Kathleen Log

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 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.
• 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.

• I will try again to just watch the videos all the way through a few times.

Sat Mar 17, 2018

• 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.

Fri Mar 16, 2018

• 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