FreeCAD Blog By MangoJelly Solutions

The catenary curve (also known as a chainette) comes from the Latin word catenaria , meaning “chain.” This type of curve naturally occurs when a uniform flexible material, like a rope, chain, or cable, hangs freely under its own weight between two supports. In everyday life and engineering, the catenary shape appears in: Hanging chains Overhead cables Suspension elements Spider webs and vines in nature It distributes weight evenly between its two ends, forming a mathematically predictable and stable arc. The Challenge: Modeling a Catenary in FreeCAD At the time of writing, FreeCAD does not provide a built-in tool to generate a catenary curve with a single click. The only earlier implementation came via the now-discontinued Animation Workbench, where animation paths were used as geometry. My goal is to explore how we might generate a catenary using FreeCAD's Curves Workbench by plotting a set of points and applying interpolation or approximation techniques to buil...

This guide serves as a reference for calculating tool speeds and feed rates for different materials and how to effectively prepare CNC paths and limit switches before starting a job. General Cutting Overview Before initiating a CNC job, it's essential to configure your CAD/CAM toolpath with more than just a feed rate. Choosing the correct cutting strategy—whether roughing or finishing—ensures efficiency, precision, and prolonged tool life. Preparing the Toolpath Depending on the material and project complexity, it's often advantageous to perform two distinct passes: Roughing Pass: Removes the bulk of the material quickly. Finishing Pass: Refines the surface with higher precision. Roughing Pass Strategy The goal here is speed and efficiency. You can achieve this by: Using a larger bit (e.g., straight flute) to cover more surface area. Increasing tool load, which removes more material per pass. Techniques to Increase Load Increase Z-axis depth per pass....

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 array to...

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 JUMP TO IMAGES Do you want to purchase the complete series along with others and keep forever?  Check out my shop https://ko-fi.com/mang0/shop 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, i...