r/FreeCAD

Hey guys, I'm pretty new to designing and just started watching some tutorials. Can anyone guide me on how you would go about designing this please?

I made the center with a simple rounded corner rectangle and thickness/pocket tools, but I have no idea how to go about adding the rounded edges. I tried creating arched sketches on different planes but I have no idea how to curve them between the planes.

I also tried just creating flat surfaces to create an "L" shape and then round of the corners thinking I could extrude the edges, but can't figure out how to bend them.

I thought this would be a simple design to learn on, but it seems harder than I originally thought. Any guidance on how to go about it please? I feel like I may be overlooking some simple method and trying to go about a way of doing it that's not the best.

Any tips would be really appreciated!

I had pic 2 when I first started and I’m not sure what I clicked (or it could have been the cat lol) to end up with the colourful limited option. Any help
Would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hi everyone, I’m new to Fusion 360 and I’m trying to round the front edges of extruded SVG text for 3D printing.

I imported an SVG, extruded it into a solid, then used Modify → Fillet. The inner edges sometimes fillet correctly, but the outer edges give the error:

“The fillet/chamfer could not be created at the requested size.”

I originally thought the Arabic SVG geometry was the problem, but I tested a normal English text SVG and got the same issue.

In the screenshot I’m only selecting one outer edge, with Tangent Chain OFF, and trying a 1.5 mm fillet, but Fusion still refuses it.

Am I missing a setting or using the wrong workflow for rounding extruded SVG/text edges? I basically want a soft rounded edge around the entire front face for a 3D-printed clock.

Screenshot attached. Thanks!

Hello! I started learning FreeCAD a couple of days ago on my own. I've learned a lot from online tutorials, but there are some things that simply don't work the way they do in the tutorials, and I have no idea why.

I have a case split into two parts, and I want to lock the two halves together using simple latches. To do this, I need to cut the latch "locks" into one half of the case (basically, make holes in the body so the latch locks can fit into them).

However, for some reason, when I use Boolean Operation (Cut), my latches seem to "rotate 180°". Because of this, the latch locks don't intersect with the active body. Instead, they end up intersecting with the other half of the case. So when I perform the Cut, nothing happens to the body I'm trying to cut.

I've already given up trying to find a tutorial that solves this specific problem, so I'm posting here hoping someone who really understands FreeCAD can help me figure out what's going on.

I'm not sure if my explanation is clear enough, so I'm attaching an image and a link to my project file, (https://www.mediafire.com/file/6lubmofmci5arf8/Case.FCStd/file).

And sorry if I'm being completely clueless here. I swear I've tried everything I could think of before coming here to ask for help.

Thank you in advance!

Trying to do a subtractive cylinder inside an additive cylinder. Why the hell does this floating ring appear?

I’m trying to make a mirrored body on this item and make some adjustments on it. I want them to be a seperate body, but don’t know hot to do it. Can anyone help? Many thanks

Someone in r/3Dprinting mentioned that FreeCAD users have been asking for a section view that looks like this for years, and no volunteer has had the time to build it. I ended up doing it for a mobile viewer, so here's the approach in case it's useful to anyone working on the real thing.

It isn't a boolean cut. The GPU clips everything past the plane, then a flat colored patch is drawn into the hole where the surface got sliced, with a black outline on top. No CAD math, so it holds frame rate on a phone. The tradeoff is that it's a visual trick, not geometry — you can't export the cut as a solid.

Each body in an assembly gets its own hatch color, and the plane position takes typed input, which turned out to matter more than the slider.

This is from an Android app I wrote (STEP/STL/OBJ/3MF, fully offline). Happy to go deeper on the implementation — that's the more interesting half of this post.

A lot of IRL surfaces have some kind of curving. For example, the part that I want to replicate has very small curve, like maybe 3-4°. It's kinda hard to discern on the photo, but you can see light reflection to the left and right but missing in the middle. However small the angle is, it's still important, because it is a protective part of an EUC that should align with the internal ribs.

Creating a sketch of this part from the side just to reproduce the curve wouldn't make much sense. You'd want to sketch it from above instead. But sketching it from above implies that once extruded it will be straight, so somehow you need to make it curved afterwards.

Looking around, I find various posts and videos about making curved surfaces, but they all refer to addon-workbenches, like "Curves" and "SheetMetal".

I am confused, does FreeCAD really have no built-in way to implement that? I mean, it would seem to be a widespread enough need that I'd expect it to be, well, if not in "Part" or "Part Design", then at least in one of the OOTB workbenches 👀 Am I perhaps missing something here?

Dear FreeCAD community,

about a year and a halve ago i strated looking into creating frames with FreeCAD. There are many great addons for that, how ever while using them the modeling of "nodes" places where multiple "frame members" end was still a tideous task.

So I thought up a way to laverage the subshape binder, Attachment, Assemblys, ... to help me streamline my workflow.

I put the result of that work into an addon:

FramesAndNodes Addon

Which has all the tools needed to show a Prof of concept of my envisioned workflow. Now I need your help in identifying issues early and to polish the addon before I am going to add it to the addon manger.

Is there a way to add a bend to this part? Im trying to build a hanger for my toolbox and wanted to see if there's a way to add the 2 bends I want without having to draw the side profile.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Happy cadding everyone

I’m not sure why the timing gears this add-on makes are slightly oval shaped, and not perfectly circular.

This 5GT gear with 22 teeth, the gear is generated with L=33.65mm and W=33.87.

Can anyone give me some advice?

Ring for Flash modelled with Blender and rendered with POVRay #dccomics #flash #3d #animation

Hey everyone,

I’m currently transitioning my workflow from SolidWorks to FreeCAD. My current project is designing an open-source diode laser engraver (the My-Diode Laser), and I hit a major roadblock that I know many SW transplants struggle with: Part Configurations inside an Assembly.

When building a machine with V-Slot aluminum extrusions or lead screws, you need multiple instances of the same profile with different lengths. I recently watched MangoJelly's excellent video on Configuration Tables and Variant Links and tried to figure out a way to apply that logic directly inside an assembly without duplicating files.

I tested this in older FreeCAD versions and couldn't get it to work—every time I changed a configuration on one instance, all the other instances in the assembly updated to match it. However, I just tried experimenting again using the FreeCAD 26.3.0 DEV version, and I found a workflow that seems almost too simple!

I’m honestly not sure if this is a new feature that just started working correctly in the new Assembly WB, or if I was simply doing something wrong in my previous attempts.

The Workflow I'm Testing:

1. Create a Master Body part driven by a Configuration Table (Spreadsheet).
2. Insert that Master Part directly into the new Assembly Workbench.
3. Here is the trick: Select the instance in the assembly tree, go to its data properties, and switch Link Copy On Change to Disabled.

By doing this, I was able to drop several instances of the exact same extrusion file into the assembly and change their lengths independently! No duplicate files and no complex SubShapeBinder workarounds needed inside the assembly.

I uploaded a quick test file to GrabCAD so you guys can see exactly what I mean and test it yourselves: 🔗 https://grabcad.com/library/

My question to the FreeCAD veterans: Is this the intended way to handle instance variations in the new Assembly WB? Are there any hidden bugs or performance issues with this method when the assembly gets huge?

Any feedback is highly appreciated! I'm trying to establish best practices for my CAD classes and open-source releases.

P.S. If anyone is curious about the open-source machines I'm developing to democratize digital fabrication, you can check out the progress at https://my-machines.com/open-source-machine. Cheers!

All I wanted was a simple model that was completely parametrically defined, and instead, I encountered every single bug known to man while trying to build this model in FreeCAD. The mental model for using this program is just completely busted.