FreeCAD Blog By MangoJelly Solutions

Hexagon mesh and structures feature heavily in the CAD industry.  Being a naturally strong structure they are built by insects to build homes so it would be only common sense to utilise them in human structures for their strength and reliability. For this tutorial we will be creating a hexagon 'Bee Hive' surfaces using the curves workbench in FreeCAD.  To do this we will need the curves workbench installed (from the tools menu > add on manager > workbench tab > curves. And from the same location click on the Macros tab and select the honeycomb macro. FreeCAD will ask you to restart which you must do for these to take effect.  Please not: The macro when first run will create a file, you must restart FreeCAD again once this file is created.  Subsequent use doesn't need a restart. We are going to start creating our object first using a simple curved surface.  We will start with an extruded curve. 1. Create a  new file. 2. Jump into the sketcher workbench and create a

There is nothing like experimenting and seeing what happens when learning something new.  For millennia humans have learnt by doing, learning through success and failure. This process is known simply as 'play'.  FreeCAD offers a coding environment to allows you to do just that, it's called the Python Console. To start our experimenting we need to make the necessary panels available.  This will allow access to both the Python Console and the Report View. Python Console The Python Console allows us to enter and experiment with commands and to see what operations look like in code such as creating pads and pockets. The majority of these operations are translated and displayed in the panel as Python commands. To show this panel we go to the top menu and click on: View > Panels > Python Console Report View Any output that may result from executing our code, including those from FreeCAD itself, are displayed in the report view.  Messages such as warnings of potential proble