Melanie Allen Log

Welcome to the log for Melanie Allen (Golfishlaser)

Machine: Acer Predator Helios 300, 15.6" Full HD IPS, Intel i7-7700HQ CPU, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 256GB SSD, GeForce GTX 1060-6GB

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Uploaded Developer Test Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Q8IJsUNjY&feature=youtu.be

1) Installing Linux I tried various methods of creating a live USB of linux, and the one that worked for me was Rufus. I was unable to successfully create a virtual machine, so I used the live boot. [4 hours]

2) Learning FreeCAD Overall I spent 20 hours learning FreeCAD with 15 hours being direct effort at building the cube.

3) Documenting Work I spent about 2 hours probably documenting my work. I did not always successfully migrate footage to my SD card before things like system crashes so some parts are undocumented- including signing my initials on the cube and adding the screw (I have yet to use the screw to assemble)

The hardest part was building the cube. We are supposed to submit this test at the end of the 2 weeks but it isn't quite right. I would greatly benefit from a mentor. Because I intend to assist on the Documentation Team, I am hoping that this submission will be suitable. If not, then I will learn more about how to contribute outside of being a Developer and try again later.

Score: 80

Using Linux: 100

Learning FreeCAD: 60 (did not align parts, did not insert screw)

Documenting Work: 80 (did not capture all of video, and sometimes at fault of my own)

[1 hour]

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Perused social media channels, reviewed Wiki materials, watched OSE videos. [3 hours]

Monday, August 3, 2020

Spent a half hour trying to build the cube. Something I'm not understanding about using alignment. May need to rewatch some videos. Considering creating my cube video without perfectly creating the cube and detracting points for what I haven't learned. Since I'm trying to be on the documentation team, I wonder if that will fly. [0.5 hour]

Sunday, August 2, 2020

More time spent trying to build the cube. Unhappily, the system crashed and although I have my FreeCAD files I hadn't moved over my vokoscreen footage to SD so they are lost and will have to be redone. I now understand what I'm doing enough that I can get the cube shape in a short amount of time. It is now time to move these parts carefully into the desired shape, insert the screw, and add initials to the face. I am taking a short break and returning to work for a second session. [3 hrs]

Have made some progress in approximating the shape. Need to add proper constraints though. Signed a face with my initials. Lost the video of that, but I think I'm going to have to redo the whole thing for the video anyway. A little confused about the specifics of getting a "1 inch bolt". Have... a bolt. https://imgur.com/a/tLzCwQS [2 hrs]

Thursday, July 30, 2020

More time spent trying to build the cube. While in the process of understanding how to transform and rotate the tubes, they became very distant from one another. Rather than give up and try again, I went through the tedious task of rejoining them. This process helped me practice moving things around in space anyway. I am pretty close to being able to competently move objects around. I predict it should come pretty quickly in my next session, and then I will just need to add my initial and the screw, which I am pretty sure I understand how to do. Here is a screenshot of the progress on the cube up to this point: https://imgur.com/a/tLzCwQS [2 hour]

Monday, July 27, 2020

Video Cover Letter [1 hour]

Sunday, July 26, 2020

... I spent another 4 hours trying to build the cube, but there must be something I'm missing because my expectations keep not aligning with what happens. Sometimes when I change the perspective view, parts just disappear in what seems to be a random way to me. I'm able to copy, rotate, move, delete generally, but sometimes I seem to be forbidden to place things or rotate things the way I'm intending to. I understand the general purposes of each of the work benches and what the tools are supposed to do. Just putting it all together consistently seems to be a lot of trouble and the menus sometimes behave erratically as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully when I return to this, things will go more smoothly. I'm sad to not meet the deadline I set for myself to finish this today. I may be able to do another session of work later but I'm not sure. I do feel like I made a lot of practical progress, just not enough that I successfully have made the cube. I uploaded a video of about where I am in FreeCAD ability. [4 hours]

Saturday, July 25, 2020

Created YouTube playlist: OSE FreeCAD 101 videos and other videos watched for Dev Test They're in order of how I watched them. I understand the FreeCAD materials are meant to be absorbed within an hour or something like that. This is logical, but I have an atypical attention span. Here are my impressions of the materials:

(1) Tutorials 1 & 2 - AMAZING love them. They are definitely critical to my success at the project. Sharing them to anyone I know trying to get into FreeCAD. Love the fast pace, which surprised me at first (despite the explanatory text). (2) FreeCAD 0.16 (5007) TH13A - Assembly2 - The mouse animation at the beginning confused me and the lack of sound made me think something was wrong with my audio settings. This video does show the assembly workbench. Learning by just watching can be good, but I gotta admit, I prefer videos with verbal explanations. (3) (4) FreeCAD Programming - This was an exciting video to me. I definitely would like to get to the point where I'm programming with FreeCAD. This video shows the potential and how to get started very well. (5) Use the Draft Rotating tool - Like Sarah, whose log I got this from, my first challenge getting started at building the cube was getting the parts orientated, this video helped with that. (6) 5 Ways FreeCAD will annoy you - This video helped me to understand that it isn't me that is a little confused by this UI...

These materials combined with the sample developer test videos is going to lead to my success. [4 hours]

Friday July 24, 2020

I tried installing OSE Linux to a virtual machine. It didn't go well and an error window came up saying "Sorry, Ubuntu 16.04 has experienced and internal error". After closing the window, clicking on anything was unresponsive. I waited awhile and this was still the case so I shut it down.

Decided to give the live OSE Linux another try. I am using Freecad v 0.16 rev 6712 Also my version of OSE is specifically Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 16.04 xenial

Everything went well. It seems all the crashyness has abated. Now I can begin my real concentration on the materials, applying the FreeCAD tutorials to the 8 hole tube file. I watched a video Sarah shared in her log and added it to my materials to use as I complete these tasks. [2 hours]

Wed July 22, 2020

Started Phase 2 of the Development Test. Further studied FreeCAD materials and downloaded the 8-hole tube to get started.

FreeCAD repeatedly crashed as I attempted to create the cube. At first, it crashed when I would import the file to the project. Then I ran apt-get upgrade and apt-get update. To be honest, there was an error when I initially ran these that I had to resolve, and I should have made a note of it but I didn't. After doing so, FreeCAD no longer just crashed because of adding the file to the project. Instead it would crash when I switched work benches. I will do a better job documenting everything going forward, I just didn't want everyone to think I was a punk because of all the problems I was having so I had planned to pretend like they didn't. [4 hours]

Tuesday July 21, 2020

Completed Phase 1 of the Developer Test. Installed OSE Linux to thumbdrive and booted it up. I used Rufus to make the bootable OS in a Windows System because when I tried to use my Ubuntu Studio environment and associated tools I had trouble mounting my USB drive.

I did a test screen recording while studying FreeCAD materials, but it was lost when I restarted the environment. [4 hours]