FreeCAD _ LinkStage3: Design using the boolean tools in PartDesign workbench. (Part 1)

hello to all and welcome to this fricat tutorial i just wanted to say that language is a big barrier for me so please don't hack me hang me for the way i talk and please bear with me while i'll try to express some pretty complex um concepts uh of rickhead second of all um the version that i use to do this tutorial is the link stage free branch from freak from real thunder this is a highly experimental um branch it has a lot of really useful and cool features but bear in mind that you can often bump into bugs with this small prelude out of the way let's get on with this tutorial hello fellow freak headers and welcome to this tutorial where we will talk about the newly added boolean tools um in the part design workbench and this is present in the linx h3 branch from real thunder first of all a quick word about the interface or the only thing that i did is to move the combo view on the right and leave the tree view on the left and this way we'll we will have a better view of the different operations that we will do we will start with a basic shape of a vase and this shape is actually pretty easy to do in freecad and i will start by doing a quick demonstration so we'll change our workbench to the part design will create a new body and within this new body will create a sketch on the x z plane okay let's just uh go ahead and hide our previous body select the polyline tool and do a quick rundown of the overall shape i'll snap to the origin right click to exit the tool right click again to have a free mouse cursor select this edge shift v for vertical uh dimension and we'll choose 150 millimeters okay let's make the two horizontal lines equal by pressing the e key on your keyboard shift h for a horizontal uh dimension and i'll choose perhaps 30 millimeters and we will go ahead and close our shape by using a b spline snap to the first point three point b spline click and then right click to exit the tool tweak a bit uh the shape close the sketch and we're pretty much done you saw that i haven't completely constrained my sketch but this is only because of time constraints so we'll go ahead and do a revolve on our sketch i'll choose the base z-axis and click ok let's select the top face do a pad and we'll leave it 10 millimeters okay one cool trick that uh i like to do is to go ahead and reopen my previous sketch we can select the revolution make it visible by pressing the spacebar and now if we tweak our shape and press f5 you can have a real-time preview of the modifications that you you are doing let's press f5 again front view and as you can see it's pretty simple to do quick modifications on the fly and preview them close our sketch okay with this little uh tutorial in itself out of the way i'll delete my my body and we will work on our base sketch so to make it a bit more interesting we can we have to first make it active as an active body i will rename it base select the top face and we'll make a fixed solid i want a thickness of the wall of about two millimeters i want the thickness to be inwards and if you look closely you can see that this edge right here is somewhat beveled so if we want a sharp edge we can go and change the joint up type in intersection and we have our sharp edge click okay and we're done so as a quick explanation how the boolean tools are better yet the split the previous feature into multiple solid works because this is the first one that we'll use this feature works basically by taking as a reference subobjects shape binder and splitting the last feature of a body along the lines of the shape binder a big advantage of the ling stage free branch is that the bodies can now have multiple solids inside them you will see you will see briefly you will see in just a bit how this is uh really important uh for uh this kind of workflow the first thing that we need to do is to define some some splitting uh planes for our um for our vase so we'll create a new body inside this new body will create a sketch and the first sketch that i want to do is on the yz plane so choose that and click okay i need to first reference the bottom face of my uh vase so we'll quickly get out of our sketch with the body that will rename as splitting tools so with the body that is called splitting tools active we'll choose the face from our base and we'll create a shape shape binder let's reink let's first hide our arrays re-enter the sketch and i will reference my external uh geometry so click on reference and we basic basically have our reference or right click to exit the tool will hide our body let's go ahead to switch to our side view use a polyline let's try to hit this vertex vertical line click on the first line h for horizontal and what we essentially need is to have some lines that will cut our vase entirely okay so now we're pretty much done let's close this sketch highlight the base and we'll create another one another sketch this time on the xz plane we'll create a simple sketch for the sake of time but of course we can use sketches that are really complex let's make this tangent uh to our z-axis by clicking shift o let's make these two symmetric and now we're pretty much done at this point what we will essentially do we will we will create some cutting planes for our ways so i'll select my first sketch i'll move to the part workbench select the first sketch choose extrude i want to extrude it on the x direction for about 200 millimeters and i want to extrude it symmetric to the z axis let's try this okay and i need another cut plane i'll choose my second sketch again extrude i want to extrude in the y direction for about 200 millimeters and again symmetric and click ok so now we basically have our cut planes now to put some order in my tree view i like to create some folders and uh the first one i'll call it the splitting tools and i'll create another one that is called assembly tools and you will see why in just a minute okay let's move the splitting tools body and to extrude extrudes in the splitting tools folder and you can see that we already have a little bit of a cleaner trivial now we need to activate our vase what we essentially do is to go ahead and select a face from the second extrude will create a shape binder and as you can see the shape binder is created inside the base with this shape binder selected we will go ahead and click the split previous feature into multiple solids and this is a mouthful so let's go ahead the splitting tool will will cut our main main body based on the shape binder and to see it better we need to hide our second extrude because it is still visible in the 3d view and if we double click on the blue blue split we activate that body as you can perhaps notice that we made a jump in time and we left our model in this state with our bottom and top splits activated what we need to do at this point we want to split the base once again along the vertical axis so we need to have our base active and select this face and this face from our first extrude create a shape binder and you will see that the shape binder is created inside the tree structure of the active body using this shape binder we will go ahead and make a new split let's go ahead and hide our extrude select it press the spacebar so we can better see our model activate the various geometry inside the split and at this point we have a pretty nice split of our base and we will again try to make a bit of order in our tree view so collapse the base the splitting tools will create another folder and this one will name it to rename it as let's say components we'll throw our base inside that folder i will show you now a really cool trick that we can do inside the link stage 3 branch and this is the hierarchy menu just select the sketch uh press u on your keyboard twice this will bring bring up the hierarchy menu and you will see that at the base we have the sketch and above it all the hierarchy under which it is placed so our sketch is part of our splitting tools that are part of our splitting tools folder and of course we have as a top item the our split tools file so if i select the sketch this will automatically expand the trivial so we can go and select the sketch here press spacebar to hide it so now we will begin with the fun part we will go ahead and create a new part in our document and as you perhaps know the part is a container in freecad that it is designed to have its own coordinate systems system and it can hold various bodies as well as other geometrical entities the part container can be considered as a simple as a simple assembly container because it doesn't have its own solver for movement but it can hold various bodies placed relative to its origin coordinate system so let's highlight let's expand the tree view of our ways we need the various splits that we previously made and notice that the part container has an active or inactive state similar to the body container with our part active we go ahead and select the first split and we will create a new body based on that split click yes on the dialog and the new body is created with the base features that references our first split select the second one create a new body click yes and similarly we'll do it for the remaining bodies and yes okay let's go ahead and hide our components hide our assembly tools hide our splitting tools for now and i will rename my part as final product let's rename the first body as bottom the second one is and will hide the top part of our design in this episode we will concentrate on the bottom uh side of our base and we'll see how far we can go with this i want to give a more interesting color to my body so i will select my my bottom body ctrl d on your keyboard select a color of your liking press ok close you will see that nothing changed because we have the base feature that if we if you go in the view tab and search for the map face color you will see that the map face color property is set to true this means that the color will follow the color of the reference the body i don't know if that makes sense to you but just bear with me i will change this property to false and give the base feature with ctrl d a shape color and we'll choose the same color as before okay we'll do the same thing for the side the bottom side body so choose the color okay close this dialog and the base feature needs to not map the face color we set it to false false and if we do a ctrl d on the base feature choose the color and we're pretty much done what i want to do is to create some kind of connection between our two pieces that closely follows the contour the the interior contour of uh of our base to do this we will once again use the boolean tools and let's concentrate first on the bottom body let's create a new body make it active we will rename this body as let's say base connection and inside this body i need a reference to this face let's say this face and this one create a shape binder and we can hide our final product for just a second okay okay switch to front view create a new sketch on the xz plane okay let's reference the bottom side of our vase so reference this external geometry right click to exit the tool we can align our sketch to the view with this icon and i want to create some connection tabs between our two pieces i'll go ahead and quickly draw some geometry we can select all of our geometry select the z-axis as our list item selected and we can mirror the geometry on the other side we essentially mirrored our sketch on the other side for because of time constraints i will not go and fully constrain my sketch but it is always advisable to do that so close our sketch unhide our bodies and notice that we are still working in the base connection body if we have to follow the structure that we imposed on our tree view i should go ahead and move this base connection into the components folder and let's reveal it double click on the base connection will make it active select the sketch and pad it symmetric to the plane for about 200 millimeters or i guess that 100 could be enough okay we will select our binder and click on the split tools the split tool have uh created has created a bunch of uh solids and we will activate only the ones that we need to uh inside our model so we need to activate this one deactivate the exterior one and like i guess this that this one we need as well i also want to split my base connection along the x z plane so to do that we will go ahead and create a new button plane i want to attach it to my initial pad click ok and again with the datum plane selected go ahead and split your base connection body so we have one split second split first split and the fourth split at this point i want to merge my various plates with the bottom and the bottom side bodies so we need to activate our bottom body we will only for the clarity hide our side body [Music] and let's deactivate this one let's deactivate this one with our button as active body we go ahead and try to make a boolean operations operation select your first split edit and again we have the cyclic reference error message so dismiss it cancel we'll go and see where we have the binder select this one go into data and the binding mode should be detached okay let's try to make our operation again on the bottom we do a boolean operation i select my split we add it i select the second split that i need and add it to the body and click ok if we hide the base connection uh body which is a separate body from our final product bottom piece select the base body and press space the space bar you can see that we merged our constructed geometry with the bottom side of our base to be honest i don't really like how this geometry has turned out and i can go back to my base connection and tweak it so we go into our sketch okay and close hide the base connection and you see that the geometry of the last boolean is updated based on our preview on our modifications select the last boolean go into view map face color to false and let's see if we obtained the desired result we will do pretty much the same thing on the bottom side body so unhide this i'll hide my bottom body so activate the bottom side what i need to do is to bring in the other splits and i'll highlight them as needed and i will activate them as needed so we don't need this one but we need this one we deactivate this one and activate the other one notice that this geometry is still part of the base connection if we hide it we don't yet have it as part of our bottom side body so make sure that this body is active by double clicking it and go ahead and do a boolean operation we'll select the split and edit we'll select the second split and edit to our body click ok select the boolean map face color to false and hide the base connection body so we don't see it anymore unhide the bottom body [Music] and you can see that we managed to create a bridge a perfect perfectly matching bridge between the two bodies to enhance our viewing experience i will create an exploded assembly with using links so selecting our bottom uh body we will go ahead and create a new link let's select the bottom side go ahead and create a new link select the two links and let's drop them in the assembly tools folder and this is only because we want somewhat of a clean trivia okay right click on that voice click transform and let's bring our component in here right click on the second body transform and let's bring it here this way we have a really nice view of the components of our final product keep in mind that these are only links to the first bodies that they reference but they can have their own positioning and uh their own set of properties but they will update once we modify the base uh the referenced body okay we are pretty much at a good point but looking at this model i can see that these two pieces would really need some alignment tabs and we'll repeat the drill we'll go ahead and create a new body but first of all we need to deactivate the bottom we deactivate the final product because i want the new body to be created outside of any other model that i previously made so create a new body i will rename this as alignment tabs and i will i will throw it and i will throw it inside the components folder okay and of course our alignment tabs need to reference in some way this connection bridge that we previously made to not get confused we will hide our assembly tools hide these bodies i want to hide the side the body as well activate the alignment tabs by double clicking on it we will select this face and this face as well and create a shape binder hide the bottom body to have a clear view of what we are doing and we will create a sketch on the xz plane now that we created our basic sketch for the alignment tabs we'll go ahead and pad it for about two millimeters or perhaps three okay it looks quite alright to me so let's reveal our bottom piece and we want to bring in this new geometry so double click to activate it boolean tool we'll select the alignment tabs and add them of course we have the cyclic reference so cancel let's expand this the binder we need to go into the data tab and desynchronize it so we need to have it detached let's go into our body click on the boolean tools choose the pad edit and click ok select the boolean tools view tab let's turn the map face color to false and we are pretty much done to this point if we unhide our assembly tools you can see that our body is updated with the new geometry of course we need to create the matching geometry on the on the side part of our assembly so let's hide the first one reveal the side component double click to make it active we'll do a boolean operation inside of it and we'll select the pads even though they are not visible we'll select the pads we'll choose to make a cut and edit click ok and hide the alignment pads as you can see it is quite beautiful that the boolean operation has preserved the color of the previous feature used and i think i'll leave it to this because i like it just to refine a bit our model we will go ahead and do some chamfers on some edges so we can go into the bottom body reveal it let's hide the bottom side and let's try this select this edge chamfer let's try to add some more edges and of course it doesn't work let's try 0.5 millimeters yeah i want this one as well i want this one this one and this one click okay let's do another chamfer select this edge chamfer okay so i must say that i quite like how this is turning uh on i would like to have the alignment tabs chamfered as well because this way they will have a easier match so i'll try 0.2 millimeters let's try zero 0.5 okay of course we want to do the same on the bottom side so double click to activate it hide the button reveal the bottom side and let's try to do some chamfers click ok let's say unhide our bottom uh body and perhaps i want to see this one as well okay quickly before we close this episode and we will continue our model in the next one what i need to do is to punch the holes for the screws that will go ahead and unite our two components of the bottom base with this side with the bottom side so we need to do it in the bottom side body let's hide the other one let's hide this as well and we'll create a new datum plane and we will attach it to the base feature oriented on object xs and we will move it in the z direction by 60 millimeters remember that the z direction of this plane is basically the normal direction so the perpendicular line on the on the plane this way you can kind of quickly orient it in space click ok select the datum plane create a new sketch and this will create a sketch on the datum plane we need to reference some geometry so let's turn this around click the reference geometry icon i need close the sketch and we will punch a hole or better yet create a pocket inside our model let's do it for 50 millimeters let's try this i think we can get away with 45 yeah click ok and select the datum plane and hide it to add a bit of refinement to our model let's go ahead and chamfer this edge let's add this one this one and this one click ok and unhide the other part of our body okay fellow freak headers i'd say that for this episode uh we're pretty much done in the next one we'll go ahead and build other components referencing our main vase geometry thank you for getting this far and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: OficineRobotica

Views: 11,837

Keywords: freecad, linkstage3, realthunder, cad, modelling, fusion360

Id: N7b2LBgREmE

Length: 40min 31sec (2431 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/QuakeString]

I love the dev who bring the multibody support in body... Love it.

[u/meutzitzu]

OMG this is more than amazing

man, the things I could do with this

[u/loosukudhi]

Hello OP. Your freecad looks amazing. I want mine to look like yours. I also like your colors for the bodies orange. And properties on the right side is just perfect. I like the tree branch structure on the left. Is this different software to freecad. I downloaded from website it looks different totally. Can you help me with setup. Any config file you can share with me ? Will real thunder persons edition and features come to normal freecad ? Sorry about lots of questions I am new to freecad.

[u/DireGnome]

If you were to 3D print this thing, the alignment tabs wouldn't fit together because the "slot" is exactly the same dimensions as the "key." Is there an easy way to shrink or grow those features to allow for some clearance?