Wheel - SolidWorks and FreeCAD

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Celica_Supra

Wheel - SolidWorks and FreeCAD

Post by Celica_Supra »

I'm brand new at FreeCAD but I displayed a model I made and I was asked to make a tutorial and how my background in SolidWorks transitioned into FreeCAD. So I made a wheel and discussed what translates to SolidWorks throughout. Hope you enjoy, and more importantly I hope someone somewhere finds this helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XXnuly ... e=youtu.be
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chrisb
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Re: Wheel - SolidWorks and FreeCAD

Post by chrisb »

Thank you very much for this very well made tutorial. Speed is perfect, explanations are very good.

I have watched until now only the first 20 minutes, but it might be helpful to give already some hints which might help in the future. See especially the external geometry tool below.

For defining a distance from the origin you need only to select one point. That makes the sketch a little more robust against flipping as the direction is fixed too. For that you have to select the point first and then add the dimension.

I would like to direct your view to the Polyline. Start with a straight line and then use the M key for different continuation modes, it is most useful. It would speed up e.g. the lines having a tangent connection to an arc.

There are two modes to create an arc, perhaps the non default mode fits your solid works experience better.

At 13:40 you add a construction line. You can consider to use one of:
- make center and endpoint of arc horizontal
- create a point-on-line constraint of the center and the following horizontal line
(Further on I see that you did so on the other side.)

To toggle visibility you can select an item in the tree and hit the space key.

Around 18:00 you ask for a possibility to reference a previous sketch. Use Sketcher External.
A Sketcher Lecture with in-depth information is available in English, auf Deutsch, en français, en español.
Celica_Supra

Re: Wheel - SolidWorks and FreeCAD

Post by Celica_Supra »

chrisb wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 7:03 am Thank you very much for this very well made tutorial. Speed is perfect, explanations are very good.

I have watched until now only the first 20 minutes, but it might be helpful to give already some hints which might help in the future. See especially the external geometry tool below.

For defining a distance from the origin you need only to select one point. That makes the sketch a little more robust against flipping as the direction is fixed too. For that you have to select the point first and then add the dimension.

I would like to direct your view to the Polyline. Start with a straight line and then use the M key for different continuation modes, it is most useful. It would speed up e.g. the lines having a tangent connection to an arc.

There are two modes to create an arc, perhaps the non default mode fits your solid works experience better.

At 13:40 you add a construction line. You can consider to use one of:
- make center and endpoint of arc horizontal
- create a point-on-line constraint of the center and the following horizontal line
(Further on I see that you did so on the other side.)

To toggle visibility you can select an item in the tree and hit the space key.

Around 18:00 you ask for a possibility to reference a previous sketch. Use Sketcher External.
Excellent suggestions - Thank you! Will save a lot of time and get the same result. The External Sketcher will be especially helpful - I'll be looking into it now.
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Kunda1
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Re: Wheel - SolidWorks and FreeCAD

Post by Kunda1 »

@Celica_Supra take it another step forward, have you thought about making an indepth side-by-side comparison between FC and Solidworks? Just like you point out in the video that Solidworks 'loft' == FreeCAD 'sweep' as an example of jargon differences.
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shiftee
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Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by shiftee »

https://youtu.be/7XXnulyKPNI?t=1070

A question was put out in the above video "FreeCAD Tutorial for SolidWorks Users" by user "JOKO Engineering".

The question is:
Is it possible to reference inactive sketches in our current sketch?

CAD videos by this user have anywhere from 10 views to 160k views so hopefully FreeCAD will get some nice exposure regardless
chrisb
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Re: Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by chrisb »

shiftee wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 5:51 pm Is it possible to reference inactive sketches in our current sketch?
What's an "inactive sketch"? A sketch from another body cannot be referenced directly. You can use a ShapeBinder or use Expressions to reference it.

Edit: hadn't seen that it's the video to which I answered already above.
A Sketcher Lecture with in-depth information is available in English, auf Deutsch, en français, en español.
freecad-heini-1
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Re: Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by freecad-heini-1 »

chrisb wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 6:10 pm
shiftee wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 5:51 pm Is it possible to reference inactive sketches in our current sketch?
What's an "inactive sketch"? A sketch from another body cannot be referenced directly. You can use a ShapeBinder or use Expressions to reference it.
Chris, your statement concerns PartDesign. In the Part-workbench you can use Sketches as skeleton or mastersketch.
If you extrude a sketch at the design beginning to faces, you can use the faces and the sketch for referencing what ever you like and as sketch-plane. Freecad is very powerful.
Here you could see an example:
phpBB [video]


And a more advanced topdown design with Freecad. It was a early Freecad 0.17 version with PartDesignNext:
phpBB [video]
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DeepSOIC
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Re: Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by DeepSOIC »

shiftee wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 5:51 pm https://youtu.be/7XXnulyKPNI?t=1070
The question is:
Is it possible to reference inactive sketches in our current sketch?
I just answered it as youtube comment.
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shiftee
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Re: Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by shiftee »

Brilliant, thanks very much.

Alas, a little further on, I came across a second question:
https://youtu.be/7XXnulyKPNI?t=2546

Is it possible to mirror part of a sketch?
To avoid having to construct a mirror image of part of a sketch manually.
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shiftee
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Re: Question in Youtube video on quite popular channel

Post by shiftee »

Dammit, there's another one right at the end:
https://youtu.be/7XXnulyKPNI?t=3275

He says the fillet feature seems a little more limited vs Solidworks,
which he said will automatically taper down a radius if you're in a tight edge or corner.

He's wondering if this is possible in FreeCAD?

No pressure to answer obviously but this guy is very impressed with FreeCAD so it would be nice to showcase how great the community is
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