u/arantius

Context: hobbyist. Usually modeling for eventual 3D printing. Started with SketchUp many years ago. Tried Fusion because it was easy to learn, but hated my data being locked in their cloud, subject to their terms and whims forever.

So I had a preference for FreeCAD: files I could save and software I could run, for however long I want to. But I found it very frustrating. Many seemingly simple things just wouldn't work. Recently I had a rather simple model -- I tried, and started over, and tried, and started over for two and a half hours. Couldn't get FreeCAD past the first few steps despite trying several approaches.

Restarted with Fusion and I was done in 20 or 25 minutes. Didn't know why. Even more recently I randomly got lucky and found out that many/most of my problems were down to expecting, but not getting, automatic coincident constraints, e.g. when drawing something by snapping to an existing point/edge.

I'm probably still stuck in the beginner zone, but now (e.g.) to draw an arc, I click the center point, then the beginning and end point ... then I select each of those one by one (plus the point that I snapped to when drawing it) and manually add coincident constraints. And suddenly so many frustrating problems I used to experience have disappeared!

I'd expect an auto constraint here, but knowing to add one manually has really helped.

https://old.reddit.com/r/cmaxhybrid/comments/1uwbvr3/

This recent post mentioned "... got a can of R-134a with POE oil (thanks to this sub - I know what can happen with the wrong oil!)."

I'm currently deciding whether to self-service my A/C or not. (It's a bit weak. I've done nothing to it in the ~4 years I've had it and I can't vouch for its history before that.) I think the system should already have the right kind of oil in it, and the first can of R-134A I can find says it is "Pure Refrigerant: Contains pure R134a, meeting AHRI standard 700 and SAE J 2776 purity standards ...", i.e. no oil. So if I was to add this, I'd be fine, right? Sounds like the advise being referenced above is just not too add the wrong stuff?

While we're on the topic, I'd probably plan on using a simple hose set on the low side with a pressure gauge, run the A/C at max, and observe the pressure there. Service manual has a chart for acceptable ranges, depending on ambient temperature. This mostly simplifies down to "about 30 PSI, maybe a bit more at high temperatures". If low, add very gradually, monitoring temperature at the vents, gradually approaching that pressure or good vent temperature, whichever happens first.

I maintain a low balance Fidelity account, used to learn and experiment with trading. I recently decided to learn about margin trading, which AIUI lets me borrow against equities held in my account as collateral, to execute more trades.

So I started by turning roughly 85% of the cash in my account into mutual funds (FXAIX and FNCMX). Then learned (why!?) that unlike equities including ETFs, mutual funds must be held for thirty days before they're marginable?

Well that was June 2nd and it's now July 15th. It's been well over 30 days. In the mean time I bought something (leveraged, non marginable I think) with most of my remaining cash. Now if I open the Trade dialog in Fidelity Trader+ it says "Margin buying power $83.10" "Non-margin buying power $83.10".

Why isn't my margin buying power cash + mutual funds? It's just cash.