Converting model aircraft plans into a 3D model for printing

[TonyR]

I don't quite understand what you mean, Tom.

[NormandC]

Hello Tony,

Welcome.

Until you get 0.17 working

It will never happen, because as shown in his screen captures Tony is using Windows XP 32-bit. This OS has not been supported by Microsoft for years, FreeCAD 0.16 is the last release that supports it, newer MS compilers have dropped XP support, so 0.17 needs Windows 7 and up.

Why are you still using XP Tony? Going on the Internet with an obsolete system riddled with security holes is a little risky. Some users here chose to switch to Linux which allowed them to keep their hardware. Ask bejant. Personally I switched 10 years ago.

P.S. This topic really should have been posted in the "Help on using FreeCAD" forum rather than in Open discussion. Would a moderator please move the topic?

[tommeyers]

Come-on Tony!!!

Model aircraft costs a lot more than a PC with windows 10.

Really, I paid US$110 on EBay for a used Toshiba Satellite: 1.3, GHz, dual processor, 4GB RAM. No bottlenecks in FC.

Tom

[NormandC]

And it costs nothing to install a Linux distro on existing hardware. You save up US$110 that you can put on the model aircraft instead.

[chrisb]

I don't seem to be getting anywhere trying to trace using FreeCAD despite the 10's of hours I've spent trying to learn FreeCAD, and my Gimp trace is a shocker (attached)...

FreeCAD does not have a tracer. If you have an image of the cut you can use inkscape to do the job. From inkscape you can save the SVG and import it in FreeCAD. There you can convert it to a sketch for further editing.

[bejant]

Until you get 0.17 working

It will never happen

So Tony, with XP you're stuck at FreeCAD 0.16 (thanks for the explanation Norm).

Some users here chose to switch to Linux which allowed them to keep their hardware. Ask bejant.

Yep - when MS announced they were going to drop support for XP I decided to try Linux by downloading Ubuntu onto a USB thumb drive and booting from the thumb drive. Eventually I partitioned my hard drive to create an XP partition and an Ubuntu partition so that I could boot either OS. I've slowly been reducing the size of my XP partition over the years, and now it's probably been a couple of years since I've booted into XP. You might want download Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Lubuntu to a thumb drive and give one of these Linux varieties a try.

That's waaaaay further than I've been able to get so far, Bejant.

How did you manage to draw that circle on part #1 so accurately?

Breifly, after using the image WB to create ImagePlanes from your images I changed the Data tab > Property > XSize and YSize then used the Sketcher tools in the Part Design WB to trace over your images.

Open the model I posted.
In the history tree, select Pad and press Spacebar to hide it.
Again In the history tree, click the little icon to the left of the text "Pad", to expand Pad in the history tree.
Double-click Sketch to open it in Sketcher.
You'll see that I centered the ImagePlane on the X-Z origin, re-sized it, and traced over your image using 8 arcs and for the hole I added a circle in the center.

For part #1, what are the distances along the horizontal and vertical axes of the fuselage? I could use that information to give you a better and more specific answer...

[salp]

Tony,

I am doing the same thing as you, I finally realized that it's best to just bring the image directly into FreeCAD, center it, scale it to the proper dimensions and then use sketcher to recreate it using the drawing tools in FreeCAD.

I also noticed that you are stuck in version 0.16, it would really help to upgrade (have you tried using Linux? then you can get the latest version).

This is a screen shot in sketcher with the image in the background. I highlighted every other Arc just to show that its multiple sections.

Screenshot from 2018-04-15 16-35-47.png (707.96 KiB) Viewed 651 times

Hope this helps
Sal

OS: Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.18.13532 (Git)
Build type: None
Branch: master
Hash: 4adeb7702da610da2c7f3014217044167109f0d6
Python version: 2.7.12
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.2.0
Locale: English/UnitedStates (en_US)

[salp]

I just realized I replied to an old post, sorry

The steps I outlined are the same that "Bejant" explained.

[TonyR]

Thanks for all your replies.

There is a reason I'm still using Win XP on this machine - I have expensive legacy software that won't run on later versions of Windows.

It's a Catch 22 - Windows/Intel etc. keep upgrading their stuff (instead of just sticking with ONE and making it bug free and secure/tamper proof)... and the manufacturers of my specialized hardward/software won't upgrade their platform.

It's just a cash-grab for the software and hardware vendors, but meh - such is life...

Those 'Sketcher' examples are exactly what I'm looking for - but I can't seem to get those nice arc's working like you guys have shown.

I never seem to be able to get the tool to do what I want it to - or maybe I'm using the wrong tool.

I have watched at least a dozen crappy "how to" YouTube tutorials etc, but they either move to fast, are blurry, in another language or all of the above.

Surely this stuff isn't that hard to learn?

[TonyR]

Had a bit of a play with sketch mode and got the arc thing working. Not as neat and tidy as yours Salp, but it's at least a step forward. Thanks

I guess I'm a bit more used to splines... but getting there...