FreeCAD Blog By MangoJelly Solutions

This article explains how to setup and run #freeCAD with multiple configuration files. In the past when teaching FreeCAD on my YouTube channel I often got asked where a toolbar is or why mine differ from the viewers. About 12 months ago I stop customising my toolbars and configuration as my channel supporters are my first priority when it comes to my FreeCAD work. I have now only just stumbled across the terminal commands to run FreeCAD with different options using the -u parameter. After a bit of reading I found I could run FreeCAD from different configurations. This allows me to set up a directory to hold the individual configs and then run different bash scripts to load FreeCAD and point it to the configuration of my liking. Below is an example of my Linux bash script I use to load my configuration 1. All you need to do is supply the location of the configuration file with a specific switch, if one cannot be found then the default configuration is loaded. Once you have change...

I talked about creating a Rhino3D tween curve on my Patreon page a few weeks ago ( https://www.patreon.com/posts/75954207 ) and an idea that I have to get this working as a macro in #FreeCAD. But I thought I try to make a few intermediary macros to get myself back into the swings of programming again.  I already created the 'curve to freehand b-spline' in a previous post but now I want to take this a step further and create a 'ISO curve to freehand b-spline mesh'.  This means that there would be a fully eatable mesh that can be lofted, approximated with some kind of NURBS surface such as a Gordan surfaced or even a plane loft or ruled surface.  Building it with Freehand B-Splines will allow a user to double clicking the individual curves to edit the mesh via the control points.  The ISO surface interrogates a selected surface and creates a UV grid which follows the contours.  My idea is to take this ISO grid and make it fully editable as a mesh allow the resulti...

The starts of a List of #FreeCAD Errors With Resolution / Fix / Work around To date there is no known list of error messages with resolutions in existence.  The process of creating such a list is not straight forward.  You may think that all that is needed is for a programmer to go through the code and list them along with the resolution, but it is not that straight forwards. FreeCAD is written in C++ and modules can be written in both C++ and Python. If your developer or have an understanding of the coding languages used then you could search the projects github repository.  Looking through the code for the commands that output the standard information, error and warning message to the screen will allow a list to be compiled detailing these errors.  I have included the links below to allow you to take a look at where in the source code that these messages are echoed to the screen : https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/search?q=printerror https://github.com/FreeCAD/...

Boosting FreeCAD Performance with the Linux Nice Command If you're a FreeCAD user frustrated with performance lags, especially during heavy modeling or rendering tasks, here's a trick that might help you push your CPU to prioritize FreeCAD. The Terminal Snippet That Might Improve Performance Buried in an obscure forum thread (unfortunately now lost to time), I found this little gem of terminal wisdom: sudo nice -n -20 sudo -u yourusername ~/your/location/of/freecad.AppImage This command sets FreeCAD to run with a niceness value of -20, which is the highest possible CPU priority for user-space processes. Understanding the Nice Command in Linux The nice command controls how the Linux scheduler prioritizes processes. Here’s a quick breakdown: Niceness range: -20 (highest priority) to 19 (lowest) Default niceness: 0 You can check process niceness using top or htop,  look under the NI column. For more technical depth, you can refer to: Wikipedia - Nice (...

FreeCAD Macro: Create Freehand B-Spline from a Selected Curve If you're exploring FreeCAD macros or looking to replicate Rhino3D’s tween curve functionality, this guide will walk you through how to create a freehand B-spline from a selected curve using the Curves workbench. This macro is part of an ongoing effort to bring more organic, editable curve control into FreeCAD. Goal: Convert a Selected Curve to a Freehand B-Spline The first step in this project is converting a selected edge or curve into a freehand B-spline, not directly connected, but one that follows the curvature of the original. This allows for more flexible editing and prepares us for the next stages, like applying this to ISO curves on a surface and generating multiple B-splines per edge. Watch the Macro in Action Here’s an unlisted video showing the macro in use: https://youtu.be/fycOs-0Oy8M What Is "Discretize" and Why Use It? To build a B-spline, we first discretize the edge. This simply mean...

If you follow my FreeCAD YouTube channel you'll have seen the quantity of videos that I have produced.  At time of speaking over 340 videos are available to watch at: https://www.youtube.com/@MangoJellySolutions   These are being added to weekly and currently I have been non stop averaging 2 videos a week.  This includes also making content for Patreon, replying to comments and questions (my inbox is constantly full so please bear with me) and managing the many aspects of being a teacher and content creator (including starting this blog). Most of my video's are 'adhoc' but I do have some long running series / themes such as: Learning FreeCAD for Beginners Understanding FreeCAD Curves Workbench Series Lattice2 Series Lately I have started working with a developer who has extensive knowledge of the FreeCAD code base, the hope this is going to unlock the secrets of FreeCAD and bring more value to the channel.  In exchange I am helping him understand YouTube as a creator...

Being visually impaired myself (due to injury I became partially blind and now have an artificial lens in one of my eyes to 'fix' my sight) and the channel attracting a good spread across ages with varying eye sight and visual abilities I have decided to start to build a information resource to help in this area. Anyone with any information they think that would be helpful and should be included please contact me and I will add. This includes both tools and style sheets that can help with visual aids. What styles work for you? Do you like the dark styles or do you prefer the default light style that comes with freeCAD as default. Please note that his page is still a 'work in progress' and it's worth checking back for updates. I am especially interested in any setting for higher definition monitors that need special configuration if any. At the moment there is a project carved out in the freeCAD development road map to fix issues with larger and high resolution...

If you're looking for inspiration from the FreeCAD community, you’ll want to check out the remarkable work of Jan Jindra , featured in the FreeCAD Facebook group. Jan has combined architecture, history, FreeCAD modeling, and 3D printing to recreate some of the Czech Republic’s most iconic landmarks, its many tourist lookout towers . Czechia: The Land of Lookout Towers Did you know that the Czech Republic has more tourist watch towers than any other country in the world ? Over 300 towers (and counting) dot the Czech landscape. Many of these architectural gems are free to the public and serve not just as observation points, but as historical monuments that span centuries, from the late 1800s through both World Wars and into modern times. As new towers continue to be built, the tradition is still very much alive. These structures are more than just attractions; they offer a view, both literal and historical, into the country's rich and evolving past. From Travel Photograph...

This is a quick tutorial of how to make organic structures in FreeCAD's curves workbench. Inspired from the original Rhino 3D tutorials I created that may be somewhere on the internet (it's been a long time!) I have taken inspiration from the curve tweeting tool which creates intermediate copies of the curve by dividing two supplied curves into an equal number of points, finds the midpoint between the corresponding points on the curves. and interpolates the tween curve through those points. At time of writing FreeCAD doesn't have this feature but we can get a similar result using the iso curves. Here's the process: 1. Create a sketch with two curves, individual sketches could be used but the Curves WB can be used to extract and move both curves. Think of this just as a template. 2. Go to the Curves workbench and select one curve and click the join curve tool or from the top menu; Curves >join curves. Repeat for the second curve, note: the newly created join curve may...

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...