FreeCAD 0.19 - Basic Course - Part 1 - Your start with FreeCAD (EN)

hello and welcome everybody to this video course free cat 19. in this course which will consist of several parts i will show you how to get started quickly and effectively with free kit my name is florian mostly known as flowy in the freecad community and i've been working as a cat educator for more than seven years now about two and a half years ago i picked up freecad and started my german youtube channel flowy's corner in january 2019 i started a free cat basic course in german because of the great reception that i received in my german channel i decided to make this course available for my international audience here in the freecad academy freecad itself is an open source community so the community is very important for freecad you can participate in the community by using the forum where you can ask for help or show your own personal freecad project if you want to participate more in the freecad community you could probably help translating or upgrading the documentation the so-called freecad wiki and there are several other ways to help improving and contributing to freecad this course is funded by generous donations from my freecad community so i get paid by the viewers so i don't have to make deals with companies or advertisement here for products or affiliate links and other stuff so it's completely free and funded by the viewers and now let's start this video course the first thing you should do in order to start with freecad is to go to the website freecadweb.org this is freecads official website and the starting point for you in your journey with freecad what do we have on the website we have a features list you can click on this and see all the wonderful features that are currently in freecad and that are currently under development we have the downloads i will talk about this later this is one of the most important tabs overall the documentation or the so-called wiki where you find all the information how freecad works tutorials it's a great manual on all the specific tools within freecad about the specific workbenches and there is so much information in here next thing is the community most important in the community is the forums but there are a lot of other ways to interact with other freecad users you will learn how to contribute to freecad how you can help how you can track box how you can contribute to the wiki you can donate to the freecad organization and you will have a showcase on some nice models that have been built within freecad so we switch to downloads and under downloads we will find the current stable version is the 19.1 and we have three platforms where we can use freecad and that's windows mac os and linux i will continue with this video after the installation in windows 10. see you there here we are in the fresh installation of free kit 19. we start in the so-called start workbench you can see that by having a look at this little button here this is the so called workbench selector where you can select different workbenches for different activities within freecad what can you do in the start workbench first you have documents you will find the recent file list the files that you have been recently using and some nice examples of freecad we have the help tab very important that brings you directly into the documentation and you will find about the different workbenches and applications you do in these workbenches and lastly the activity tab you can see the last changes that have been added to the freecad source code freecad is heavily under development and you will see that there are fixes and new features coming to freecad all the time let's close this start page tab down here and you will see a big gray surface here within this gray surface we cannot do any 3d design work so in order to do this we need to change the workbenches so let's click on here the workbench selector and select the part design workbench why the part design workbench this is my standard workbench to create 3d geometry and the workbench that i will use within this course the first thing i'd like to do is to change my user preferences therefore i click on edit preferences and then i will have this little window here to change the user preferences these are just suggestions by me you don't have to follow all of these you can take some of them you can do it completely on your own it's just a suggestion and it will show you how i have my user preferences set for this course language we will leave on english first thing we need to change is the size of the toolbar icons that's currently set to medium these are the toolbar icons here on the top of the screen and i find them too tiny to be easily visible so i change them to large 32 pixels apply and you will see it's a lot better visible next thing i want to change is which module is automatically loaded after the boot up at the moment we start in the start workbench as you have seen i will change this to the part design workbench and click on apply so whenever i boot freecad for the next time i will automatically start in the part design workbench there are six more tabs under the general settings here document selection editor units and so on you can check all of these and find if there are settings that you would like to change i will leave them at standard for this course next thing we click on the display we will add anti-aliasing that's currently set to none we will change this to msaa four times and we will change the pick radius so how sensitive does the selection react to your mouse click we will change this to 8 pixels apply under the navigation tab we will leave everything as it sets standard we will leave the 3d navigation at cad style and the next tab is important it's the colors tab where we have a gradient color as standard background color you see this nice blue to gray background color i prefer not to have gradient in my background especially not when recording video this can produce some unwanted artifacts by compression settings in the video so i prefer to use a simple color i click on simple color and change this simple color in the red green and blue settings to 220 each therefore i will have a nice light gray background the pre-selection and selection highlighting at yellow and green i will leave at the standard settings so the next thing i want to do i want to go to part design and change the model settings we have three check boxes here to automatically check the model after boolean operations to refine after boolean operations and to refine after sketch based operations i will set this active all three of them next tab is the shape view tab i will change the angular deflection from 28.5 to 6 degrees that means that for instance on a cylinder where you have round shapes will be displayed a little bit more like a round shape and not so edgy so i will change it to six apply shape appearance i will have to change the shape color that's also set to a very light gray this will not be visible very well so i will change it to a darker gray 98 each and apply let's go to the sketcher in general and in display tab everything can stay at standard settings but under colors you will see that there are a lot of different color settings to be made here in the sketcher the 2d sketch environment now my suggestion if you leave the background color under display here if you leave this at the standard setting dark blue to dark gray background everything with the colors in sketcher is also fine but if you change it according to my suggestion to a light gray background you will have problems for example to see the default edge color at white or default vertex color at white in front of the light gray background so you can change some of these colors here at my github repository github.com flowy flowy freecad you will find a folder flowy's settings and under this folder you will see my color scheme that's a pdf file where i have listed all the settings for all the colors in the sketcher and in freecad in general maybe this can help you and i've also made a separate video on the topic of the colors so i will change the colors here now and then we start in freecad and talk about the user interface to explain the frequent user interface i downloaded the freecad demo grind plate here also from my github repository from the example files because it's easier to explain the interface if you open a frequent file and don't show it in an empty freecad document the first thing i'd like to talk about are the toolbars the toolbars are located here on the top of the screen and you can drag and drop them and position them according to your needs if you are missing one of the toolbars that you need you can go to view toolbars and here you find all the toolbars that are necessary for example the part design modeling tools these are the most important tools here in the part design workbench in order to create geometry the largest part of the screen here is the 3d view where you will see the grind plate or the 3d geometry everything that's visible here in the 3d view can be toggled visible or invisible for example you will see on the left side you would see the grind plate here if you select it and you press the spacebar it will disappear in the 3d view press spacebar again and it's back visible that's a common mistake among beginners that they lose their geometry and it's simply hidden if we hover the mouse over the geometry you will see that certain parts of the geometry like faces or lines are yellow that's the pre-selection color and if you left click on it you will see it turn green that's your selection color that you can set up if you want to select more than one object you will have to hold down the control key on the keyboard and select more elements for example these four faces if you click the empty screen everything will be deselected the controls in the 3d view are defined here on the bottom right of the screen if you hover over it you will see that we have the cad navigation style that we set up under the settings it's selecting his left mouse button zooming is the mouse wheel rotating is middle and left or middle and right mouse button and to pan we press the middle mouse button so we start panning i press the middle mouse button and i can pan my object here in the 3d view i press middle and right mouse button at the same time i can rotate around my object here and if i want to zoom i just roll the mouse wheel back and forth and so i zoom to certain elements the focus point on the zoom is always defined by the location of your cursor if you're completely losing track in the 3d window what can happen pretty easily for example if you pan it out of sight here there is help for you in the top left of the screen is here the button fits the whole content on the screen and you will see the part appears back in the middle of the screen so always remember this button here what i often do is when i'm constructing i use these predefined views here we have the isometric view that we are currently in we have a front view a top view view from the right side view from behind down and from the left side these are very helpful and i often use them we also have the navigation cube on the right corner of the screen where we can also select various angles of the geometry and i often use the cube to keep track in my 3d orientation and the last very important thing in the freecad user interface on the left side of the screen is the so called combo view that's divided under model and tasks tab here the combo view can also be grabbed here and positioned on a different place of the screen for example on the right side which is standard in some other 3d cad programs i leave it on the left side but you can drag and drop it where you want something that can also happen is you click the little x here on the top right and you click close and now you don't have the combo view anymore you have to go to view panels combo view to make it appear again you should not close this it's very important under the model tab in the combo view you see the model tree so how is the 3d file you see here in the 3d view how is it structured and under the tasks tab you can do various operations these operations depend on what you have selected for example if i select this edge here on top of it the tasks tab will change to give me the option to create a fillet or a chamfer here or some datum geometry so i can select chamfer and create a chamfer here on the edge so it's sensitive to what you have selected if i have nothing selected like now the tasks tab offers me to create a complete new 3d body element you can simply switch back and forth between model and tasks tab by simply clicking on it as i said earlier under the model tab in the combo view you'll find the structure or the composition of your 3d file let's have a closer look at it the first thing is the actual file if you select it you will find different informations down here under the properties about the file so for example who is the creator of the file where is it located on your hard drive and other things like license and other informations about the actual file the next thing is the part design body it's called grind plate underscore v1 in my example here if i select this a body element is very important in the part design workbench because under the body element it's like a container all the 3d and 2d geometry belonging to this will be stored in this container for example all the sketches all the operations features every body has its own origin and that's the first thing you find in the list under the body here origin it's grayed out so we press the spacebar and make it visible you will see then that the origin consists of three planes x y x z and y z plane and three x's there is a little arrow next to origin if we click on that you will see that there are the six elements that make the origin in part design we talk about the so-called feature editing approach that means that we start with one base feature and apply various features or operations on this base feature in order to create our 3d geometry for example in the model tab you see that all objects are grayed out only fillet underscore top is in color and that means that only the last feature here is displayed we can select an earlier feature for example the grind plate base press the space bar you will see that fillet top will become grayed out and we only have grind plate base colored here this is almost like jumping back in time to the timestamp when this feature was created how was the grind plate base created we click on this little arrow and we see an underlying feature here called grindblade based geometry with this little icon here we can also make this visible by pressing spacebar and on the back of the geometry we will see some lines here these blue lines and red dots i double click on this one and you will see we move to a different workbench the so-called sketcher workbench that's a 2d workbench where you can define two-dimensional sketches to define your geometry i closed the sketcher and this sketch was modified losing the pad to transform a two-dimensional sketch into a three-dimensional body and that's exactly what the grind plate base here is so now let's see what history based operation means i created a large slot also with an underlying sketch i created this small slot here that creates a hole in the geometry i created a mirror that mirrored the two slots here to the right side i created a chamfer to make a little chamfer on the down edge here then i created a fillet that rounded the corners here and then i created another fillet to round the upper corners here and that's the editing history you see that i apply feature after feature to create from a simple base geometry the finished product and what you can also see is that i started with sketch based operations like this grind plate base that's a pad and the pocket for the slot holds here and after i was finished with the sketch based operations then i moved on and created features that lay on top of 3d geometry for example the fillets here are not based on sketches they are based on 3d geometry and it's always advised to use these elements that are based on 3d geometry as the last elements in your structure here in this part of the video it's time to create our first very own model i want to demonstrate two different ways to create our first model in freecad what we want to do together now is to create this little pac-man shaped model it's a very very simple model it's only a cylinder with one quarter cut out so super simple super easy for anyone of you who has never used freecad before first i would like to show you how to make this model using basic shapes and then i want to show you how you can make this model using sketches and a pad the first thing we need to do is to create a new file we go to file new and there it's called unnamed one we go to the save command save the active document demo video one and we have to make sure we are in the part design environment if we are in the part design workbench we can create a new body element by clicking on this button here create a new body and make it active or click in the combo view under tasks create body these two commands are exactly the same so i will click on create body switch to the model view again and there you see i will close these two documents here and here you see the file demo video one that's the name of the file and under the file there is my body body is a container that contains all my 3d and 2d geometry and within this body i will start doing a basic shape therefore i go to this comment here primitive that's the official name for basic shape click on the arrow and create an additive cylinder now frequent needs to know where we want to create the cylinder therefore we need to define the attachment attachment is active right now therefore we can click on a plane we have the x z y z and x y plane i will click on this plane the x y plane and define my cylinder to be created on top of the x y plane the next thing i need to do is i have to define a radius for my cylinder i will type in here 60 millimeters and a height of 20 millimeters and free cat is very handy here because we can cut out the quarter by simply defining an angle here you see it's currently set to 360 degrees if i set it to 180 degrees you'll see i only have half of a cylinder therefore i just enter 270 degrees that's three quarter of a cylinder and i'm completely finished i click on ok and i have my shape completely done i often mention that freecad is a so-called parametric cad system that means that this cylinder is created using parameters therefore i can click on the cylinder and set its properties down here i can change the radius maybe to 80 millimeters or the height to only five millimeters and the cylinder will adjust within a few seconds so i'm set it back to 20 and 60 and can change whatever i'd like i can even change the angle here later to set it to 90 degrees i only have one quarter i think you get the trick so that's when you start with primitives or basic shapes now i will delete the cylinder i select it here in my combo view and press the delete button on the keyboard and now the cylinder is gone the next method is using sketches sketches are 2d geometry that are later put into 3d space using different 3d commands i start clicking on create a new sketch command select the xy plane as before to create my sketch on this plane click on ok then i will have to draw a circle first i find the circle here in my sketcher toolbar create a circle in the sketcher it's defined by clicking on the midpoint and one outer point i click right in the middle of my sketch document on the origin here and then i drag the mouse and click again and then i set my circle i have to define the radius of the circle now so therefore i click on this command here constrain an arc or circle click on the circle and set it to 60 millimeters and okay now we have a full circle but we only want three quarters of a circle so i have to trim one quarter here on my circle in order to do that i click on the line command here create a line in the sketch i start with the first point also here in the origin and i end on my circle here and i do exactly the same starting here on my origin and end here you will see that there are automatically two constraints created a vertical constraint here and a horizontal constraint here now the sketch is a little bit over defined because we don't have one single closed shape but two of them so therefore we have to trim this quarter we select the trim command trim an edge and then we click on this part of the circle right click to exit the command and you will see we have a three quarter circle here that's fully constrained you see it here in the solver messages fully constrained that's what we want to achieve in the sketch we go to close have the sketch here go to pad pad the selected sketch and pad it up to 20 millimeters and now we achieve the exact same what we had with primitives before this construction is also parametric that means if we want to change the thickness of the cylinder we just can go to pad and adjust on the length here the height of the cylinder maybe 10 millimeters five millimeters or even crazy 80 millimeters whatever you want to do if you want to change the shape of the circle of the underlying circle we don't necessarily need to go into the sketch we could do that by double clicking on the sketch and change the 60 millimeters here exit the sketch here but we don't need to do that we can also select or highlight the sketch here go to sketch constraints open it here and you see there is a constraint set to 60 millimeters and that's the radius of the sketch so i can even adjust the sketcher constraints in my properties menu here on the left so as you see two different methods to create the exact same geometry that's fully parametric and can be adjusted later in the process of the design the next question that certainly occurs which method do i prefer so it's pretty simple if you want to start your design with a very simple feature like a box or a cylinder something that you find here in the primitives menu it's absolutely fine to start with a primitive but if you're going to more sophisticated designs and you're not starting with such a simple sketch like this one here you will certainly want to start with a sketch and this is going to be the subject of the next video in this basic video series how do i create professional proper sketches using the sketcher workbench thanks for watching this first episode let me know in the comments how you liked it it's the first time that i do such a long video in my english channel and it's also the first time for me to do a video that i created for my german channel exactly the same video in english so let me know where can i improve what do you want to see in the next episodes have a great time see you here in the freecad academy my name is flowy and goodbye

Channel: FreeCAD Academy

Views: 190,399

Rating: 4.9479957 out of 5

Keywords: freecad, freecad 0.19, freecad 19, freecad 19 basics, freecad basic course, freecad base course, freecad fundamentals, freecad start

Id: u8otDF_C_fw

Length: 27min 49sec (1669 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Tek_3D]

I am one of the ones in the unfortunate situation of not being german, so thank you.

[u/HillbillyCream]

Thanks for all your hard work

[u/dshivaraj]

I used Solidworks at work, needed a FOSS alternative for personal use. I found FreeCAD and your channel. Great combo. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[u/TheRedBased]

I always watch your videos, it's great to see you doing them in english as well now!

I'm still hoping that the same miracle that happened for blender happens for FreeCAD as well :)

[u/00001000bit]

Even though I don't speak German, I watched some of your German videos back when I first was getting into FreeCAD. Even though I couldn't follow most of the audio, I was still able to pick things up from them because of how clear and straightforward you approached everything.

Now, I feel pretty comfortable in FreeCAD, but figured I'd watch this beginner video because I like your content. I had it running on a 2nd monitor while doing other work AND still picked something up I never thought to do (adjust constraints from the property panel instead of going back into the sketch.) So, you still found a way to teach me something new. Thanks. :)

[u/mauserl]

Dankeschön!

Not that I need a translation for myself, but I bet many will be glad for it. Though I prefer a tutorial that uses the same language as my installation (free tip: never use your local language for complicated software and you will never run into the "that was a nice tutorial, but how is the option/menu called in German/[insert your native language here]" ever again)

[u/BrandonGene]

I'm really excited for these, hope you keep them coming!

[u/dzalf]

Watching now. Danke schon!

[u/flowwstar]

I received incredibly positive feedback to this first episode, so that I am happy to announce:

Episode 2 of my FreeCAD Basic Course will be released FIRST on my English channel FreeCAD Academy and then translated to my German channel. So this will be the first time for me to start the release for my great international audience.

I'm trying to finish working on episode #2 on this weekend - so that I am able to upload next week.

Thanks for the support and see you next time!

flowwie