FreeCAD Blog By MangoJelly Solutions

What is a Catenary Curve? Catenary also known as chainette coming from the Latin "Catenaria" meaning“chain” describes a curve which sags under load along its length transferring this load equally to the two supports. In nature any freely hanging flexible string like material whether it being a chain, cable, spider silk etc assumes this shape if it is of uniform mass per unit along it's length.  In engineering we see this in overhead cables, chains or any long flexible connection between two points.  The Challenge At time of writing a curve of this description cannot be applied to modelling at a touch of a button, it will need some setup before. The only place I have seen this subject touched upon and solved is by use of the now defunct 'Animation WB' using animation paths as geometry.  My thoughts is that width aid of the Curves WB we can plot the points for the curves and then use the approximate curve or interpolate curve against these points to create a curve ...

This post is for a reference for calculating tool speeds and feed rates for different materials and setting up limit switches. General Cutting preparing for the cut Before making the cut we have to first prepare the path within our CAD/CAM package with a few additional settings other than our usual feed rate. To do this we have to decide on what type of pass we are going to make. Depending on the project it may be beneficial to machine the project with two passes. The first pass is called a roughing pass which aims to remove as much unwanted material as quickly as possible. The second pass is called a detailing pass, smoothing the edges and adding the intricate detail. Roughing Pass To remove as much material in the shortest time possible one or a combination of the following may be used:  A larger bit to move as much of the material as possible. Increasing the load on the tool to remove more of the material at any one time. A larger bit such as a large straight flute to create ...

What is a Macro? A Macro is code which can be run to automate a tasks.  This general differs from standard programs as a macro is normally run through or targets an existing program to automate actions that would normally be done manually i.e. in FreeCAD to control a simulation or animation.   Why Do We Need One For Animation So why do we need these in animation?  There are a number of ways to create animation and some additional workbenches take over the need for macros, allowing for a process of recording the movement and playback these are fine for exploding and imploding assembles.  But if we want to go beyond seeing how things fit together and explore subject areas such as simulating a suspension system tackling bumpy roads then it is inevitable that we will need to write at least some code.  The aim is to write as little as possible and allow FreeCAD to do the hard work.  Your First Macro, 'Hello World!' So it's time to write your first macro! It...

This project gives some background and resources to the project to create a fully parametric toy brick that can be configured to make any size of brick with the minimum size of 2 x 2. Driven by a spreadsheet and using FreeCAD the designer can change the parameters in the spreadsheet resulting in the brick changing to the desired size and the studs, nubs and tubes dynamically reconfigure to create a new brick. Both parts of the tutorial can be found on my channel at PART 1 : PART 2 : The technical drawing is below: Design Log First tests with the part design workbench though successful had the following flaws: 1. Unable to shrink this down to a 2 x 2 brick which has four studs and one tube. The linear pattern in the multi-transform requires more than one feature otherwise it errors. This only allowed for bricks that had no smaller than two tubes on the base. 2. The speed of calculations and rendering was reduced because the the pattern features not being optimised as say the draft arra...

Welcome to the total beginners course to FreeCAD 0.20. In this is a two part lesson we will practice our tracing skill in the form of a mini project. Using the below reference photos we will create a more complex part which will consist of repeating features. We will utilise the symmetry tools to ease construction in both FreeCAD sketcher and Part Design workbench. This project work will help teach the fundamentals of freeCAD allowing a understanding of the basics but delivering this information via teaching you different workflows. In this tutorial we will be tracing photos imported into FreeCAD via the image workbench https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Image_Workbench The story of this tutorial The idea and first attempt at creating this tutorial was back in FreeCAD 0.18.  The physical part itself, well, I have no idea what really it is, it looks like something from some flat pack furniture (I believe it was left over from a kitchen fit that was done) and it ended up in my in-tray for...