Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

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Joel_graff
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Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by Joel_graff »

Hello,

I have an opportunity to present various professional engineering topics to engineers here in Illinois. I belong to the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers (ISPE), and we rgularly give boot camps / webinars / etc with presentations on various engineering topics. The idea of doing a presentation on FreeCAD struck me, as it's a great opportunity to highlight on of the relatively few open source engineering applications out there which, in my opinion, is easily competitive with commercial applications.

I'm interested in developing a presentation that focuses on open source software and engineering and highlights the things that FreeCAD does well. I can poke through the numerous forum threads, but I don't really have a strong appreciation for the disciplines to which FreeCAD is most useful.

So, are there any thoughts or good threads that might help me? I don't know, at this point, if I'll present on FreeCAD, but I'm certainly inclined to do it, if I can.

Thanks,

Joel
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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PrzemoF
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by PrzemoF »

I hope it'll help you to start:
- design of electronic devices together with KiCAD/StepUp: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=14276
- FreeCAD to real world: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=6430
- Architecture: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=21106
- other user cases: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewforum.php?f=24
- Stress calculations (@bernd, do you use FreeCAD at work?)
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easyw-fc
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by easyw-fc »

some more links

FreeCAD in space
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=22922

Guitar
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=19552

Telecom steel mast
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=22558

commercial product
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=18799

boat design
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9939

FEM: an example of what FreeCAD and Open Source can do in a quite large scale industry
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/eskom-op ... te-michael
just a few line from the presentation
In September 2016, this open source software solution was rolled out to 300+ individuals in Eskom. The initiative proved to be more cost-effective than purchasing commercial licenses. The capability expansion also exceeded the initial planning without additional costs.
Jee-Bee
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by Jee-Bee »

easyw-fc wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:03 am FEM: an example of what FreeCAD and Open Source can do in a quite large scale industry
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/eskom-op ... te-michael
just a few line from the presentation
In September 2016, this open source software solution was rolled out to 300+ individuals in Eskom. The initiative proved to be more cost-effective than purchasing commercial licenses. The capability expansion also exceeded the initial planning without additional costs.
Nice catch!!
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PrzemoF
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by PrzemoF »

Jee-Bee wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:21 am
easyw-fc wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:03 am FEM: an example of what FreeCAD and Open Source can do in a quite large scale industry
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/eskom-op ... te-michael
just a few line from the presentation
In September 2016, this open source software solution was rolled out to 300+ individuals in Eskom. The initiative proved to be more cost-effective than purchasing commercial licenses. The capability expansion also exceeded the initial planning without additional costs.
Nice catch!!
Really good! Can someone with linkedin account ask him to join our forum/provide feedback/make a wish list? A company with a large user base could be a really good quality tester.
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easyw-fc
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by easyw-fc »

PrzemoF wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2017 9:38 am Really good! Can someone with linkedin account ask him to join our forum/provide feedback/make a wish list? A company with a large user base could be a really good quality tester.
Michael is already a great FC contributor known as @makkemal ;)
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easyw-fc
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by easyw-fc »

and Open Compute Server
http://lists.opencompute.org/pipermail/ ... 00403.html
joining FreeCAD and KiCad :D
EDIT
and from the same team leader (http://splitted-desktop.com/)
http://ruggedpod.qyshare.com/?author=1
thschrader
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by thschrader »

Joel_graff wrote: Thu Jul 13, 2017 5:25 pm Hello,

I have an opportunity to present various professional engineering topics to engineers here in Illinois. ...

I'm interested in developing a presentation that focuses on open source software and engineering and highlights the things that FreeCAD does well. I can poke through the numerous forum threads, but I don't really have a strong appreciation for the disciplines to which FreeCAD is most useful.

So, are there any thoughts or good threads that might help me? I don't know, at this point, if I'll present on FreeCAD, but I'm certainly inclined to do it, if I can.

Thanks,

Joel
Hello Joel,
I am working as a structural engineer in the telecommunications-industry (steel construction of antenna-systems).
For me freecad is most useful for
1. constructing complex steel-shapes and presenting/helping the cad-technicians to find a solution
(heres a small example due to file-size-limt, no big thing...)
ballastgestellFC16.FCStd
(277.23 KiB) Downloaded 85 times
2. running FEM-calculations on complex steel-parts
And this is the part in my opinion freecad is very, very good. U have the full CAD-workflow for constructing
the parts, then switch to FEM-WB an run the calculation. The freecad-parametric allows you to change
design-options very fast. Several weeks ago I had a little diskussion with FEM-moderator bernd to develop
a FEM-presentation. Please see FEM-forum, tons of stuff.

Please see also the amazing work amritpal/chakree are doing to develop the reinforcment tools
for concrete construction.
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 0&start=70

And for architecture please have a look to the astonishing project of regis on youtube.
(super-long tutorial, but worth to look!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq7TG7nHG9o

Greetings, Thomas
(native german speaker, sorry for my english)
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Joel_graff
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by Joel_graff »

These responses have been very helpful! And it's just good to see how FreeCAD gets used in various industries. :)
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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Joel_graff
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Re: Presenting FreeCAD to industry engineers

Post by Joel_graff »

I'm reviving this thread because I am (this time for sure) giving an hour-long webinar to the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers in early June.

The working title is "Open Source Software in Engineering". I have an hour to do a presentation, and I think I'm going to have to talk about open source as a general topic to start (licensing, purpose, etc.). I want to talk about engineering-related tools including (but not limited to) FreeCAD. It would be nice to highlight tools that are strong, viable alternatives to commercial software for engineering consultants. For example, QGIS stands as a genuinely viable FOSS alternative to ArcGIS and is really the only case where I can honestly say an open source alternative to a proprietary software solution is genuinely on the same level. Of course, there's LibreOffice / OpenOffice for general productivity, and Blender is another good example, but it tends to fall a little outside the engineering realm.

If there are other good examples, I might appreciate a mention of them here so I can at least mention them in passing. There's already some good references in this thread which showcases FreeCAD, and @yorick's FOSDEM 2018 presentation on FreeCAD and the WikiHouse project is going to provide me some good material to include as well.

The organization I'm presenting to represents all sorts of engineers (chemical, mechanical, electrical, civil, industrial), but the bulk of the engineers will likely be transportation consultants. It's important I address the breadth of engineering, but I also plan on showcasing whatever limited functions my transportation workbench has. If nothing else, it will highlight the potential that exists in open source for transportation engineering, but I don't anticipate I'll have much to show, given the less-than-stellar speed at which I am developing it. :roll:

Anyway, just putting it out there, in case there's been some more recent developments in the last few months that might be useful.
FreeCAD Trails workbench for transportation engineering: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/freecad.trails

pivy_trackers 2D coin3D library: https://www.github.com/joelgraff/pivy_trackers
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