FreeCAD: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 13:53, 3 December 2016
See 3/7/16 update on OSE FreeCAD Workbenches -
Current Work
Tractor Construction Set Specification for FreeCAD.
Strategy
Collaborate with open source support institutes such as INRIA to develop FreeCAD to open source product deevlopment standards.
Original Specification
- See FreeCAD Specification
- FreeCAD is based on the Open Cascade Technology CAD kernel
FreeCAD Review
OSE Needs
See FreeCAD Scripts for the list of top 10 instructionals that are needed.
Process for Developing FreeCAD Instructionals
FreeCAD Architecture Tutorials
Arch Workbench
How to design this structure in FreeCAD is here - [1] -
Drawing Building Panels
Overview
More Basics of FreeCAD from Yorik
3D Printing Tutorial for FreeCAD
Architecture in FreeCAD
Producing Build Instructionals with FreeCAD
FreeCAD Downloads
See http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Download
Import from Proprietary Formats
- AutoCAD dwg - import appears to be available - [2]
FreeCAD Instructionals
Action Plan
Recruit software developer to analyze FreeCAD and build with/upon their work. Short-term Objective: Get Assembly Module Working.
Document FreeCAD source code in github repository.
Document FreeCAD's code structure.
Info
FreeCAD Bugtracker/Issue Queue
OSE FreeCAD Documentation
I (Mark Norton) have created a very simply, introductory guide to FreeCAD. It only covers the very basics at this point, but we can expand on it as needed. - User:Mjn
This document covers the following topics:
- Views
- Workshops
- Sizing a Primitive Part
- Positioning a Part
- Making a Cut
- Combining Parts
- Rotating a Part
- Extrusion
See also, FreeCAD Documentation and Tutorials [3].
OSE FreeCAD Requirements
For OSE to use FreeCAD for all of its design needs, these are the functions required. Do these exist? Please comment.
- Freehand drawing of shapes and extrusion (like Sketchup).
- Adding parameters to all of the shapes, so they can be modified.
- Modifying all parameters in 3D parametrically (typing in lengths)
- Modifying all parameters in 3D with the mouse (such as dragging corners, edges, and faces)
Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "This is not possible and will not be in the future. This kind of behavior needs quite advanced back-end functionality which is not provided by our geometric modeling kernel"
- Adding parameters in 3D parametrically (boolean operations)?
- Adding parameters in 3D by drawing them and extruding (mouse-based boolean operations)
- Adding parameters to shapes in 3D parametrically (such as drawing in new objects parametrically)?
- Adding parameters to shapes in 3D manually (such as drawing in new objects with a mounse)?
- For multiple objects, moving them with the mouse to arrange, mate, align them.
Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "That is not yet possible. The assembly workbench is in a very early design phase and still needs quite some time. That is true for basic functionality and integration into freecad workflows."
- Grouping and ungrouping objects into assemblies?
Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "not yet but will be possible with upcoming assembly workbench"
- Maintaining parametric nature of grouped objects?
Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: "not yet, but will be possible with the upcoming assembly workbench"
Now for interoperability with other CAD packages:
- Importing multiple new objects into a drawing - one at a time?
Response from FreeCAD developer ickby: 'currently you can only import whole files, not individual objects from a file'
- Importing multiple objects into a model - all at one time?
- Importing new objects while passing the parametric values into FreeCAD, such as with a STEP file?
Tutorials
2015
Obijuan - good set of 34 lessons, but in Spanish.
Bram De Vries, 2012
Tutorials 1-8:
Assembly Workbench
Tutorial: http://freecad-tutorial.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-to-test-assembly-module.html
Example
Contributors and Users
From Kostas:
- Jürgen Riegel is the project founder, working for Daimler Chrysler, his free time is probably limited https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=User:Jriegel
- Werner Mayer is the most active developer in terms of commits, he is just awesome, I don't know what he does professionally but if some funding can get him to increase the time of his participation, this would definitely be a great investment of financial resources.
- Yorik is our architect: http://yorik.uncreated.net and he is already dedicating a lot of hours in the development of FreeCAD, since he is a free lancer he is probably quite flexible with time, so maybe he could implement special feature requests for FreeCAD even on a paid basis.
- j-dowset, joined FreeCAD recently and has done a great work on improving blueprints creation in FreeCAD. A very appropriate task for him would be to implement a correct dimensioning system for blueprints. I believe he has the capabilities to implement any kind of feature with relatively short running in time and high quality.
- mrlukeparry is quite experienced with Qt and Coin3D so he can do a lot of GUI work. Being a student his free time is probably also limited except school vacations.
- Ickby has worked on a prototype for applying assembly constraints between parts. A special task for him would be to accelerate the implementation of the Assembly module after jriegel has finished with the basic framework/structure/design.
- tanderson69 is very good in OpenCascade, so he can work on difficult tasks that have to do with the CAD geometry kernel.
- Daniel Falck is the person to contact for CAM integration.
- Kostas - sketcher module.
- Yorik van Havre, Daniel Falck, and Brad Collette - Path Workbench
- Ian Rees - crowdfunded individual working on Drawing Workbench
- gCAD3D appears to be viable for CAD/CAM - [4]
- Przemo Firszt, Bernd Hahnebach - CAE workbench
- Sebastian Hoogen - OpenSCAD workbench
- FEA, macros - psicofil, Lucio Gomez - [5]
- Cad1919 - Extreme User - is doing some of the most high level work in FreeCAD - cad1919 on YouTube - [6]
- 61quick - 3D printing complete toolchain within FreeCAD - [7]
- Lars G. - IGES files to house cross sections in architecture - [8]
- Kwasny - macro example of how to create an Icon in the workbench that allows you to draw a piston ring by clicking on the icon. This way, the macro (a set of commands) was actually turned into a tool - [9]
- Dan's Open Source Design Tools, with motto to be free from black-box CAx toolchains - [10]
Uses of FreeCAD
There are various cases of real-life usage of FreeCAD in commercial, research and educational contexts. Add as necessary:
Main Needs
According to [11], the main need for the project is documentation.
Links
- FreeCAD Survival Guide from Lasersaur.
- Original FreeCAD Specification by Juergen Riegel
- FreeCAD Architecture Design
- Open Source Design Tools - [12]
- FreeCAD Video Scripts