Revision as of 02:07, 18 March 2018

Sat Mar 17, 2018 - FreeCAD Video Tutorials and Test Notes

Got lost briefly at "Create a new sketch", "select the XY plain" @ :21 seconds. The different orientation of my menu put the sketch mode button in a different area, for some reason made it hard for me to locate
Confused about how to select point, how to select multiple points. For selecting a point, "left mouse button" seems to be shift + click on a trackpad. I switched to a mouse after this. I still don't know how to select a region of points (square selection)
Video started using resources I didn't have, so I watched them through once more but then wanted to start working with the models from the test, so maybe I could just start with that and use the video for reference as I tried to make my cube.
I wasn't sure where to find 8 hole square tubing, got it confused with the rounded edges one, wasn't sure if I was supposed to find a single file, but did find it in its library after a few minutes.
No trouble opening it in FreeCad.
Made copies, moved some around, not bad.
Rotating is HARD. Briefly caved and looked at an external resource, still couldn't do it.
Stopped in frustration
Started again and got it to rotate on the axis I wanted, still not sure how.
Tried to move objects around again, behaved differently this time and I'm not really sure why,
tried to align two faces, clicked on some "alignment" buttons, didn't find what I needed.

Summary so far

Enjoyed the speed of the videos, but it was easy to get very stuck once I tried to do the test. Since I knew the videos covered more than I wanted to do yet (section about converting and cleaning meshes) I was more tempted to skip around to get where I needed to go, but it generally didn't get me unstuck, I think because there was something more fundamental that I was missing.

Would really like to go through each step with the videos, so not having pre-constructed examples might help. Also some kind of linear progression that covers only those skills related to finishing the test. Something like: 1. opening the sketcher menu, 2. navigating in 2d space, 3. creating a point, 4. modifying the point, 5. turn the point into a line, 6. modify the line, 6.5 turn the line into a square 7. opening the part design menu, 8. navigating in 3d space, 9. turn the square into a pad, 10. modifying the pad, opening the draft menu, making duplicates of the part, aligning the parts (rotating the parts? :D ) etc.

Installed FreeCAD for Mac
Started reading the FreeCAD manual
Stopped going through the manual, I'll be attempting to finish the CAD test with just the two instructional videos.

Installed kdenlive via macports following instructions here
Recorded video questionnaire
Edited video using kdenlive
Uploaded video questionnaire to vimeo
Created work log - found it was easier to look at how others had formatted their work logs, might make sense to provide a starter template

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 * Got lost briefly at "Create a new sketch", "select the XY plain" @ :21 seconds. The different orientation of my menu put the sketch mode button in a different area, for some reason made it hard for me to locate
 * Confused about how to select point, how to select multiple points. For selecting a point, "left mouse button" seems to be shift + click on a trackpad. I switched to a mouse after this. I still don't know how to select a region of points (square selection)
-* Video started using some resources, so I watched them through once more but then wanted to start working with the models from the test, so maybe I could just start with that and use the video for reference as I tried to make my cube.
+* Video started using resources I didn't have, so I watched them through once more but then wanted to start working with the models from the test, so maybe I could just start with that and use the video for reference as I tried to make my cube.
 * I wasn't sure where to find 8 hole square tubing, got it confused with the rounded edges one, wasn't sure if I was supposed to find a single file, but did find it in its library after a few minutes.
 * No trouble opening it in FreeCad.