Hello! I've been using freecad for a little over a month at this point, following through MangooJelly's beginner course and modeling stuff around my home. While it's been nice modeling random objects here and there, I've been wanting to design my own drone fuselages for a while now. After attempting something similar to the attached image using lofts, and coming up with some really ugly fuselages, I figured there might be a more "professional" approach to fuselage design. Does anyone have a concrete direction I can follow for this type of design? Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated!

I was wondering if there was an alternative way to model external threads other than sketching the thread profile then additive helix

it's my first project and a task to enter robotics club in my college , why is wire not closed msg appearing . i think it's closed

PR to FreeCAD. Available on AstoCAD!

FreeCAD is incredible, so I’m looking for a way to make a donation.

My son is trying to create a small table that goes into a door handle on a car. How can he make the part that stick a hollow space inside easily? He's spending a lot of time trying to figure it out. I don't know if anybody minds if some one can make a video to show him how to do it. I'd be grateful. Thank you.

I'm designing a custom low profile keyboard for my portfolio. Apart of this project is designing clickable scrollbars for the thumb clusters, and I'd appreciate some design advice/review.

For context I'musing the EC10E1220505 as my encoder and TC-1109-C-E as my switch. The second slide is my current rough bar CAD Model.

About the project

It's a split unibody keyboard with tone uncommon physical interfaces.

Features:

• Cherry ULP (MX6C-K3NB) Switches
• Per Key RGBW LEDs
• Alternative Programable Inputs:
  • 10x clickable encoders,
  • 4x latching switches,
  • 10x slide switches.
• No Trackpoint: the thinkpad nipples are for determining spacing for future iterations

I'm currently in the process of designing the scroll bar for the thumb encoders, and refining the placement of the switches around the nipples.

On preorders:

I'll likily be unable to make 1 single unit with a fabrication lab, so if others want the extra units I'll make them available and if demand is overwhelming I'll have more units made.

This is an experimental keyboard, designed as a development kit for engineers. This device is best for people with experience programming keyboards.

I just found out about Github Sponsors program being a legitimate donation channel for the FPA.

Sponsor @FreeCAD on GitHub Sponsors

FPA | The FreeCAD Project Association

Considering GitHub charges:
"GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization."

If you're donating as an individual, especially outside the EU where SEPA isn't an option, this seems like it gets more of your money to the FPA than PayPal or standard credit card channels.

has anybody got any ideas whay freecad could be crushing on launch with just the splash showing, this is the first time i have had such an issue on my system which is fedora 44, i was using it just fine yesterday and up until this afternoon. i left it running with an open project but when i came back i found my laptop still running and for some reason it was loading when i was expecting the laptop screen to turn off. i decided to kill it in task manager because it was too long to and now it keeps crash each time it tries to launch

I need some free alternative for autocad without any activation shit and nanocad is asking for activation so pls recommend something useful

Hi everyone!

First, I wanted to mention that I was a bit out of the loop, and I recently realized that Ondsel no longer exists, which was sad news! I also want to express my gratitude for the improvements brought to FreeCAD.

I used Ondsel a few times in the past and really liked its interface and default preferences. I know FreeCAD’s interface is highly customizable, and my current setup in my dotfiles is heavily influenced by Ondsel defaults.

I started this thread just to see what you guys think about Ondsel’s default experience interface and preferences, and if it would help more people to start to use FreeCAD if it adopt something like that UX as the default or at least offer it as a theme/preferences.

[EDIT] The second image wasn't to be comparative, it is my current FreeCAD preference with the default theme.

It says only subtractive/additive features can be mirrored, but I'm trying to find a way to mirror a feature that I repeated using a linear pattern, was wondering if it was possible even

If you see the picture you can see that I have a Lattice2 polar array, and a simple tool shape. If I click just on the "Lattice Part Design Pattern" button it tells me that I need to select a feature and a pattern. In the picture you see that I have done that. If I now click on the button then I get "LatticePattern001" but it doesn't replicate the tool shape. It does nothing that I can see that has any value. No doubt I am missing something trivial, but it's not working for me. Does anyone know how to make this work in Part Design?

Edit: to be clear... I have used exactly this process with linear arrays using Lattice2 with Part Design and it worked as expected, but the same process doesn't work with polar arrays as far as I can tell, and that is why I am here.

Edit2: I have also asked this question on GitHub to see if the author can shed any light on the situation.

Good afternoon everyone!

I am having a very hard time understanding the cross section view C. Can someone explain what this ø17 is and where its located? (I know its the Diameter but where is this and how would this help???)

Thank you for the help!

So this method uses custom Properties feature of the Body's Property View panel (or any object with properties).

(1) Right click on the empty space in the Property View of the object, e.g. Body,

(2) chose Add Property.

(3) Enter property name, type and value (similar to VarSet).

(4) Use this custom Property in expressionable (fx) fields such as sketch dimension constraints in this form:

href(<<Body>>.My_Custom_Property)

href(...) wrapper here is important to prevent cyclical dependency.

(5) You can now modify the object by changing values of parameters in its Property View panel.

Because of the href() wrapper the auto-complete doesn't work and you need to type in the entire expression.

Another banger from https://bsky.app/profile/freecad.org/post/3muj265rszk2t

Can anybody tell me what the heck is going on with a sketch I am trying to pad? Everything seems fine, but I get this after its padded?

I have been working on a couple of parts from printables lately, and while I know that you can convert .steps to solid bodies and use the Part Design workbench from there, this workflow never really felt right. A lot of times I will just reverse engineer the part.

I know that there has been an attempt at adding text generated modeling. I wonder if it wouldn't be that hard to have a AI decide how to build a model from scratch that matches a .step/.stl. Maybe have a tool where you can tell it a dimension needs to be easily modifiable before it generates the features.

I think this tool would also be useful for people switching from othe CAD software to FreeCAD.

I don't really have the time or skills to build it, so I'll put this here if anyone is interested.

Trying to add fasteners to an assembly and they keep inserting inverted. The invert checkbox does nothing. I can't edit placement or angle. I can't translate the fastener. If I click a different concentric circle on the hole face the fastener spawns off to the side and I can't move it.

The only workaround I've managed is to add the fasteners to the original part file and re-add it to the assembly, rather than adding the fastener to the assembly, but then when I try to add joins to the assembly (eg. revolute to align holes and bolts) I can't get the flat surfaces to line up.

The jank of this process is infuriating. I hope it's something simple but I can't see it.

From https://bsky.app/profile/freecad.org

So i made this cool wall shelf for my cd collection that is 320mm x 160mm

When talk about learning CAD, the advice usually starts with software.

Learn Fusion 360. Try Onshape. Start with Tinkercad. Follow tutorials.

That makes sense, but I keep running into a step before the software.

Sometimes I know what I need the part to do, but I don’t know what the part should be.

Example: a cabinet is loose, a cable needs routing, a small object needs support, or something needs to fit into a weird space. I can take a photo and explain the problem, but I don’t know whether I need a bracket, spacer, clamp, stand, brace, holder, or something else.

How do experienced CAD users move from “this physical problem needs a part” to “this is the model I should create”?

Do you sketch first, search similar parts, measure everything, ask someone, or just start modeling and iterate?