As usual, just what I needed. I'm mounting a portable air conditioner in my van conversion for summer travel, and needed to both replicate the exit air duct that attaches to the unit, but also create a custom set of interlocking sections of "piping" down to the hole in the floor I will vent out through which I will insulate on the outside, as well as a custom pass through there that the pipe attaches to, and that attaches to the flooring and has a screen mounted inside to keep critters from wandering in. All will be custom designed. Learning FreeCAD has given me the freedom to invent at will with my 3D printer and I have more ideas than the time to spend on them with other things going on all the time! I can highly recommend it to any hobbyist with a 3D printer. They may find, as I did, that getting the basics under your fingers and THEN setting a goal to create a pretty complex part will PUSH you over the edge of confidence with it. My goal part was a "cart" for a window actuator in a motorized car window: the part that rides up and down in the curved track, which the steel cables pull up and down (with the window attached) to open and close the window. These are somewhat a "planned obsolescence designed part" as they will break after years of use. Creating it involved two Boolean cuts (one for the curved shape of the track it had to smoothly ride which I think was something like a 5' radius curve!) as well as precise internal cavities for the cables to mount into at the right tension with their springs. Along the way, I learned to do test prints on just a cut down portion of the model to save time and filament to check fit both for the track and the window "pin" that holds it. Works perfectly in my son's car, and now I have a model I can print, or mirror to print for any of the 4 windows! Quite a feeling of empowerment. So far, PETG is holding up fine in the car, but I have ABS and ASA I can reprint in if I deem it failed from heat exhaustion. My best CAD friend is a $3 plastic caliper from Harbor Freight, actually two of them: one in the garage, and one at my computer. I have a battery one that's more precise, but I find unless I'm doing absolute minute precision, and with some experience knowing how filament will expand slightly in your prints, I get all the precision I need and don't have to worry about batteries. Once you "think" in CAD terms looking at or imagining any new object (pad here, pocket here, etc.) it really opens up a whole new world and your channel is on my short list to plug any knowledge gaps...

@JokoEngineeringhelp

Ай бұрын

Those sound like awesome projects. I have hot summers where I'm at, I could use a portable AC myself. I also love my caliper, and a 3D scanner has really changed my reverse engineering game as well. Keep up the great work, thanks for the comment.

This video is one of the most important videos about FreeCAD in whole internet! It opens so many abilities for engineering!

@JokoEngineeringhelp

7 ай бұрын

Thank you

As a beginner, I have to express many thanks for your work.

The word was Frenet. My spiral sweep now works and life is worth living. Thanks

Best learning resource on FreeCAD I've found. Appreciate your work on this channel man. Thanks!

Thank you. I chose this one for general information about the workbenches and was happily surprised by the information about offsets and thicknesses.

just amazing how deep you search within Freecad . Big applause . Thanks From France

@JokoEngineeringhelp

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks very much!

Well done! Usually I get through a tutorial and it's *almost* what I needed to learn. This had exactly what I needed, why I needed to do it that way, and then some bonus ideas of doing it a different way just for awesome sauce. Thank you!

Another great turorial proving the glory of freecad. When using thickness in part wb i find changing from arc to intersect mostly works when "hollowing" a sweep.

thanks for this, i rarely comment on YT but this was exactly what I needed to make a pvc reducer

@brianmi40

Ай бұрын

There's a cool trick that lets you do such things in sheet metal also. My grandfather was an engineer and world class expert in sheet metal so have always been inspired by what they can do (he taught himself the math to do curved metal doors in a curved wall room). To create any shape / diameter to any other shape / diameter, cut both out in something like scraps of 3/4 plywood (what each end profile looks like, round or square, etc., remembering to take into account any requirements to overlap or underlap the overall diameters to allow joining as necessary), then mount them appropriately distanced via a scrap of wood in between. Now lay out the sheet metal and start wrapping it around the top shape and attach it with screws will also making it conform to the shape at the other end. If one is larger, you'll have overwrap which you can rivet together as needed along the length, but eventually you can get them to both adapt and conform to each shape. There's videos on YT of the entire process. I used it to make custom adapters for some downspout out of galvanized sheet metal and it wasn't that hard to do and they've held up for a decade with no issues.

Excellent video, this style of yours help me learn much faster on the use of different tools, and easy to relate to the icons. Rather than the one object being created..... this is truly the 21st century way of learning..... Very much appreciate the video.

I really should have watched this before struggling for so long trying to make the sweep work. Thanks for the video. I was able to use a profile to sweep as an edge point of each of the end sketches instead of in the center like yours but wondered what difference it makes if any. PS nice tux wallpaper :D

I love your videos. They have helped me improve my knowledge of FreeCAD. It would be cool if you used the clipping plane view to explore the geometry a little more.

Nice. Covered every scenario in every workbench. Thanks bunches.

Absolutely awesome, thank you! Now I can easily design custom air ducts for my printer.

@edcbabc

3 жыл бұрын

Just what I'm trying to do!

It seems to be a good guide, one of the best I've seen, but I couldn't accomplish what I was trying to do. I settled for a mockery of a pipe.... there's not even a hole through it. Perfect. Thanks for the video, I may be back

@JokoEngineeringhelp

2 жыл бұрын

You can also try the thickness function to make a hole after the fact. I don't recall if I used that in this video or not.

@RobertJeffersonBased

2 жыл бұрын

@@JokoEngineeringhelp I was trying to make a simple pipe that turned 90 degrees to replicate a PVC pipe fitting I'm using in a subwoofer box design. I did manage to make it with a hole through the thing, but it took me far too long and I still don't know how I'd make a pipe of any other shape. I will be back to your video in the future, I am sure :)

Very useful. Well explained. Much appreciated!

Hi Joko. Ruled surface means that it is not smoothed. It does nothing if your loft has only two profiles, but for 3+ profiles it makes a big difference.

@BloodyMobile

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, with 3 or more profiles it will interpolate a curved path along them, which can be disabled with this setting.

This is superb and a very interesting topic. I covered a similar topic in my latest video, trying to sweep a circle (double close profile for a hollow pipe) around a 90 degrees corner.

It is better to fillet the sketch and not the object for offsetting purposes because you can see that when applying a fillet to the object you generate a point "edge" in the circle section. By filleting the sketch beforehand you get a smooth arc in the circle section instead and this makes it possible to offset the object afterwards

Superb!! Keep it up, helps a lot of your subscribers on advanced Freecad.

Great video! Thank you, I learned something(s)

Wow. Appreciate your work

Gostaria de agradecer por este tutorial, muito útil.

Great stuff.

Very thorough and usefull

Thank you.

Ruled surface creates straight surfaces between lofted items. However, with only two items being lofted between you see no difference from selecting ruled surface or not. But, when you loft between three items the difference between ruled surface and standard loft's curved surface is quite dramatic.

Oh good. It's not only my CPU fan that goes into hyperdrive when using FreeCad

You can loft a tube with inner and outer sketches for variable profiles and thicknesses. I made a tube with various cross sections and puzzled for many hours on why the inner and outer lofts were crossing over from inner to outer in some parts. Eventually I found freecad does not loft according to inner or outer sketches but according to the order that you created the inner and an outer in one sketch.

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 ай бұрын

That's valuable insight, thanks

@meisievannancy

3 ай бұрын

​@JokoEngineeringhelp Pleasure. Hope it helps someone. Even a video on double lofted tubes would have been informative with this "feature" included so as to avoid it unless one is looking for a chiseled interfaced section.

Thanks Joko. You're an excellent teacher. If not for your tutorials I would've given up on FreeCAD as it's not the most user friendly software (compared to Solidworks). Also really like the dark layout but couldn't figure out how to change mine in 'preferences'. Plesse advise 😅

@raymondg.3173

4 жыл бұрын

@@mihailazar2487 thanks, I'll definitely check it out

Very helpful video, trying to follow it now. I am wondering if it is possible to make a loft/sweep follow a path that is continually varying in all three axes? Your (bezier) path is essentially lying on one plane, so it is only varying in two. I imagine if the destination sketch was offset in the other axis it would still work, but the path would still be lying on a plane, albeit an angled one? Say you wanted it to follow a path continually varying in all three dimensions? (Not sure if one would, it is just for completeness of knowledge, and I cannot even see how one would sketch it). I guess you could get that effect by having a lot of intervening way points - but then the shape would not be continuously morphing from one end to the other.

I think the RULED SURFACES comes into play when you have MORE THAN TWO SKETCHES to loft through. :D

Better names for workbenches would help!

Sooo... is the datum plane absolutely necessary in order for loft/sweep to be calculated properly? So far lofts for "full" bodies worked (for me) by changing the sketches' attachment in combo-view. Now I want to sweep a duct, with a spline as path, and basically just get stuff I could put on posters or tshirts. Best case I get would be just swapped inner/outer edges. i'm 3 weeks into freecad's(0.19) sketch and partdesign workbench and try to "learn" what the program is doing. this is my first time using cad software. Awesome video by the way, only watched 9mins so far because i get interrupted all the time :-(

Thank you for this excellent tutorial. If someone were going to design a tube frame structure with dimensions in all planes (like a dune buggy chassis), would part design be the best workbench to use?

@JokoEngineeringhelp

2 жыл бұрын

Part design is great, check out the dodo workbench too. I have a video on it covering only part of its functionality, but it's great for weldments and what not. The last I used it (a long time ago) it had a limitation on radiused components.

what about a rotated or twisted sweep?

Great tutorial! I have a question: can the shape rotate as it transitions from one end to the other? I mean rotate as helix.

@funkysod

4 жыл бұрын

If the path is a helix it should work. Need to test your specific profile against the helix you want.

@JokoEngineeringhelp

4 жыл бұрын

As funkysod said, you can make a helical path from the part workbench or you can use the curved surfaces workbench to specify a twist. You can see how to do that here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/iaCnksWqmLmpk5c.html

@federicolopezbervejillo7995

4 жыл бұрын

@@JokoEngineeringhelp thank you!

I'm experiencing an issue where my loft doesn't connect fully. I've simplified my drawing and the loft won't connect on a basic outline to another. I can may a video to show.

Is it possible in the Sketcher to create a "mirror constraint" where all the parts get mirrored across some access and remain fully constrained so I only need to define one side?

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

Yes the mirror does exist, but it does not fully constrain. Some constraints are copied but not all.

17:20

wow - is that tool: FreeCad Open Source ?

@penelopezturbo

4 жыл бұрын

Yes

It's a bit sad that there are several incompatible workbenches that do similar things, but you end up not being able to use them together. In the forum, you get comments like... yeah don't use part design with objects from part, or similar comments.

What's the software your using for the on screen display for hotkeys

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

Keymon, available in linux

I confess: I set Playback speed = 75%....

Can you please do a video on making Herringbone gears in Freecad

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

Just specify the herringbone instead of the spur gear here. See my video on the addon manager if you're unable to add the gear WB. kzread.info/dash/bejne/Yq6szLF7YqbHn5s.html

ah i see, @11:33

great video! Is frenet "freenet" or "frenay" like in french?

@JokoEngineeringhelp

4 жыл бұрын

Honestly I've been trying to figure out the pronunciation on that for a while now.

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

Found it! It's pronounced like "Frinnett" www.pronouncekiwi.com/Seret-Frenet%20equations

Sim-flow

@JokoEngineeringhelp

2 жыл бұрын

That would be cool to run in sim-flow

I was and still am confused on why there is a Part and Part Design workbench. It seems Part Design is for more simple stuff? Now I don't use it, only Part. I was trying to get a 36 chevy front fender in the right shape and freecad never could get it right. It has a bump in the loft and after hours I gave up and had to edit it out in the real world with a grinder/sander, which was kinda the point of using cad not having to do that..

@JokoEngineeringhelp

4 ай бұрын

Great question. The part workbench runs on a CSG workflow, which stands for constructive solid geometry and relies on booleans to create features. It's an older and more original method to model parts. The Part Design workbench came after. It takes a more modern workflow with a full history tree. Users of other platforms such as Onshape, SolidWorks, Alibre, Inventor etc will feel much more at home with Part Design. There is a lot of functional overlap between Part and Part Design, but the workflows to do the same things are quite different. For autobody applications, it might be worth looking into the curves and possibly curved shapes workbench. It can make organic geometry such as fenders a lot more doable. Most other workbenches in FreeCAD rely on the Part workbench for additional editing, which will probably be similar to how yo are already modeling. Hope that helps

Is there a tool to offset an entity in a sketch?

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

A channel I've worked with - Allvisuals4u has a video covering sketch offset methods.

Could you possible point me to a video where you create a curved slot? been banging the old noggin, pulling out hair trying this. To be honest, at my age I can't lose much more hair. I mean a curved slot in a lets say a flat board lets not get crazy here :P

@JokoEngineeringhelp

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Ricc; Does this help? grabcad.com/library/curved-slot-for-ricc-1

@RiccBallard

3 жыл бұрын

@@JokoEngineeringhelp Absolutely! thank you so very much.

You should really try to pause between actions. I'm playing this at 1/4 speed, and it's still hard to keep up my actions with yours, and at that speed, it's also impossible to tell what you're saying. Pausing as you go along would help with letting the viewer keep pace.

@fosatech

3 жыл бұрын

Pause the video and replay it. It's better to do that than watch a 1 hour long video of a dude rambling on about one thing. There's too many people who already do that.

Too many shortcuts and too fast for me to follow... would like to see you clicking instead of using tons of hotkeys. would be better for a video.

@JokoEngineeringhelp

20 күн бұрын

That's a tough one- I get people telling me to use hotkeys because they want to know the best workflow. I don't think there is a way to satisfy everyone, but I'll keep trying to find a way that's best.

I'm sorry but this application is the biggest load of rubbish I've ever used. Compared to AutoCAD, this takes 10x the amount of effort to try draw something that always ends up not working. So not wasting my time using this anymore!