r/FreeCAD

Hi people. Hope you're doing well. I just wanted to share some thoughts and know if someone had or has the same feeling. I've been working with solidworks for 5 years now. Started working in university and bought the makers license. I've tried fusion and rly liked it too. Since I started working as Freelancer I was forced to decide, do I spend lots of money in licencing, or... learn FreeCAD. I swear I hated it at the beginning, the logic of building sketches, and bodies was different from what I knew, I felt a noob again. I was so frustrated, but I needed to learn or I would live with the possibility of having legal problems at any time. So.. I learned and I started making simple models, started getting into it... And now I'm hooked. I love this software and everything that it does. I think it's actually better for my needs. I hated the body's system, now I love it. You're telling me I can move sketches, commands and references between bodies, that's amazing and it comes in handy soo much. Now I'm sad because there are still a lot of people who pay hundreds of dollars to corp just because it has a "professional" connotation. What do you think? Have you migrated from solidworks and/or fusion too?

I am fairly new to 3d modeling and the piece of plastic that holds my gaming chairs footrest snapped so i made it in blender and prepared to have pcb way machine it but because i made it in blender it wont let me use the model is there a way one of yall could make it in a software that that pcb way likes? Here is the model on thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7356747

I'm totally clueless, only beginning to dabble to adjust a 3d print file a bit, and the tutorials are a little like drinking from a firehose, but I've got a problem that I think should be simple. I'm opening an STL file, and I can move it around fine, but any time I try to select anything, the entire project selects, but nothing I can find actually changes anything but the perspective. Am I barking up the wrong tree entirely? Am I missing something painfully obvious?

With the recent update I’ve been trying to make the jump fully now from fusion 360 but I still find myself going back to it. Any add ons? YouTube videos ? That anyone suggests in order to make the transition smoother or give a similar flow as fusion?

Just a quick question. In the second screenshot. I drew and constrained the left side circles. I then mirrored them to the right side. But it didn't copy the constraints automatically.

Is there a way to do that?

https://preview.redd.it/47ngoyww7c2h1.png?width=1321&format=png&auto=webp&s=99799e563ff3d5661760a33e3b2751bc21e0563a

https://preview.redd.it/x8cx7zww7c2h1.png?width=1357&format=png&auto=webp&s=0183a1c1c39c0ac715a88289b7c5199415bd164d

I think I'm slowly getting the hang of constraints, but there's still a lot of surprises and head scratching going on.

The latest question is about External Projection.

Bringing in bits of another sketch to constrain against seems to make sense. But when I then try to apply anything to resulting sketch, like a pocket, I get an error that the wire is not closed as the projected bits of geometry seem to become part of that sketch.

If I then go back into the sketch and remove the edges I projected, the sketch becomes under-constrained, but I can apply the desired pocket without error.

I'm clearly getting something wrong or misunderstanding the process. How can I avoid this?

I've been pulling my hair out for days trying to get FreeCAD working on Fedora 44 KDE (Wayland only).

I've got FreeCAD 1.1.1 Flatpak installed from Flathub. I'm running NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

When FreeCAD starts up, I see most of the interface, but there is no grid. I can create a sketch but when when I go back to the main view from the sketch, I can't see it. It's clearly a rendering bug.

There's another very odd behaviour. I'm no FreeCAD expert, but I know my way around the basics. It's not doing what I think it should be doing.

1. I create a parametric body
2. I create a sketch
3. I draw a random rectangle about the origin (under-constrained, as expected)
4. I pick the top left and top right corners and the vertical axis and click >< to make it symmetric
5. It now tells me there are redundant constraints (which I do not believe is expected behaviour?!) and the rectangle is not actually centered about the vertical axis until I try to move it (which again I do not believe is expected behaviour.
6. Then when I click the top right and bottom right corners and the horizontal axis, it tells me there are 2 redundant constraints.

Again, I'm not an expert but I have defined a dozen or more somewhat complex parts. This isn't the behaviour I'm used to and I'm wondering if it's related to the rendering bug?

I've already tried what's in https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeCAD/comments/1h6cot9/howto_make_freecad_run_under_native_wayland/ but it didn't fix anything for me.

I also tried QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb which is what generative AI recommended. I haven't managed to get it to work. LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 also did nothing.

Edit: I just tried the AppImage from the FreeCAD website and it does exactly the same thing; both with the rendering and with the constraint behaviour.

I have a complex part (A) that needs to nest into a fitted pocket in another part (B).

Both parts are being 3D printed and I don't want to simply scale up from the slicer as that will ultimately ruin the scale of other aspect of the part.

If I apply a boolean to part (B) using part (A) am I able to add an offset that increases the cutout by .1mm?

Hi Community,

I’ve run into a small parametric-design problem and could use some advice.

I want to place a rectangle with a fixed size of 52 × 5.5 mm on top of this body. The rectangle should stay aligned to the bottom edge (as shown in the screenshot), but it also needs to remain centered horizontally/symmetrical relative to the body.

What would be the best way to constrain or parameterize the horizontal offset so the rectangle always stays centered, even if the body dimensions change?

https://preview.redd.it/nxtzy9j3782h1.png?width=1081&format=png&auto=webp&s=30d0823e15f2b68f63bae8a2215ce1033bffdc9e

This is another situation where there might be an easy way and I just don't know about it.

For some projects I sit down and make up my VarSet before I start sketching. I then want to use the VarSet values as I sketch. If I draw a circle I don't see a way to use the VarSet value unless I draw a random-sized circle, then add a constraint so that I can edit the constraint, hit the fx button, and put in my VarSet value. It would save time if I could start dragging out the circle then just put in the VarSet value right then.