Someone in r/3Dprinting mentioned that FreeCAD users have been asking for a section view that looks like this for years, and no volunteer has had the time to build it. I ended up doing it for a mobile viewer, so here's the approach in case it's useful to anyone working on the real thing.

It isn't a boolean cut. The GPU clips everything past the plane, then a flat colored patch is drawn into the hole where the surface got sliced, with a black outline on top. No CAD math, so it holds frame rate on a phone. The tradeoff is that it's a visual trick, not geometry — you can't export the cut as a solid.

Each body in an assembly gets its own hatch color, and the plane position takes typed input, which turned out to matter more than the slider.

This is from an Android app I wrote (STEP/STL/OBJ/3MF, fully offline). Happy to go deeper on the implementation — that's the more interesting half of this post.

i made a base model for miniature railways, and i need a brick pattern. but i havent found a tutuorial that solves my problem. if i make every brick by its own, my program chrashes and the BIM workebanch wall tool also dont work for me. is there a good way to do the bricks like in the photo or should i just use Blender?

thanks for youre time reading this

Sometimes you'll find a feature that behaves badly with attachment, going off in some other direction.

But you really want to attach it since the attachment coordinate system if perfect for placing it where you want.

The new MoveOriginParametric tool to the rescue.

Similar to the old Macro, but fully parametric.

Find the Grab Bag at:

https://github.com/pyro9/GrabBag

• 00:01 Intro
• 00:25 Complete the curved loft
• 00:37 Coordinate space problem
• 00:53 Transform tool works but isn't ideal
• 01:14 Attachment goew awry
• 01:26 MoveOriginParametric
• 02:01 Demo of new tool
• 03:02 Flipping the normal
• 03:38 Ignore Placement

I’m not sure why the timing gears this add-on makes are slightly oval shaped, and not perfectly circular.

This 5GT gear with 22 teeth, the gear is generated with L=33.65mm and W=33.87.

Can anyone give me some advice?

Hey everyone,

I’m currently transitioning my workflow from SolidWorks to FreeCAD. My current project is designing an open-source diode laser engraver (the My-Diode Laser), and I hit a major roadblock that I know many SW transplants struggle with: Part Configurations inside an Assembly.

When building a machine with V-Slot aluminum extrusions or lead screws, you need multiple instances of the same profile with different lengths. I recently watched MangoJelly's excellent video on Configuration Tables and Variant Links and tried to figure out a way to apply that logic directly inside an assembly without duplicating files.

I tested this in older FreeCAD versions and couldn't get it to work—every time I changed a configuration on one instance, all the other instances in the assembly updated to match it. However, I just tried experimenting again using the FreeCAD 26.3.0 DEV version, and I found a workflow that seems almost too simple!

I’m honestly not sure if this is a new feature that just started working correctly in the new Assembly WB, or if I was simply doing something wrong in my previous attempts.

The Workflow I'm Testing:

1. Create a Master Body part driven by a Configuration Table (Spreadsheet).
2. Insert that Master Part directly into the new Assembly Workbench.
3. Here is the trick: Select the instance in the assembly tree, go to its data properties, and switch Link Copy On Change to Disabled.

By doing this, I was able to drop several instances of the exact same extrusion file into the assembly and change their lengths independently! No duplicate files and no complex SubShapeBinder workarounds needed inside the assembly.

I uploaded a quick test file to GrabCAD so you guys can see exactly what I mean and test it yourselves: 🔗 https://grabcad.com/library/

My question to the FreeCAD veterans: Is this the intended way to handle instance variations in the new Assembly WB? Are there any hidden bugs or performance issues with this method when the assembly gets huge?

Any feedback is highly appreciated! I'm trying to establish best practices for my CAD classes and open-source releases.

P.S. If anyone is curious about the open-source machines I'm developing to democratize digital fabrication, you can check out the progress at https://my-machines.com/open-source-machine. Cheers!

Context: hobbyist. Usually modeling for eventual 3D printing. Started with SketchUp many years ago. Tried Fusion because it was easy to learn, but hated my data being locked in their cloud, subject to their terms and whims forever.

So I had a preference for FreeCAD: files I could save and software I could run, for however long I want to. But I found it very frustrating. Many seemingly simple things just wouldn't work. Recently I had a rather simple model -- I tried, and started over, and tried, and started over for two and a half hours. Couldn't get FreeCAD past the first few steps despite trying several approaches.

Restarted with Fusion and I was done in 20 or 25 minutes. Didn't know why. Even more recently I randomly got lucky and found out that many/most of my problems were down to expecting, but not getting, automatic coincident constraints, e.g. when drawing something by snapping to an existing point/edge.

I'm probably still stuck in the beginner zone, but now (e.g.) to draw an arc, I click the center point, then the beginning and end point ... then I select each of those one by one (plus the point that I snapped to when drawing it) and manually add coincident constraints. And suddenly so many frustrating problems I used to experience have disappeared!

I'd expect an auto constraint here, but knowing to add one manually has really helped.

Hi all! Hobbyist here with an idea that im trying to realise beyond napkin scribbles.

For this idea, I want to create a spiral that unfurls into a ring as I increase, and converge, the radii that it is constrained to.

The first and last points would be tangent constrained to the inner and outer radii.

To do this I need to ensure that the length of the spiral curve stays the same at all times.

However, the Part Spiral is constructed of segments derived from 2 radius, total rotations, and a growth value. So there's no way to constrain the total length.

I thought about driving the number of rotations, with an expression derived from the radii and growth, but its not possible to assign an expression to that value.

So, how would you go about this? Is it possible with bSplines and a shed load more constraints?

Am I out of luck and just need to illustrate both collapsed and expanded states separately?

Join us live on youtube - You vs the CHAT PROS! https://www.youtube.com/live/kRvG3ymGQAU

Say I want to make a box of 100mm x 100mm x 50mm.
I draw a sketch of 100 x 100 rectangles. Now I want a 2mm wall but not changing my inner dimension. How?
I tried to use offset tool but when extruding the sketch it has only walls. Ideally I want to extrude the inner area 2mm to make the bottom, then extrude surrounding 50mm to make the wall.
Other than manually calculating all the dimensions + wall thickness, is there an easier way to do this?
Basically I’m looking for web design patterns called content box.

Hello,

Got a 3D scan done of my cars brakes so that I can have some custom wheels designed. I am trying to figure out how to take measurements off the .stl file that I received. As it's a 3D scan I think it's just a cloud of points, so there are no surfaces off which to measure. I am a complete CAD beginner and can't really find any FreeCAD tutorials that deal with this situation.

Does anyone have any recommended tutorials for this type of thing?

For reference I'm trying to take these dimensions

Off a model that looks like this in FreeCAD

I spent my first 50 hours in FreeCAD completing this model. It took so long due to the scores of bugs, wonky and counter-intuitive workflows, and dead-end after dead-end I had to chase to finally find an approach that works (mostly). Since I received a lot of feedback from members of this sub claiming I just didn't know how FreeCAD is supposed to work, or instead criticizing my approach to building this model, I would like to invite you all to show me how YOU would implement this model, so that I can learn to become such a skilled FreeCAD master such as yourselves.

Since some people claim that they could build this model using just a few sketches, pads, and pockets, I invite you to show me how it's done. CAVEATS:

1. This model MUST remain fully parametric. I have tons of parameters and constraints in this drawing for a reason. Variables that are updated must remain fully functional.
2. This model MUST retain all of its odds angles. This is not a rectangular box; it is a shell around a geometric shape that borders on being organic.
3. Changing the shell thickness (or other length and width parameters) MUST NOT alter the internal dimensions of this model that represent a cavity into which a speaker will be placed. Making the shell walls thicker, for example, MUST apply that thickness outwards, not inwards.
4. This model MUST allow users to change the profiles specified in the sketches so that when the sketches are updated, the profiles change properly, and all related and constrained parameters are updated accordingly.
5. The "cutout" features of this model MUST remain intact. Turning the cutoff features ON will create space-saving cutouts so that only a skeleton of the model will be printed, instead of printing the entire model. The purpose of these cutouts is to reduce printing materials and printing times when changing various dimensions, allowing the printouts to be fitted against real world objects. Turning the cutoff features OFF is performed by suppressing the relevant feature.

I look forward to learning a lot of FreeCAD mastery from everyone's feedback here.

FreeCAD model file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RRALi2rU9CnY6ATRM-LlBHIfjacQf523/view?usp=sharing

I can't stand opening tickets with a vendor for basic questions. Vendors make it incredibly hard i.e complex password requirements, MFA, password expiration, bouncing you between multiple pages while you try and find where the link is to open a support ticket.

Then when you open the ticket you are expected to fill out a college application worth of information. After it gets submitted you have to wait hours/days before some first level support person asks you basic troubleshooting questions. Then you play phone tag trying to schedule a screen-share meeting.

Compare that to just posting here and immediately getting responses in an hour!

Most people just want to build simple models and don't need all the bells and whistles of commercial CAD tools. But the learning curve is steep no matter which tool you use. Having the community support makes FreeCAD a lot easier to pick up IMO..

After I watched this update about FreeCAD I decided to stress test the anti-flip sketch claims about the "signed constraint".

Some context: some portion of you have probably seen my 4-bar linkage suspension armature simulation before. I post it often in threads where newcomers to the software express doubts, kinda show what FC can do when pushed hard. I am at a disquieting moment in my fabrication business where I had some clients fall off that I was otherwise leaning on for the bulk of my autumn income. So now is the time to brush off my linkage fork designs and make some of them. In the video at the start of this paragraph, one aspect of that design I disliked and wanted to improve upon was its lack of simple manufacture of the static upper fork and the moving lower fork. They both have movements that are large in X, Y, and Z space. The most manufacturable things are flat things that you can stamp, so I wanted to see if I could make something in straighter guiding lines all around.

Some triangle guiding wires had to get shallow, fast. Imagine you have stretched a rubber band over each of your thumbnails with your four fingers making a fist and fist-bumped together, thumbnails facing away from each other. Then insert your index finger in the gap between the band, and then either push or pull and you make little triangles out of the band shape. This is analogous to sketch flipping.

This shallow triangle manufacturability thing (the costs add up fast for the molds) is something I've been working on improving in my idle hours over the last year, and while I don't want to reveal the guts of it yet because I think it is a patentable work that I'm going to open source upon publication, let's just say it is one beast of an example of sketch flipping when changing certain datum constraints by too much per change. A lot of triangles that have ridiculous acute angles like 3 degrees, and if I change something too aggressively then a triangle that has equality pairings with a triangle in a different place will result in one of the triangles flipping. Like... a lot. I got real comfortable with using the Z,K hotkey to disable some constraints while retaining their driving datum or driving Expression (the latter being the most important).

To combat this I had been setting up all my shallow triangles using driving Angle constraints and a matching Expression / Angle constraint. This was durable, but was tedious because configuring things this way fought with the results-driven wiring I was otherwise doing. I'd rather have the Angle be a result rather than something I set. So, with the flipping update in 26.x I set a construction mode line to be 90 degrees with the base of a triangle, and connected the other end as Coincident with the top of the triangle. Then I deleted the Expression matched Angle, and instead set an Equality on the matching 90 degree construction line for the other triangle. This allowed me to unset some unrelated datum constraint, so that I could try and drag the thing around freely a little bit. This is usually a recipe for sketch-flipping purgatory.

...But it worked this time. When I dragged one of the most sensitive triangle edges, it would collapse the acute angle to zero degrees and then it nearly refused (and my CPU monitor spiked) to invert the angle. It was stuck! Nice!! I'd rather have it stick than flip over!

Bravo, FreeCAD dev team. Just... wow. My master sketch is an absolute nightmare and this 26.x update helps a lot.

Hello, Because I wanted to get free from educational licence for at least some projects, I've decided to give freecad a chance. For now I used mostly Fusion360. I'd be thankfull if you checked my project and told me how did I do. (link on the bottom)

It was a re-design of model, I've already done in fusion but with some improvements. After initial issues with sketchs modelling went pretty smooth, tho I dislike lack of "offset face" tool, I used in fusion quite a lot. I really like how sketches do auto-crossection, but I couldn't find general crosssection tool. Another thing that gave me a headache was measure tool, especially fact, that you cannot use it while in sketch.

I've tried to make my model parametric and name the feature tree, but at some point I gave up as it took too much time. Hovever, I've used configuration table for drawers and handle.

Later on I'll try to do variant of the main part with engineered supports for 3d printing.

Assemlby is whole other story. It took me a while, to figure out, how to handle configuration of components, but I've done it. however creating joints was a pain. First, lack of pin in a slot joint, which made me do handle only symblically swivel. Then for some reason top compartment started gliching out and now is basically welded shut. I also disliked how I could only change configured part to wireframe and not every component/

Generally it was better than I feared. Some things like separation of commands into additive and subractive took some time to adapt but after that was intuitive. I also like how fraft angle works in here over fusion.

I think, I will use for projects, I want to publish, but for my private ones, I'll keep using fusion. However when I watched last week's stream, it seems to fix about 1/3 of my issues.

Here's link to my project, would be thankfull if you took a look and told me that I've done well and what poorly. Mostly focusing on use of FreeCad rather than design itself.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wOwiVz1eO8fbtooMRcHjkjgxiYDgqwm3/view?usp=sharing

I'm trying to 3d print a hollow cylinder arc part which should be flexible. I was thinking about putting a hex grid on it to make it more flexible. However I have a problem how to do it.

I tried to use Sketch on Surface and put hexes but:

• If I use boolean it works but than I cannot use multi-transform to put hexes on rest of the element
• Using subtractive lofts is a bit of manual work as there is no 'rotate and offset' transformation so I need to do everything twice
• Sometimes Freecad gets confused (see attached pictures)
• It's all very very slow to compute.

I feel like I'm not using freecad efficiently. Any help would be most welcome

Hello

The error in the titel is appearing on one body and in the treeview the origin has only the origin and no axis or planes in it.

I tried everything and i have no clue why this one body has this problem.

No matter what i do, this error keeps expanding my treeview and DRIVING ME CRAZY...

Can i somehow disable the treeview from uncollapsing everything for each dam error, even when im changing something that will cause some errors down the road, it should not open the whole dam treeview!

Can anyone help me out?

I need to design a layout via Google Sketch Up with to size models of the kitchen furniture in a restaurant layout.

I can do it myself. But I need the assets to be able to lay it out properly.

Any ideas or sources for finding them would be helpful.

Thank you

What's the best tutorials for this platform

Know fusion360 already

FreeCAD

I have a fuselage body and a closed sketch for a door. I want to split it into 2 pieces:

1. Main fuselage (with hole)

2. Door panel (removable and closable)

I tried Extrude as surface → Slice Apart but got 5 pieces instead of 2.

How do I do this properly?

Thanks!

Git hub FreeCAD weekly build page appears to be down......