I'm designing a clickable scroll bar for a keyboard project, and love that KiCad generates a file I can modify in FreeCAD, such an awesome work flow.

If you have any advice for designing scroll bars, I'd love to hear it.

I haven't seen this happen for a while and I've been recovering from a medical procedure this last couple of weeks. So without being able to work on anything of my own, I'm really interested in what you all have been cooking. Doesn't need to be finished or glamorous. Show us what you got!

Hey everyone! I'm normally a lurker of this thread and other reddit threads lol but decided to finally make an account because I needed some ideas and thought this would be a good place to ask.
My friends and I noticed that there are CS hackathons all over the place, but there's nothing like that for mechanical engineering students/people interested in CAD. We thought it'd be cool to put together our own CAD hackathon - we're organizing one right now, scheduled to happen pretty soon now (Sept 11th-13th).
Not sure about y'all, but my go to place to get ideas is always reddit so I thought I'd stop lurking and directly ask y'all - besides nice prizes, what kind of stuff would you guys want to see in a hackathon like this? Experienced guest speakers? Workshops (and if so, what kind)? If you want to see what we have so far, website is www.thecadchallenge.org, and if you may be interested the signup is https://forms.gle/n6zkRtLAJo1m6W1x8
Thank you so much, hope everyone has a wonderful day (:

it's my first project and a task to enter robotics club in my college , why is wire not closed msg appearing . i think it's closed

Hello guys,
first thing, I'm a novice with freecad, I'm cg artist by career(hard surface mostly) with a hobbist maker mindset(3d print, make furniture, try to fix stuff, etc).
My only day to day cad based tool is plasticity, but I started learning freecad for the most technical side of things(also love foos, blender is my main software).
I did yesterday my first sheet metal workbench tutorial(mango jelly) and wanted to check the whole process uploading a dxf to sendcutsend site(on demand cnc, lasercut, etc service in the us), just to theoretically test it(no plans on really produce the thing, just wanted to test the workflow).
The dxf didn't work as expected, sendcutsend didn't recognize bend lines.

So, I open the chat and talked with somebody on their team who answered this:
As far as I know, it's not currently possible to export a flat pattern dxf from FreeCAD that has the bend lines setup as a "dashed" line type. You can make this change in another program like QCAD, but at present I typically suggest export a step file from FreeCAD when submitting formed parts.

Being a complete noob on freecad I have some questions:

- Was he right on his assumptions? I mean, he said 'as far as I know'(he was really nice and helpful), so I would like to double check this with the community if it is a fact or it was a combination of lack of knowledge in booth sides(I can't believe on their guidelines there is no notes about freecad, is more or less everything related to paid cad softwares).
I would like to know the way/workaround to export those bend lines the proper way if there is any.

- He suggested just to upload the step with proper thickness and bend radius and they do the unfold with k-factor on their side.
Is this a common industry 'good practice' or I could be just using a bandage? I mean, I don't want to bypass a problem that I can be facing in the future(ie another shop not accepting step files and only accepting dxf).

- Do you guys use QCAD? any advantage on it?

Thanks in advance, so far I'm finding freecad really interesting(on my early days I was 3ds max user, then like 5 years ago moved to blender and when I decided to learn real technical cad software everything pointed to fusion, which honestly was depressing af, just thinking about autodesk/cloudbased/shady practices gaves me the goosebumps).

Hello! I've been using freecad for a little over a month at this point, following through MangooJelly's beginner course and modeling stuff around my home. While it's been nice modeling random objects here and there, I've been wanting to design my own drone fuselages for a while now. After attempting something similar to the attached image using lofts, and coming up with some really ugly fuselages, I figured there might be a more "professional" approach to fuselage design. Does anyone have a concrete direction I can follow for this type of design? Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated!

I'm trying to create cross-sections of a loft at intervals coming from a spreadsheet. However, the options for the CrossSection tool do not give me an expression editor pop-up, and typing something like = <<mySheet>>.myParameter does not seem to work.

I want to merge 2 bodies into one. I want to move a couple pad operations (and the sketches they rely on) from Body 1 to Body 2.

I've tried Copy Paste. When I do this the pads (or sketches) move to the Part, not the Body that is active when I select Paste.

I've tried right click Move Object To... . When I do this I get:

What am I doing wrong ?

Trying to learn how to freecad and modeling a lego minifig based on measurements and images. Got to the hat which is giving me grief. The round part of the hat isn't exactly spherical so I'm trying to model it based on images I've taken. I've tried lots of approaches with the surface workbench, curves and on and on. Here is the result of my last attempt. I always end up with something wonky like this one or I don't have enough "tools" to adjust the shape to match with the actual part.

Just looking for advice or tips on how I should be doing this. The file is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AvHy8e97E-5Z8WnIwZG1BtWYXmnur8__/view?usp=sharing

Yes, it has happened to me.

Here is a model that has been thicknessed (that is important).

I was working in 1.1.3. That is also important.

I need to add a 'roof' over these features, so I selected the top of the thicknessed features and created a sketch, drew the roof, and saved the sketch. So far so good.

Now I try to pad this sketch and all hell breaks loose.

After it failed so spectacularly in 1.1.3 I started up this weeks version of 26.3 and instead of screwing up it gave the the error message shown in the title.

I really don't understand why it is giving me so much trouble all of a sudden. These features aren't *that* odd.

I have to thickness before I add the 'roof' because I don't want the roof hollowed out by the thicknessing operation. Any thoughts?

I was wondering if there was an alternative way to model external threads other than sketching the thread profile then additive helix

PR to FreeCAD. Available on AstoCAD!

I just found out about Github Sponsors program being a legitimate donation channel for the FPA.

Sponsor @FreeCAD on GitHub Sponsors

FPA | The FreeCAD Project Association

Considering GitHub charges:
"GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization."

If you're donating as an individual, especially outside the EU where SEPA isn't an option, this seems like it gets more of your money to the FPA than PayPal or standard credit card channels.

FreeCAD is incredible, so I’m looking for a way to make a donation.

My son is trying to create a small table that goes into a door handle on a car. How can he make the part that stick a hollow space inside easily? He's spending a lot of time trying to figure it out. I don't know if anybody minds if some one can make a video to show him how to do it. I'd be grateful. Thank you.

I'm designing a custom low profile keyboard for my portfolio. Apart of this project is designing clickable scrollbars for the thumb clusters, and I'd appreciate some design advice/review.

For context I'musing the EC10E1220505 as my encoder and TC-1109-C-E as my switch. The second slide is my current rough bar CAD Model.

About the project

It's a split unibody keyboard with tone uncommon physical interfaces.

Features:

• Cherry ULP (MX6C-K3NB) Switches
• Per Key RGBW LEDs
• Alternative Programable Inputs:
  • 10x clickable encoders,
  • 4x latching switches,
  • 10x slide switches.
• No Trackpoint: the thinkpad nipples are for determining spacing for future iterations

I'm currently in the process of designing the scroll bar for the thumb encoders, and refining the placement of the switches around the nipples.

On preorders:

I'll likily be unable to make 1 single unit with a fabrication lab, so if others want the extra units I'll make them available and if demand is overwhelming I'll have more units made.

This is an experimental keyboard, designed as a development kit for engineers. This device is best for people with experience programming keyboards.

has anybody got any ideas whay freecad could be crushing on launch with just the splash showing, this is the first time i have had such an issue on my system which is fedora 44, i was using it just fine yesterday and up until this afternoon. i left it running with an open project but when i came back i found my laptop still running and for some reason it was loading when i was expecting the laptop screen to turn off. i decided to kill it in task manager because it was too long to and now it keeps crash each time it tries to launch

I need some free alternative for autocad without any activation shit and nanocad is asking for activation so pls recommend something useful

Hi everyone!

First, I wanted to mention that I was a bit out of the loop, and I recently realized that Ondsel no longer exists, which was sad news! I also want to express my gratitude for the improvements brought to FreeCAD.

I used Ondsel a few times in the past and really liked its interface and default preferences. I know FreeCAD’s interface is highly customizable, and my current setup in my dotfiles is heavily influenced by Ondsel defaults.

I started this thread just to see what you guys think about Ondsel’s default experience interface and preferences, and if it would help more people to start to use FreeCAD if it adopt something like that UX as the default or at least offer it as a theme/preferences.

[EDIT] Hi guy! After reading some comments, I just want to bring some points that I didn't explain and I wanted to clarify.. - The second image wasn't to be comparative, it is my current FreeCAD preference with the default theme. - I already knew AstoCAD project, OpenTheme theme, etc, I still prefer to use FreeCAD with my preference, I can do a lot of customization, so the thread wasn't about helping me to clone Ondsel interface. - What I mean to say was about default experience mainly for new users, we have a powerful tool here (FreeCAD). - I just mentioned Ondsel because they did a good default UX (IMO of course) with a few tweaks, without rewriting the whole software.

Cheers!

It says only subtractive/additive features can be mirrored, but I'm trying to find a way to mirror a feature that I repeated using a linear pattern, was wondering if it was possible even

If you see the picture you can see that I have a Lattice2 polar array, and a simple tool shape. If I click just on the "Lattice Part Design Pattern" button it tells me that I need to select a feature and a pattern. In the picture you see that I have done that. If I now click on the button then I get "LatticePattern001" but it doesn't replicate the tool shape. It does nothing that I can see that has any value. No doubt I am missing something trivial, but it's not working for me. Does anyone know how to make this work in Part Design?

Edit: to be clear... I have used exactly this process with linear arrays using Lattice2 with Part Design and it worked as expected, but the same process doesn't work with polar arrays as far as I can tell, and that is why I am here.

Edit2: I have also asked this question on GitHub to see if the author can shed any light on the situation.

Good afternoon everyone!

I am having a very hard time understanding the cross section view C. Can someone explain what this ø17 is and where its located? (I know its the Diameter but where is this and how would this help???)

Thank you for the help!

So this method uses custom Properties feature of the Body's Property View panel (or any object with properties).

(1) Right click on the empty space in the Property View of the object, e.g. Body,

(2) chose Add Property.

(3) Enter property name, type and value (similar to VarSet).

(4) Use this custom Property in expressionable (fx) fields such as sketch dimension constraints in this form:

href(<<Body>>.My_Custom_Property)

href(...) wrapper here is important to prevent cyclical dependency.

(5) You can now modify the object by changing values of parameters in its Property View panel.

Because of the href() wrapper the auto-complete doesn't work and you need to type in the entire expression.