Preview of whats coming in Freecad 26.3

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-xUFwzAt6A

Big improvements coming this Autumn.

Russell

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

I’ve been learning this over the last week or so and I can see that it’s vast improvement compared to even v1.0. No crashes (as yet) and I can make fairly simple parts, so it’s worth persevering with in my opinion.

I bought a new(ish) HP workstation laptop from Amazon and everything is flying along nicely. 😉

FreeCAD v26.3 is well worth a try.

Martin.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

It seems that I don’t need to learn FreeCad after all. 😉

Skip to 12:30 to see Claude AI and FreeCAD working together.

Martin.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Just be aware that the development versions are still under development and bug fixing.  The final stable version is likely to be released in November.  If you are using a pre-release version for anything important make frequent backups of your model files, just in case!

Russell

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Hi Russell.

I’m quite new to FreeCAD, so I’m not making anything of importance with it yet. That said, it has been very stable and hasn’t crashed on me so far.

Pretty much all of the annoying error messages of previous versions have been absent, with the ones that do appear being more relevant and understandable.

I’m finding that the golden rule is to keep sketches as simple as possible and to build in the features one at a time. Keeping sketches small also allows you to fully constrain them much more easily.

Overall it seems to have improved so much over the last few months, that either I’ve had an epiphany or there has been some serious work done under the bonnet.

 

Martin.

[blowlamp]

On blowlamp Said:

I’m finding that the golden rule is to keep sketches as simple as possible and to build in the features one at a time. Keeping sketches small also allows you to fully constrain them much more easily.

 

Hi Martin,

Yes, that’s a good approach.  It also means that if you find you need to change a basic dimension in that first sketch that change will propagate through the tree easily.

I am keeping the latest stable version, 1.1.3, on my main computer and have the latest 26.3 weekly build on my laptop for playing/experimenting.

Russell

[Robert Walker 8Participant @robertwalker8]

Thanks  very much for posting this. Very helpful.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

I don’t want to hijack this topic, but for anyone seeking a free open source CAD program as an easier alternative to FreeCAD, it might be worth looking at QymCAD.

I downloaded it yesterday and after the usual fumbling about with these programs, I’ve been able to make very reasonable progress.

I’ve included the video I saw on YT which prompted me to give it a try.

Martin.

EDIT: For some reason the video isn’t translated when linked here, so it’s necessary to use the translate option under Settings.

 

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

I don’t use Freecad very often, I have in the past but the latest releases have been extremely flaky. I decided to give version 1.1 a go. The image below (which was going to be a single cylinder engine) happened like this.

I drew the cylinder, 50mm dia, 25mm bore, 35mm in length. I then added a bottom bit to the cylinder of 15mm to give 50mm total length. I added a mounting flange 25mm square by 5mm thick. 4 10mm dia bosses were added, with 6mm holes through. I gave the bottom of the cylinder 2mm fillets. there is also an internal water jacket. I then decided to section what I had drawn to have a look at the internals. I drew a square 26mm by 26mm on the top of the cylinder from the centre of the cylinder and used pocket to cut a chunk out, only it didn’t. Freecad wouldn’t section the engine. I remembered the trouble I used to have with fillets, so I deleted them. Freecad would then section the engine. The inside looked fine so I pressed CTL Z to undo the section, (all fine) and then deleted the drawing, this is what Freecad gave me. I am fairly sure the engine wouldn’t run properly, but I could be wrong. I use Freecad 0.19 to draw gears for 3D printing. It does a fair job. If version 1.1 does a better job of drawing gears I will keep it. If not, I will delete it. I will try 26.3, but I have very low expectations. I tried to alter the drawing and no-matter what I did, Mr. boxy appeared.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

It looks like circles are displaying as polygons. Had you fiddled with the display settings?

If the mounting flange is only 25mm square, then it’s only about the size of the bore, so I don’t see how that can really work, but it looks larger in your picture.

 

Martin.

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

You are right Martin, the flange was 50mm square, my error, same size as the circular cylinder I drew. The whole design looked fine until I drew the 26mm square on top of the cylinder. One thing I forgot to mention was the display of the cylinder in different stages of destruction each time I tried to section the cylinder before I deleted the fillets. Maybe that destruction messed up the file. Whatever it was that caused the rectangulation(?) of my promising engine, it shouldn’t have happened. I have now removed version 1.1, I will keep ver 0.19 and try 26.3 when it is released. I didn’t alter any of the settings.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Lee.

I’ve been getting some respectable results with FreeCAD 26.3.

Trying to replicate your result was pretty uneventful, apart from my usual misunderstandings of some of the tools. I had no crashes or hang-ups.

Martin.

 

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

Yep, that’s about what I drew. After thinking about the problem I realised it might be of interest to the Freecad team, so I found the FC forum to post about it. I didn’t feel like signing up to another forum I may never visit again, so I didn’t bother. What I did discover is my version, 1.1, wasn’t the latest version, there was 1.1.4, so I downloaded it. This time I saved my drawing at each design step, especially when I came to section it! There problem was still there. I opened the file in ver 0.19 added the fillets to the bolt bosses on the flange. The fillets tried to follow a straight line around the boss instead of curving. I went back to ver 1.1 and modified the sketch so there was plenty of room for a 1mm fillet to exist by raising the plane the bosses sketch lives on by an extra half a mm to 1.5mm above the flange. Before padding the bosses I filleted the outer edge of the flange by 1mm. The bosses were then padded down by 6.5mm to the bottom of the flange. The bosses would then take a 1mm fillet. I saved the file and drew the square to section the cylinder. It sectioned perfectly. I will play with ver 1.1.4 until 23.6 is released.

This is the sort of thing I design using Designspark mechanical. A 7 cylinder radial engine. Total fantasy design, not much realism in its functionality. I have 3D printed most of it with only the carb and manifold left, plus anything damaged or missing. I can’t make them in metal, so plastic will have to do!

I make the valve springs from copper wire wound round a former designed in FC 0.19 and printed on my Ender3. A clipped nail glued in a hole down the middle gives it strength. The springs will be 6mm dia.

Lee

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

That is some very nice modelling, Lee. It’s a great looking engine.

You inspired me to keep going, so I plonked on some cooling fins and Polar Patterned the result. 😉

I don’t know whether I’m just lucky, but again no crashes or glitches. FreeCAD 26.3 seems to be much more usable and stable.

Martin.

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

FreeCAD doesn’t like having two filets meeting or overlapping – something to do with the mathematics behind the filleting process.  If you want two fillets to meet exactly, for example two 2 mm fillets on a 4 mm surface just set the fillets to 1.9999 mm.  That is still the case in the 26.3 version at present. You can’t fillet a fillet.

Russell

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

Nice looking engine Martin. Will you take it any further? It can become addictive you know. So much so for me that I even considered buying a laser cutter/engraver to make the display boxes for for the seven different engines I’ve made so far, with more to come!

Thanks for the info Russell. Have you any idea why my attempt turned square, it should look like Martins. I am soldiering on with ver 1.1.4 until 26.3 is released.

Lee

[Russell EberhardtParticipant @russelleberhardt48058]

Sorry Lee, I can’t say what you did wrong with the square.  I can only suggest that you keep an eye out for error messages when things go wrong.

Regarding your earlier mention of gears.  The Gears workbench isn’t part of the main program but an addon maintained by a third party. I would suggest installing the addon on your ver. 1.1.4 and trying it.  That should be safer than running such an old version.  The gears workbench addon (freecad.gears workbench) has recently been updated to version 1.4.0.  There is also a new workbench called GearWorkBench which is intended for 3D printed gears but there is a warning that it is still under development and the its file format may change.

Like you I am using  FreeCAD vr. 1.1.4 but I also have v. 26.3 installed on an old laptop for playing with.

Russell

[Russell Eberhardt]

On Russell Eberhardt Said:

FreeCAD doesn’t like having two filets meeting or overlapping – something to do with the mathematics behind the filleting process.  If you want two fillets to meet exactly, for example two 2 mm fillets on a 4 mm surface just set the fillets to 1.9999 mm.  That is still the case in the 26.3 version at present. You can’t fillet a fillet.

Russell

Here’s a nice little bit of serendipity. I’m an engineer doing some work on how to get AI interacting with CAD and I’ve been using the Open Cascade OCCT CAD Kernel as the basis for this.  This is the basis of FreeCad as well. As I’ve been using this open source software I’ve also been fixing things as a contribution back to the tool I’m using.

About a week ago a whole bunch of issues  concerning fillets were dropped into the OCCT repository. One looked enough like an issue I’d fixed elsewhere, that I picked it up and fixed it.

I’ve also been getting interested in model engineering and was perusing this forum and this post drew my attention. I’m trying to determine if this is the problem I just fixed, a different expression of it or something different. Could you show a picture of the two 1.99999mm fillets on a 4mm surface?

[Roger WoollettParticipant @rogerwoollett53105]

This was drawn with FreeCAD_26.3RC1. base is 12mm by 4mm.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Over on the HSM forum Paul A has just posted a work around for a particular chamfer issue though it might cause issues with some slicers.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Fillets seem to trip up most CAD packages to some extent. I tried it in Alibre which did not have a problem doing two 2mm fillets on the far 4mm cube producing one seamless half round.

I tried the other one with 0.19999mm and as I have Alibre set to 3decimal places it rounded it upto 2.0 and looked just the same as the 2mm one.

Changing the radius to 1.999mm does as expected and leaves a very narrow 0.002mm flat between the two fillets which looks like a single line until you zoom in massively

[focusonthechickenParticipant @focusonthechicken]

Thanks. That wasn’t actually the bug I was working on, but a bug that was filed 6 months ago. Shapr3D has no problem with that and behaves as expects – 2 r=2 quarter circles become an r=2 semicircle, go to r>2 then it looks odd but it works.

 

I was working on a related issue where two internal fillets of the same size meet at a corner and fail. Anyway, claude is off trying to fix both of them, this is one of the areas where synthetic agency beats a human even if it needs my eyes to know if its done a good job or not.

There’s a stack of other niggles in this part of the kernel, I should get them fixed but there may be a lag before they get into a Freecad release. This will miss the 8.0.2 OCCT release which is Monday and I doubt they’ll be another one before 8.1 in Jan/Feb next year, that then needs to get incorporated into Freecad, I don’t really know how they operate.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

You can do up to a full 2mm fillet in FreeCAD 26.3rc1 if you do the two edges separately, which still leaves a seam edge.

Just to compare with MoI using the ACIS kernel, two 2mm fillets gives the same result as Jason gets in Alibre with no seam. Increasing the fillet size beyond 2mm gives the result in the picture below.

Martin.

 

 

[lee websterParticipant @leewebster72680]

Interesting results for the different cad programmes. I tried to repeat Blowlamps fillets in Designspark mechanical. On a 4mm thick extrusion a 2mm fillet on each edge produced a half round. It didn’t want to let two 3mm fillets meet in the middle as above, it still displayed them as a half round. I could apply a 3mm fillet to one edge, then apply a 3mm fillet to the other edge, they still didn’t want to meet in the middle.

I’m getting on quite well with Freecad 1.1.4, looking forward to trying 26.3. I don’t think it will be as easy to use as DSM, but I will still give it a go.

In Freecad 1.1.4 I drew the OHV head for a single cylinder engine. It was hollow inside for the water jacket. I filleted all internal “corners” and asked FC to check it for faults. It found dozens! But, when I exported the head as an STL or OBJ file, the file loaded into two different slicers that reported no faults with the file, it would have 3D printed just fine. Most of the faults 1.1.4 found were related to fillets.

Lee

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Mangojelly takes a look at FreeCAD 26.3RC1 and demonstrates some new features.

Martin.

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