FreeCADI have been using FreeCad for about a year so am a newbie. Having terrific fun and have built some stuff that is already printed and working.
But I am confused as to which approach to take when building a complex part. For example, I just tried to build a twin trumpet ram pipe for a car inlet manifold. The ports are rectangular, and have fillets at the corners. So I sketched the profile and swept it using the filleted rectangle as the sweep path. That worked fine for one port, but when selecting an identically shaped port for the second ram pipe it produced a crazy sweep object.
After several attempts I eventually managed to get the second port swept but it took a lot of messing around, and I didnt learn what the problem was. Now the next problem. I wanted to make a flange for the base that covers both ports. I sketched that, but could not pad it without attaching it to a surface - why is that? Surely I should be able to pad any sketch on its own? After more messing around I managed to pad it, but then the pad closed off the ports in the ram pipes, so I then could not figure how to proceed and gave up for now.
I get the impression that it doesnt like the complexity or am I on the wrong tack here? Should I be making the parts in separate designs then merging them all?
