the designs of the fins I need to cut, to rebuild a Comanche-3 and other rockets I have lost or have damage. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
You have a few options. All involve designing the fins and then exporting through other means. I'll be honest and say I'm not perfectly clear on an export process for a laser cutter. Despite having one myself I haven't tried it yet.

Option 1 would be the path workbench, but that may not be the best approach. If you were using a CNC I'd recommend looking into this but depending on what cutting software you use G-Code may not be the best input. I know you're using GRBL so I could be wrong. If G-Code is what you need then look more into this.

I use the k40_whisperer software with my laser cutter. For that, an SVG is a better input. Again, I haven't worked through that process yet. There's a lot of guidance out there on how to do that. The simple approach would be to try exporting as an SVG, but I'm not entirely sure if there are other steps you need to do before or after. That would be option 2.

I guess I would recommend seeing what inputs your software accepts and work backwards from there. There are a lot of videos and blogs out there about exporting in various formats and I'm sure you can find what you need.

Hope this helps.
chrisb
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Re: [RFC] Rocketry Workbench

Post by chrisb »

grbl is a gcode controller. Thus you should look at the Path workbench with its already existing grbl postprocessor.
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