3D CAD Design

Overview

3D CAD is the most important element of open source product design. For design to produce buildable results as designed - as opposed to bullshit design - the design must be dimensionally-correct, complete, and exact. An open source tool that allows this to happen is FreeCAD.

See FreeCAD 101 for 2 tutorials and an exam, which is to be taken by any person interested in joining the OSE Engineering or Documentation Teams.

The OSE Part Library is the official repository of module CAD accepted into the Global Village Construction Set. Only approved developers have commit privileges into the Part Library, though other pages on this wiki may be used for uploading other designs. To request that a 3D CAD file be accepted into the OSE Part Library, email CAD at opensourceecology dot org to submit a Pull Request.

Initial Steps

Before a complete CAD model is complete - or before the design is finalized - there are parts of the design that are already known or established. These constitute the 3D CAD Library.

Process

• See the two OSE FreeCAD 101 tutorials and learn FreeCAD. The OSE workflow - FreeCAD_101#Lesson_3:_OSE_Basic_Workflow_Tutorial - can be learned in one hour.
• Upload your CAD file, and screenshots for reference - to the wiki page - to create a Part Library. Use the built-in wiki versioning system for new files to document changes. See Part Library.
• To generate 3D CAD for mechanical devices, use stock parts found in the OSE Part Library.
• If you are doing further documentation of your design in webcast/video format - use RecordMyDesktop with full voice quality and 10% video quality (allows for fast render) to record a video overview of the design and features - this communicates the design most readily to others for review. At 10%, rendering is almost immediate for a 1 minute video. You can use higher video quality.

Samples

Sample recording :