FreeCAD Badge

Hint: The specific skill set in the FreeCAD badge involves using FreeCAD 16 to create 3D geometries of any complexity. The demonstrated skill involves using the power 2D Sketcher workbench in FreeCAD, followed by extrusion and pocketing operations. These steps can be stacked infinitely upon each other to generate 3D objects of any desired complexity, and thus serve a basic design skill for producing parts for real design, including for 3D printing as a prominent way in which OSE prototypes things. The FreeCAD Badge involve a 2-level demonstration of this workflow - by creating a 3D object, with a 3D feature upon this 3D object, and another 3D feature upon the original feature. As such, this exercise is known as the Feature on a Feature Exercise, and can be done by anyone who masters this basic workflow in one minute. Proof of competency is a publicly shared video capturing this one minute of this exercise - published to one's Work Log.

About

The OSE FreeCAD badge certifies basic proficiency in FreeCAD 0.16 which allows individuals to participate in OSE's large scale collaborative design events such as Design Sprints, or to participate on the OSE Dev Team. Using modular design, wikis, and realtime editable docs - it is now possible to collaborate on rapid CAD design with hundreds to thousands of people. See more details in the video, which then goes through the exercise in the second half.

The working document used in the video is

edit

Motivation

The goal here is to qualify hundreds of people to collaborate on Design Sprints where create a complete design of a complex product such as a tractor or car in as little as one day. We do this by using existing Part Libraries for FreeCAD, Design Guides, and above all - a collaborative, realtime process where we break the design into small parts and then work together as a team. The key here is having enough people show up - breaking through the typical solo or proprietary CAD design process with inherent bottlenecks to design speed. Standard design involves locking down parts as only one person works on a part, or proprietary design which is not open to collaboration. We find these industry standards hugely wasteful of effort. We are breaking through these patterns by allowing many people to work on the same part, working in parallel teams, and keeping the design fully open. Our aim is to demonstrate that an open design process can lead to superior economic results - as in design completion and iteration on time scales of days as opposed to months or years.

How It Works

In order to make peoples' effort worthwhile, we aim for tangible results. As such, we host Design Sprints only when 144 or more people commit to participating - 12 teams of 12. This number is a minimum that allows for rapid design progress - and is based on a typical breakdown of a design into 12 modules with a team working on each module. With basic training that can be acquired in 4 hours of time, one can participate meaningfully in large-scale, collaborative CAD design. By learning basic design principles from Design Guides, plus the philosophy or mindset of Collaborative Literacy, plus the technicalities of documenting so that one's work is transparent - then one is able to participate meaningfully. The FreeCAD Badge certifies a basic proficiency of the technical skill required for CAD design.

Procedure

1. First, note that we are using FreeCAD 16, the legacy version, which is significantly easier to learn than the current version. It also suffices for basic OSE workflows. You can read a longer discussion on this at FreeCAD 16 vs Latest.
2. Set up your own Work Log. Email info at opensourceecology.org after you have your work log so we can add a time graph. Log your process, and keep track of time. The purpose here is to learn where people are getting stuck, so we can improve our instructionals. Help us do that to help accelerate our progress as a whole - learning FreeCAD is the foundational skill at OSE. Please help us make this FreeCAD test quicker to learn by providing very specific feedback on any blocks, or things that worked well for you. Our goal is to teach anyone to do this exercise in 1 hour or less.
3. Download FreeCAD 16 Appimage
4. Do the Lesson 3a and 3B from FreeCAD 101, or use this hint
   • Optional: If you want to dig deeper, have a look at the discussion what a feature is in FreeCAD [1]. (It seem more correct to call our exercise: Feature-on-a-Feature-on-a-Feature.)
5. Do the actual exercise of drawing a feature on a feature in FreeCAD according to the above lesson. Please use FreeCAD 16, as this is our official version (it is a legacy version, with a simpler interface which helps new users to learn it faster).
   1. Create a 3D object by creating a sketch on any plane and turning it into a pad.
   2. Put a 3D Feature on top of that object (pad or pocket) by drawing a sketch on any face of the 3D object, and then creating a pad or pocket.
   3. Put another 3D feature on the Feature from Step 2. This is your Feature-on-a-Feature exercise.
6. Record a video (e.g., with OBS Studio, which is OSE's preferred way) where you show that in 1 minute you can do the Feature-on-a-Feature exercise.
7. Post your video on a public video site.
   • Optional: Add a suitable license for your video. It is good practice to provide a license for all assets that you create in the context of OSE. OSE uses OSHWA compliant licenses. For this exercise it is recommended that you use the CC BY-SA license. You can use the following template if you wish Licensing_Templates#CC_BY-SA_Boilerplate.
8. Embed this video on your Work Log. Send an email to info at opensourceecology.org letting us know, with a link to your log. Please also answer the following questions to help us learn how to teach FreeCAD more effectively:
   1. What were the videos that you studied to learn FreeCAD? Please include links.
   2. Was Lesson 3A and 3B from FreeCAD 101 sufficient? How could we improve the lessons so you can get the FreeCAD Badge faster?
   3. How long did it take you to install FreeCAD 16?
   4. How long did it take you to learn the skill to perform the Feature-on-a-Feature Exercise?
9. You can add a FreeCAD badge to your work log - we'll send you your badge icon via email.

Notes

Note this is not the same as an OSE Developer Badge, which requires more knowledge of wiki documentation and cloud collaborative editing.

Recipients

Once you have received your badge (via email), add yourself to the list.

2021

1. - #19 - Neal Ladani - [2]
2. - #18 - Holger Kienle - Kienle_Log#FreeCAD_Badge_submission -
3. - #17 - Kim_Log#FreeCAD_Badge_Feedback -
4. - #16 - Matt Log -
5. - #15 - Sam Log -
6. - #14 - Leonardo Mazzariol - Leonardo Log -
7. - #13 - Prince Robinson - Prince_Log#FreeCAD Badge Comments. Video - [3].
8. - #12 - Tauat - Tauat_Log#FreeCAD_Badge_Notes. Source: File:Tauatbadge.svg.zip.
9. - #11 - Jonathan Quesnel - Video with solid of revolution - [4].
10. - #10 - Jeff Higdon - Video - [5].
11. - #9 - Odundo Sidigu - May 26, 2021 - Video - [6].
12. - #8 - Hampus Bremberg - May 23, 2021 - Video - [7]. .
13. - #7 - Joshua Thomas - May 20, 2021 - Video - [8]. Source File - File:Joshua.svg.zip. .
14. - #6 - Ken Makunga - April 7, 2021 - Video - [9]. .
15. - #5 - Michael McKinsey - Mar 1, 2021. Video https://redmatrix.us/cloud/mmc1800/freecad-0.16.mp4]. .
16. - #4 - Konstantinos Stourkas - Feb 7, 2021. Video [10]. Badge Source - File:Konstantinos.svg.zip. .
17. - #3 - Brad Morrison - #003 - Jan 12, 2021. Video - [11]. Badge Source - File:Brad.svg.zip.

2020

• Logan Loeb - #002 - Dec 6, 2020. Video - [12]. Badge Source - File:Logan.svg.zip.
• Justin Garrett - #001 - Oct 28, 2020 - Video - [13]. Badge Source - File:Justin.svg.zip.
• Jessica Leete - #000 - March 1, 2020 - Video - [14].

Data Collection

Every person is asked: how long did it take you to learn - with intent of OSE decreasing that time by producing higher quality instuctionals. So that 1 hour becomes the norm (pending software install - via OSE Linux).

Links

• Badge source is at OSE Badges. A badge can be easily created.
• FreeCAD Badges Followup Email as of Dec 2020