ppemawm wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:31 pm
I am trying to understand where you are going with this.
kisolre wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2019 5:11 pm
I wanted to try something like a simple assembly without any workbench and since there was a solver already why not use it?
Isn't this similar to the
assembly without solver thing ?
That evolved to a proper assembly workbench (
Assembly4), and I have the feeling you are doing very similar things. Did you check those threads ? Did you try to install/use Assembly4 workbench ?
In the existing FreeCAD assembly workbenches you model your parts in a separate files so they are "out-of-context" by default.
Not necessarily: they must be created out-of-context, in their own file, you're right, but once they're in the assembly they can be edited and changed in-context.
When I model real parts that should work together I usually select meaningful origin and orientation, design one part or at least what will mate with other parts.
Does this approach also work if you want to re-use a part several times ?
Designing a proper sketches and linking them together to properly represent desired relations is of course a challenge but for simple assemblies will do the trick.
Here I used kinematic sketch to define the parts lengths but it can be the other way around - use spreadsheet for basic dimensions and reference those in kinematic and design. Spreadsheet to avoid possible circular dependencies.
I very much like that approach, and I think you can build quite complex mechanisms in such way. Technically, most movements in real life happen anyway in 2D and are mostly combinations of rotation and translation.