Thank you for talking your time and making these tutorials. There are many tutorials online on Freecad, but you are especially good att connecting the dots so that one learns the correct workflow and the right order of doing the operations. Freecad can be frustrating some times, for example when you can't pad something, or any other error that is not self explanatory to new users. Keep up the good work!
Fantastic series - this covers a fundamental form of learning - wash, rinse, repeat. Absolutely brilliant and my favorite lessons so far. Please keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed this lesson, I dont get as many views of lessons that are divided over 2 or more instalments so I tried to break this one up into individual completed parts. I have a number of longer builds that I want to bring to the channel the challenge is how to present them and keep people interested. Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed
@@MangoJellySolutions I think you have a way of maintaining a continuous flow that keeps things moving along.. Others dordle too much... Also while I have not finished the piston yet, there is a definite reward at the end of the series - to see it work. I guess you can only upload them and see how people respond?
Excellent video. Appreciate hearing your strategies for chasing down redundant and missing constraints and identifying faces that sketches are attached to.
Hey mango! thank you so much for these videos, they're incredibly helpful!!! I'm experiencing an issue with FreeCAD (0.20.1) that hopefully someone here could help me with? on minute 11:50 you select 2 points by clicking and dragging, and then you use a coincidence constraint. For some reason my version of FreeCAD just does not allow me to select the 2 points (any 2 points) by click and dragging, is there a setting I'm missing that would allow me to do this?
There is no setting that I know of but there is a couple of things to check 1) are you viewing the sketch from the rear as it's extremely hard to select points from the reverse of the sketch. And 2) are you selecting from left to right or right to left as they select in a different way (may be still the same in sketcher) . Select from left to right. Glad your enjoying the videos. This selecting issue is pretty strange behaviour if it's none of these.
@@MangoJellySolutions Thank you so much for the reply!! I'm truly enjoying the content, it is extremely helpful!! I ended up just moving them a little and then doing the coincidence constraints just to complete the exercise, but I will keep this in mind!!
I think anyone who has gone back and checked every node of a fully constrained sketch that wouldn't pad would appreciate the verify sketch tool in sketcher. I know it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.
Thanks for the comments. Yes I don't know what I would do without that tool and the check geometry tool in the part workbench. Once I learnt about those it made FreeCAD a much more friendly environment to work in.
A great series you are developing. One small issue I see with the crank shaft is where the center of rotation of the flywheel is. For it to function properly, the axle center must be at the center of the flywheel, not the bulk mass end. The bulk mass is the counterpoise to the piston to equalize the mass on both sides of the flywheel when in motion. 😁
Thanks for the comments glad your enjoying the series. Yes your not the first to say that lol. I think if this was functioning it would rip the engine apart. 😆
14:35 there's a hidden feature with FreeCAD that can be very useful in cases like these, and I only found it out by accident after a long time of confusion: If you drag a selection in the Sketcher from the *left to right*, it will *only* select what fits into the selection *entirely*. Meaning if you would have selected there from the left, you'd only get the 2 vertices. But if you drag a selection from the *right to left*, it will select *anything* that is touched by that selection. This can be quite useful, depending on the situation, but the fact that this is more of a "hidden" feature can lead to quite some confusion and frustration. It certainly did for me until I finally noticed why it "sometimes" selected "everything" and sometimes only vertices. Just sharing this for anyone else who might stumble into the tutorial in the future.
Funny you mention this. This is a really common thing in CAD software, Autocad probably most notably does this. It's called window/cross selection, and I'm so used to this behaviour that I have used it during this entire tutorial without even consciously realizing it's even there.
This paragraph is more of a "Note to Self," but I'll leave it here for others who it may help (Windows 10, FreeCAD .19) For some reason, on my system, I have to clone the MasterSketch first, then create a new body, then the sketch, and then go back and drag the cloned sketch into the new body. Anything else adds a weird layer to the new body that doesn't belong there. After creating the 50 mm circle inside the bottom (second-largest circle, inside the giant circle that contains about 3/4 of the drawing), when putting a square around it, do so but then backspace twice if your autoconstraints were on (or maybe turn those off, but I think the square's endpoints wouldn't snap to each other anymore). If you don't do that, the square will get really weird, no matter what side you start adding your tangents to. The two "Create Autoconstraints" in the Undo History, that come after "Create square" are what cause this, so those have to be removed if they show up there in the first place. If not, then I wouldn't worry about it (and I may need some guidance on how to prevent just those two lines in the Undo History from showing up in the first place). Something that helps me avoid validation issues is by doing my constraints in symmetry. If I do one on the left, I do it on the right too, and vice verse (unless it's an asymmetrical design, then I go either clockwise or counterclockwise. Whenever I draw a new line or arch, I constrain the endpoints immediately. I just try to remember that no points on a sketch are actually connected until I do the connections manually, unless it's a predetermined shape, and even then, the constraints can go missing as I work on a part. When working on the CrankShaft sketch (after importing the arcs and circle needed, when adding the duplicate arcs and circle needed), I found that there was a missing radius constraint in the original Master sketch, on the right hand side (the arc that tangents with the smaller bottom circle, inside the largest circle, and with the right hand line that also tangents with that smaller circle). I had to delete the Chrankshaft body entirely, go back to the Master sketch, add the missing radius constraint, close the Master sketch, clone it again, then add the new body and sketch, do my importing and duplication all over again, and then I was able to add the pad successfully. The hard edges that need filleting are hard to click on when actually doing the filleting. Whether that's in "as is" mode or in "wire frame" mode, it's just difficult to actually see and click on them (at least if you're a beginner, still getting used to using this software). One way around that is to just manually draw in the fillets as 30 degree "center and endpoints" arcs, tangent them, trim off the 90 degree corners, and constrain the endpoints created. After that, then do the 20 mm padding. Using filet is important to learn, but at least for me, it came too soon in the learning process, because it's so blessedly hard to actually see and select those lines. Even when I tried it in wireframe, it was difficult to keep the mouse focus on the lines I wanted. There's probably some setting that fixes that, but since I'm so new to FreeCAD, I don't know what that setting is yet. One thing I find very important is to do a hand-drawn sketch on paper, where the dimensions are added in. It absolutely is never "pretty" or exact; I'd never turn it in to an instructor or a boss, but it's helpful to me personally to get through sketching things out more easily. The master sketch (with the hidden sketching) can accomplish this goal as well, but there are no "design time" errors to resolve when using a pencil and paper, beyond what an eraser can easily take care of. So, I prefer to start out that way first, then map it all out, nice and neat on the screen in FreeCAD. This is a common practice often taught to mechanical drafting students (both for manual and for digital drafting). In the end, it saves time.
I got stuck in the next situation. i made a sketch of the connection rod and checked for gaps. sketch flawless and green in color. the model does not execute the error message "no active object". can't I find a cure? where is the problem, thanks
Thank you for talking your time and making these tutorials. There are many tutorials online on Freecad, but you are especially good att connecting the dots so that one learns the correct workflow and the right order of doing the operations. Freecad can be frustrating some times, for example when you can't pad something, or any other error that is not self explanatory to new users. Keep up the good work!
I am indebted for what you have made me learn, thank you
Great to hear you are giving the Freecad visits useful. Thank you for the kind comments.
Fantastic series - this covers a fundamental form of learning - wash, rinse, repeat. Absolutely brilliant and my favorite lessons so far. Please keep it up!
Glad you enjoyed this lesson, I dont get as many views of lessons that are divided over 2 or more instalments so I tried to break this one up into individual completed parts. I have a number of longer builds that I want to bring to the channel the challenge is how to present them and keep people interested. Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed
@@MangoJellySolutions I think you have a way of maintaining a continuous flow that keeps things moving along.. Others dordle too much... Also while I have not finished the piston yet, there is a definite reward at the end of the series - to see it work.
I guess you can only upload them and see how people respond?
Excellent video. Appreciate hearing your strategies for chasing down redundant and missing constraints and identifying faces that sketches are attached to.
Hey mango! thank you so much for these videos, they're incredibly helpful!!! I'm experiencing an issue with FreeCAD (0.20.1) that hopefully someone here could help me with? on minute 11:50 you select 2 points by clicking and dragging, and then you use a coincidence constraint. For some reason my version of FreeCAD just does not allow me to select the 2 points (any 2 points) by click and dragging, is there a setting I'm missing that would allow me to do this?
There is no setting that I know of but there is a couple of things to check 1) are you viewing the sketch from the rear as it's extremely hard to select points from the reverse of the sketch. And 2) are you selecting from left to right or right to left as they select in a different way (may be still the same in sketcher) . Select from left to right. Glad your enjoying the videos. This selecting issue is pretty strange behaviour if it's none of these.
@@MangoJellySolutions Thank you so much for the reply!! I'm truly enjoying the content, it is extremely helpful!! I ended up just moving them a little and then doing the coincidence constraints just to complete the exercise, but I will keep this in mind!!
Great video!! Really looking forward to next video. You are doing a superb job at teaching the work flow of FreeCAD.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed and great to get feedback
Excellent course, thanks for your effort in putting this together :-)
No problems, glad you enjoying and thank you for the feedback.
I think anyone who has gone back and checked every node of a fully constrained sketch that wouldn't pad would appreciate the verify sketch tool in sketcher. I know it would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.
Thanks for the comments. Yes I don't know what I would do without that tool and the check geometry tool in the part workbench. Once I learnt about those it made FreeCAD a much more friendly environment to work in.
A great series you are developing. One small issue I see with the crank shaft is where the center of rotation of the flywheel is. For it to function properly, the axle center must be at the center of the flywheel, not the bulk mass end. The bulk mass is the counterpoise to the piston to equalize the mass on both sides of the flywheel when in motion. 😁
Thanks for the comments glad your enjoying the series. Yes your not the first to say that lol. I think if this was functioning it would rip the engine apart. 😆
14:35 there's a hidden feature with FreeCAD that can be very useful in cases like these, and I only found it out by accident after a long time of confusion:
If you drag a selection in the Sketcher from the *left to right*, it will *only* select what fits into the selection *entirely*.
Meaning if you would have selected there from the left, you'd only get the 2 vertices.
But if you drag a selection from the *right to left*, it will select *anything* that is touched by that selection. This can be quite useful, depending on the situation, but the fact that this is more of a "hidden" feature can lead to quite some confusion and frustration.
It certainly did for me until I finally noticed why it "sometimes" selected "everything" and sometimes only vertices.
Just sharing this for anyone else who might stumble into the tutorial in the future.
Thank you for sharing. Always welcomed 😊👍
Funny you mention this. This is a really common thing in CAD software, Autocad probably most notably does this. It's called window/cross selection, and I'm so used to this behaviour that I have used it during this entire tutorial without even consciously realizing it's even there.
Very nice👍🙂
Did it slightly differently and used a new feature in 0.20 - the rounded rectangle - to create the filllets as part of the sketch.
This paragraph is more of a "Note to Self," but I'll leave it here for others who it may help (Windows 10, FreeCAD .19) For some reason, on my system, I have to clone the MasterSketch first, then create a new body, then the sketch, and then go back and drag the cloned sketch into the new body. Anything else adds a weird layer to the new body that doesn't belong there.
After creating the 50 mm circle inside the bottom (second-largest circle, inside the giant circle that contains about 3/4 of the drawing), when putting a square around it, do so but then backspace twice if your autoconstraints were on (or maybe turn those off, but I think the square's endpoints wouldn't snap to each other anymore). If you don't do that, the square will get really weird, no matter what side you start adding your tangents to. The two "Create Autoconstraints" in the Undo History, that come after "Create square" are what cause this, so those have to be removed if they show up there in the first place. If not, then I wouldn't worry about it (and I may need some guidance on how to prevent just those two lines in the Undo History from showing up in the first place).
Something that helps me avoid validation issues is by doing my constraints in symmetry. If I do one on the left, I do it on the right too, and vice verse (unless it's an asymmetrical design, then I go either clockwise or counterclockwise. Whenever I draw a new line or arch, I constrain the endpoints immediately. I just try to remember that no points on a sketch are actually connected until I do the connections manually, unless it's a predetermined shape, and even then, the constraints can go missing as I work on a part.
When working on the CrankShaft sketch (after importing the arcs and circle needed, when adding the duplicate arcs and circle needed), I found that there was a missing radius constraint in the original Master sketch, on the right hand side (the arc that tangents with the smaller bottom circle, inside the largest circle, and with the right hand line that also tangents with that smaller circle). I had to delete the Chrankshaft body entirely, go back to the Master sketch, add the missing radius constraint, close the Master sketch, clone it again, then add the new body and sketch, do my importing and duplication all over again, and then I was able to add the pad successfully.
The hard edges that need filleting are hard to click on when actually doing the filleting. Whether that's in "as is" mode or in "wire frame" mode, it's just difficult to actually see and click on them (at least if you're a beginner, still getting used to using this software). One way around that is to just manually draw in the fillets as 30 degree "center and endpoints" arcs, tangent them, trim off the 90 degree corners, and constrain the endpoints created. After that, then do the 20 mm padding. Using filet is important to learn, but at least for me, it came too soon in the learning process, because it's so blessedly hard to actually see and select those lines. Even when I tried it in wireframe, it was difficult to keep the mouse focus on the lines I wanted. There's probably some setting that fixes that, but since I'm so new to FreeCAD, I don't know what that setting is yet.
One thing I find very important is to do a hand-drawn sketch on paper, where the dimensions are added in. It absolutely is never "pretty" or exact; I'd never turn it in to an instructor or a boss, but it's helpful to me personally to get through sketching things out more easily. The master sketch (with the hidden sketching) can accomplish this goal as well, but there are no "design time" errors to resolve when using a pencil and paper, beyond what an eraser can easily take care of. So, I prefer to start out that way first, then map it all out, nice and neat on the screen in FreeCAD. This is a common practice often taught to mechanical drafting students (both for manual and for digital drafting). In the end, it saves time.
Thanks for contributing your thoughts and tips to these videos. Much appreciated
I got stuck in the next situation. i made a sketch of the connection rod and checked for gaps. sketch flawless and green in color. the model does not execute the error message "no active object". can't I find a cure? where is the problem, thanks
You need to double clicked the body that you are creating the sketches for so the body name in the tree view is show in bold.