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| CNC machining metals. |
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| harps:
Thank you Mark i shall check out the video today!! I include pictures below on what i see. I make a sketch, I drop in a square. When I drop it in, the rotation is active, and it is hard to put it just right. so i drop it in anyway, intentionally at 50degrees and at a random size, and then look to see how i can alter the size and rotation to exactly 45 degrees and say 50mm x 50mm There is no dialog box that shows anything near the rotation 50degrees i set when i dropped it in, or the size Do i have to give it a reference constraint first? does it not know what i am looking at or what I just did? https://ibb.co/zPkqrxY https://ibb.co/gVS9NHt I cant get the pics to show up on the forum, but hopefully you can view them when clicking. thanks for your help. : ) |
| harps:
--- Quote from: MarkF on September 13, 2020, 01:08:46 am --- --- Quote from: harps on September 12, 2020, 09:56:55 pm --- --- Quote from: MarkF on September 11, 2020, 06:46:34 pm ---Fusion360 is not free. I have been using FreeCAD for my 3D prints. It has its bugs but has been getting the job done for me. Plus lots of how-to videos. --- End quote --- hi mark. is there a hidden xyz dialogue box in freecad? When I am placing a circle in a sketch I have to use the mouse freehand. I can see the xyz pop up on the screen as I hold the mouse button down, and when i let go of the mouse button the xyz numbers vanish. no where in any tab can I then fine tune the placement. very unusual for a 3d package not to have xyz to fine tune. it must be me, surly. --- End quote --- If you select an object, you can type values in the lower left corner. For pads, fillets, chamfers, rotations, etc., you can type values usually in the left Model or Tasks tabs. This guys tutorial series helped me a lot: He also does a comparison between FreeCAD and Fusion360. --- End quote --- Thank you Mark, I see, so it has to have a relationship, a relative point to be constrained too before any parameters can be inputted. I kinda thought and did try but must have been using the wrong constraints. I use 3ds max from time to time, and to make a box I click drag drop, and then there are boxes to fine tune positon and size. very easy. it would be cool if after dropping the shape into freecad there was an option to automatically set all constraints to a preselected point, and then the user could simply fine tune tune the shapes positions by typing in numbers. The program is pretty cool, and your links are great too.. thank you |
| CatalinaWOW:
I use FreeCad. Cloud free and really, really free, with zero chance of becoming not free. But there are downsides. Most important, like any free software, future development and support is chancy. More chancy than successful commercial programs. And as you have found, the user interface is not smooth. Once you learn what is going on it is usable, but there are many things that just aren't easy. |
| Doctorandus_P:
So why do you need a software program that is CNC free? TL;DR most of it. If Open Source is an important issue, I've not found a better program then FreeCAD, It has not reached version 1.0 yet, but it's getting into a state that is "quite usable", but it's not yet very polished. For controlling my CNC machine I use one of the STM32 clones of GRBL which work quite nice. I've been tinking about looking into FlatCAM, but have not done much with it yet. About eagle... The Eagle has Crashed, long live KiCad. |
| MarkF:
Here is another video tutorial series: It shows some advanced howto for springs and threads. These tutorials show entering the values in millimetres. You can also input values in inches by first deleting the popup value and units; then, entering value and 'in'. The value will be converted to 'mm' and displayed as such. If you always want to use inches, you can set the default units from Tools -> Preferences menu. You can also enter values with math functions (i.e. add, subtract, multiply and divide). I haven't tried complex expressions. Also, I seem to remember you can use variables so that same values don't need to be entered more than once. Makes it easy to make changes if needed. |
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