FreeCAD Beginner #10 - Creating a complex model

[Music] in this video we're going to create this part and you can see i already created once but i'm going to show you how to create that from scratch and we're going to do it from the sketch so this is a sketch i created myself but i created it because i saw somebody else had done a similar thing in solidworks and somebody asked me if we could create that in free cad and how would we do it so i don't think it's identical i certainly didn't look at the dimensions or anything because it was all in imperial measurements but i created something in millimeters because i prefer to work in millimeters if you like inches and uh fractions you can carry on doing that but that's not something i like to do so for me even though i live in the united states i do everything in millimeters which can be a problem sometimes if i want to get screws or something like that they're not widely available here in millimeters so you have to go back to english or uh um you go back to uh inches to to get screws and and other things so i'm kind of hybrid in that uh situation but to be fair um i just i don't prefer to work in lemons it makes more sense to me to have everything be in multiples of 10 and that's that's why i do it so so you choose you can do what you like but i i prefer to do that so we're going to do how do we create this part and basically what we're going to do is we're going to create using some of the techniques that we've already learned i'm going to keep it simple i'm going to take my time doing it so you can see how to do it and then you'll be able to take on something like this to model it and to make it work for yourself this is not a part that i need to use but it is a part that i think shows how to do some more complex modeling so without further ado let's move on so the first thing i'm going to do i'll leave this model open but i'm going to start a new model so i will start a new one and i'm going to save that one as i'm just going to call it complex model because it goes with my video and i always make my free cad files available to my patreon um so all my patrons get these free cad files uploaded so they can access the actual file that i create during the video so first thing we're going to need to do we need a part and we need a body and then we're going to create a sketch so i'm going to work on the x y plane and the first part is the base and the base is literally a rectangle and as you know with a rectangle we always take these points we're going to keep it centered around the origin because it just makes the modeling easier so we're gonna put some symmetry there and then we're gonna create a couple of dimensions and i'm looking at the sketch here that dimension is 80. and this dimension is 50. i'm just reading those from the sketch so we're going to close that and then we're going to make a pad and it's 10 mil thick on my sketch so we're going to leave that as 10 mil and we'll say okay just want to take a few seconds to say thank you to our patreons that's mucou james blackwell carricellon monkey mark morse and daniel dudley these guys have the videos at least a week in advance they get access to the free cad files and i really appreciate their support so thanks so that's the first part and of course that's the base very simple if we wanted to put chamfers or radii or anything on there i'd leave all that till last we're not going to do any of that ahead of time so for now um we're gonna we're gonna work with this piece and we're gonna build up from here so we're gonna do another sketch we're gonna do on the xy plane and this time we're gonna do the holes in the corner now remember when you do this your model is going to switch off so you want to go back to your part hit the spacebar and the model will switch back on i hit this icon up here to get back into the middle of my my picture i'm going to open up my model tree so you can see that i'm actually in the sketch and i'm also going to use this icon remember this makes it show you a sectional view so you can now see where you're drawing and then all we're going to do is we're going to put a hole up in this corner because that's where the hole is so i'm going to just draw a hole and then i'm going to dimension it it's a diameter so as always i like to dimension diameters this defaults to radii i personally think it's a good idea if you're doing a diameter to dimension it as a diameter and those diameters or or those holes are eight millimeters on my sketch and then we want to position this in the corner and i have it on the sketch it's 10 millimeters in from this edge and 10 millimeters in from this edge so i'm going to dimension it slightly differently to that so i'm going to dimension it remember if we click that point and we put a dimension in it will automatically assume that we're going to this origin so i'm going to dimension from there i know this side is 80 so that means from here to here is 40 and i want it to be 10 back so i want that to be 30 millimeters hopefully that makes sense to you so i wanted it to be 10 from this edge i know that this is 80 long i know this is the center point because i made it symmetrical around there so i know from here to here is 30 that will leave here to here as 10. now i can do exactly the same thing i'm going to click that point and i'm going to do this dimension and i know that this one is 50 so that means from here to here is 25 so that means i want this to be 15 millimeters and that puts my hole 10 in from this side 10 in from this side and an 8 millimeter diameter and my hole is now fully constrained and ready to pocket so i'm going to close that and i'm going to create a pocket now in doing so i want it to go through the whole thing and again you don't see anything because it's going in the wrong direction so i'm just going to say reversed and now there's my hole so i'm going to say okay to that and that's the hole that i wanted now i want four holes and they have to be equally spaced so i'm going to select that guy and i'm going to use my multi transform and i'm going to say and this multi transform you can see i already picked the pocket and i'm going to right click to add a mirrored transformation and this is by default is using the vertical sketch axis so i have two of those holes now right click in here again do another mirrored transformation and this time i want to do it in the horizontal sketch axis and now i have the four holes that are in that base so i can say okay and say okay and that is my base all done now i want to create the central pillar so to do that i'm going to do another sketch also on the xy plane i'm going to say okay and again my model has disappeared so i actually want to switch it back on because i want to be able to see roughly where i'm drawing this thing and then i am going to use this same icon so i can see a sectional view and this is just another rectangle so i'm just going to create another rectangle in the middle and we're going to do exactly the same thing for constraint so we're going to put that symmetrically in the middle like that and then i have a dimension for this side which from my drawing was 30 millimeters and i'm just going to move that dimension out because i find it a bit confusing if they're laying all over the place then i'm going to dimension this guy and that one i know needs to be 20. and i'm going to move that down so we can see that too so there are my dimensions fully constrained once again we're keeping it simple we're building this up slowly and we're going to say close to our sketch now remember just in case anybody's confused when you can see the model view you're in a tab view here so this is the model view if i click the tasks it shows me my current tasks which is the sketch i'm just going to close the sketch now i've closed that sketch i can create a pad from that sketch i'm going to do that there's my pad now my pad is 10 millimeters already but it's 10 millimeters it drew on this face here remember this is where the the plane is the xy plane and so it drew from there up 10 millimeters but i want it to be 80 millimeters tall so i need to add in this 10 millimeters and then my dimension is 80 from this face so this is going to be 90 millimeters tall and there is my center post so with that being done i am going to pop that in the middle so you can see it i am ready to do my angle now so i can create an angle across the top here so i'm going to do that and we could have equally we could have drawn this as uh on this plane and we could have drawn it with the angle and then we could have made it that way i mean that you can choose how you approach these models um to be honest if it was a complex shape i would have done it that way but in reality um with this being so simple i decided i would just go ahead and cut the top off it so we're going to do a sketch in that yz plane let's say okay we're going to turn our model back on again this is good practice to make sure you know how to do all that hit this icon so i'm now back in the center and one thing i need to do in this sketch is i need to bring this geometry into the sketch because i can't select this at the moment but if i click here this icon here which actually creates an edge link to an external geometry and then i select that edge it will put that edge in my drawing for me and now if i take a polyline i can start at that point there over here uh go back up to here and end up on that line there so now i have a triangle that is going to shave off the top of that post for me so let's close that and you'll be able to see that my triangle is sitting right in the middle of that post and i'm basically just going to pocket that and go either side and i'm going to open that sketch again because i want to constrain it so let me do that quickly i'm going to take that guy and that guy and give it the angle that i want it's supposed to be 35 degrees so i'm going to create that and then i'm going to create a dimension for this side and it doesn't matter what that is that dimension i'm just going to leave it be because all i'm looking to do is shape the top off so i'm going to say close now it's fully constrained i'm going to say pocket and i'm gonna do this pocket um through all and i'm gonna do it symmetric to the plane and there it shaved off the top part so as i said you could have done a sketch that was this shape here and just created that on the xz plane and then created a pad symmetrically which would be a little bit more efficient than what i just did but to be honest it's not that big of a difference so let's get everything squared away here i'm going to go pop it in the middle now you can see i have my sides here the next thing i'm going to do is i'm going to create these pieces that fit on the side here so i think what i'm going to do i'll do it all in one go here i think so what we're going to do is we'll create a sketch we're going to create on the yz plane and we're going to say okay to that and we're going to turn our model back on so i want to be able to see it and go sectional view and then all it is is a circle that fits on this line and it has a dimension the outside dimension is 10 millimeters do that that's perfect and just pull that guy out a bit so i can see it i'll zoom in i want another circle on the and i want that guy to be five millimeters again from the sketch so that is my dimensions and then that needs to be uh where's the dimension there it's going to be 50 up from the bottom that's where we're going to put it so from here to here is going to be 50 so i can select that point do my vertical dimension make that 50 say okay and now that guy is right where we want it to be so now what i want to do is i'm going to close that fully constrained sketch and i'm going to create a pad and i'm going to create that pad symmetric to the plane i'm going to turn it around so you can see it now symmetric to the plane if i do 10 millimeters symmetric to the plane that's 5 either side we know that is 20 thick so if i go 20 millimeters thick you just see it popping out here and my dimension for the amount that it pops out is four so i want that to be 28 because it's going to be four aside so 28 and now it's sticking out for each side so i'll say okay to that and now we have that piece in there now if i wanted that hole to go the whole way through i would have just done the outside shape and then done the inside shape separately and made that pocket in this case because i added this after i had this body if you look because it's a pad this part is filled into this level here but that's actually what i have on the drawing so that's what i wanted to do but if you wanted it to be a through hole what you would have done is just create this lug then you would create a drawing for this hole and then just make that a pocket so you'd be able to pocket it all the way through if you wanted to okay the next piece we're going to do is there's a plate on the top here and so if we have a quick look at our sketch you can see the plate is on the top and it's 35 degree angle and it has some dimensions to it and we're gonna we're gonna take care of that now by using a date and plane so date and planes are a very useful tool and what we want to do is we want to put that date and play and we're going to start with it on our origin of our body so what i'm going to do is i'm going to click on the origin over here and i'm going to turn that origin on so i can see it then i'm going to create a date and plane and it didn't love that so it's selecting now where are we going to stick it so i'm going to stick it to that guy so my date and plane is now actually connected to this um xy plane okay so i'm a datum plane you can see it sitting there's that brown thing in the bottom there that's my date and plane so if i maybe if i move that a little bit if you had to see yeah you can see it better there so there's my date and plane that is my date and plane sitting there and what we want to do is we want to move that date and plane we want to make it go on top up here and sit at 35 degree angle so first thing we're going to do is we're going to rotate it to rotate it you rotate it around an axis we know this is the x-axis so we're going to rotate it and we're going to rotate it 35 degrees you can keep clicking or you can just type that in there if you want to i just kept clicking so there's my 35 degrees then i want to offset it in the z direction now that offset is probably the most complex part of this model and that is we have to calculate the dimension from here to here we want to calculate this triangle so that we know what that point is or we don't need to actually calculate it ourselves we can actually make that offset that z direction offset we can make it that distance so we know the distance from here to here is 80 and from the bottom here to here is 90 okay and so we know that's 90 we know this is a 35 degree angle and so we want to calculate what that height there is so the height is going to be equal to and i'm going to select the z and somebody pointed out that if you're in this part here and you want to go with the formula editor you can just hit the equals and the equals all that shame plus over here i actually hit the equals i didn't hit shift so plus an equals on the same key so the equals then gives me the formula editor so i know i want to offset it 90 minus the tan of 35 degrees times half the the distance of this we know this is 30 from our drawing so that's going to be 15. so that times that and say okay now our offset should be exactly on top of it should be exactly on top of this exactly in the spot and so i'm going to say okay to that and now we want to create a drawing that's actually on this xy plane or on this datum plane so we're going to do a sketch we're going to select the datum plane we'll say okay and we're going to center that sketch and we're going to turn on our part again center that sketch one more time and now we want to create the basic pad so it's very similar to what we just did at the bottom i'm actually going to turn off all those uh the origin of the bodies just to make it a little clearer for you to see what i'm doing so this guy is going to go here somewhere and we're going to do exactly the same thing so we're going to select those two points that center point and we're going to make that symmetrical and then we're going to give this a dimension which from my drawing that dimension is 50 and we're gonna i'm just gonna move that and move that out so we can see it and i'm gonna select that and give that a dimension and that one is 40 and that's all good and we're gonna say close the sketch and then we're gonna pad and that one is only four millimeters thick now i want to let you know if you calculate that distance and you type in the distance rounded you can end up with a little gap between this date and plane and this face and then your model won't work so by putting that that calculation actually into the model you're exactly in the right place it doesn't do the rounding but if you put in what you calculate it'll round it to two digits and it'll actually be slightly ahead of there and your model won't work so if you're having a problem with your model not working it could be because you're not entering that formula so you want to enter that formula now we have our top plate and now what we're going to do is put our holes in so it's going to be exactly the same thing that we did at the bottom so i'm going to say create a sketch select the date and plane say okay turn back on my model center everything and it's the exact same techniques i'm gonna put the hole roughly where i want it i need to hit that guy so i can see it i'm gonna dimension it in this case the holes are three millimeters and i'll zoom in there and the exact same thing so they're actually six millimeters in from the edge and i know those edges are from the center out is going to be 20 and 25 so so let's just take that point and we're going to give that a dimension so if that is 25 and we want it to be six so 25 minus six is going to be 19. and we're gonna do the same for this guy and that should be 20 minus six so it should be 14 and that puts it exactly in the place where we want it and and again it's fully constrained so we're going to close that and we're going to create a pocket and we're going to say through all and again it's in the wrong direction so we're going to reverse it and say okay and there we have our hole our first hole we're going to do the exact same transform so we're going to select this guy and we're going to transform it and we're going to right click to mirror and then we're going to right click to mirror again and this time we're going to say it this way and now we have all four holes and we'll say okay and i'm going to turn off the date and plane because that is now um in my way oh no i need it for one more hold and i have one more hole down the middle which is a 12 millimeter diameter hole let me turn it back on so it's just a matter of touching the spacebar and now let me just say one thing i could use the date and plane create the hole and it will create the hole perpendicular to that date and plane it'll come right out the back here is that what we want on my sketch you can't tell but i actually prefer that the whole go perpendicular to the xy plane so i'll show you both just just so you can see so i'm going to create a sketch i'm going to go back and turn on my model i'm going to center it and it's literally just a circle do that so you can see where i'm going i'm going to attach to that point pull that open all i need to do is give it a diameter it's 12 millimeters and close that sketch i'll show you exactly what i meant so now if i do a pocket and i'm going to say through all and symmetric to plane now you see i have the hole it's on that angle so it's it's as if we drilled it perpendicular to this plane but it'll pop out the back because we're coming in on the dayton plane so we're coming in perpendicular to that plane i don't think that's what i really want so what i'm gonna do is i'm going to cancel that and i'm going to delete that last sketch now i'm going to turn off the date and plane i'm going to create one more sketch and i'm going to create that sketch actually let me close that it created i already had the date and plan selected so it created on the date and plane i didn't mean that so we're gonna do it again make sure we don't have anything selected we're gonna create a sketch on the xy plane say okay and this time i don't need to turn the model on because i just want this hole to be right here and we're going to do the same thing again we'll just dimension it to 12 millimeters and we'll close that and we'll say pocket and we'll say through all and i'll just turn it so we can see it back in the middle and right now you can see the pocket is there but it's not coming out the top that's because it's not reversed so there we go we have the hole all the way through and we can say okay so that's basically the model and now what we want to do is just finish up we'll put some chamfers on whatever one thing i do want to show you where we modeled that and you have this outline if you want to get rid of that if you go in if you select the pocket so you selected the whole model if you look here it says refine if you look here it says refine and you can change this refine to true and then click away and it will hide that away so that cleans up that face and then i'm going to bring this back into the middle and just a couple of things you know if you wanted if you wanted to add some chamfers i can add a little chamfer here a little chamfer there maybe chamfers here here just to make it look the part let's go round off chamfer off the edges probably do the same thing up here and just say okay and now we have a piece that looks um pretty cool in my opinion done pretty quickly showed you how to actually make that part and get to the end of it so hopefully you enjoyed this video hopefully you enjoy seeing how to make a more complex model and you enjoyed seeing the techniques that we've already learned being put to some good use and understanding the the ways in which we can modify and use those techniques to create whatever models you want to create so if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel and of course consider joining our patreon all my patreons get the cad file that goes with the video and they get an early release of the video so they'll have had this video at least a week before you see it so thanks again and see you in the next one you

Channel: Adventures in creation

Views: 9,284

Rating: 4.9917011 out of 5

Keywords: FreeCAD, CNC, CAD, CAM, CNC routing, Design, DIY, woodworking, 3D printing, maker, creativity, art, crafts, Blender, Inkscape, Prusa Slicer, OBS

Id: QzRjzBw3ymE

Length: 31min 31sec (1891 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/imagitronics]

Excellent. Since your last post, I’ve worked my way up through video 7 and halfway through 8. I’m enjoying it immensely. I especially love these episodes that bring multiple ideas together into a real-world project.