FreeCAD: Quick and Easy Hexagon Mesh | Wrapped Around Cylinder | Tube

hi everyone and welcome to the channel today we're going to be looking at creating hexagons along our planet surface and also hexagons are wrapped around the tube so we're going to be designing the hexagon mesh learning how to use an array tool and then learning how to create these different types of meshes now this is a question that's been asked on my channel also it's been asked across a number of forums and Facebook groups there are many ways of doing this and this is one of the ways that I do it so I hope you enjoy these videos and let's have a look how we create this model if you like what we've seen please subscribe to the site I also have a co-fire or a coffee site that you can donate to if you so desire and that's at Ko hyphen f i.com forward slash m-a-n-g-0 also run a patreon where you can subscribe and get extra content and that's at www.patreon.com mango jelly Solutions any money that's kindly donated will be used to span the channel so start our free Cad and I'm going to come over to the Sketcher within the Sketcher we're going to create the base sketch to create the hexagons so we're going to start a new sketch and place it along the X Y plane to do this we're going to be using this icon here which if we drop this down we have a number of different shapes in here we've got pentagon hexagon octagon regular polygon Etc we're going to be using the hexagon in here if you can't find this then come up to sketch sketch drama trees and you'll see crate hexagon Within so the first hexagon we're going to create is on this point and we're going to come out now the idea is to create two hexagons that are arranged in a way that we can use the draft workbench to link array them to do that we create one hexagon and hit escape and I set some diameter using the constrain an arc or Circle which is this one around here so this is construction geometry I'm going to set this to 20 millimeters hit enter so we've got our first hexagon I'm going to make sure that the point is on this line with a point on line constraint or point on object constraint and that for the constrains the hexagon making sure that these sides are vertical we're going to create another hexagon now and place it in this right hand section of the screen here just going to click the right Mouse button or hit escape and we're going to move it and we're going to make sure that this side is vertical so it mirrors this hat screen up here I'm going to set the diameter again to 20 millimeters but I'm going to use an equality constraint against these two and make that equal now put the constraints down and also set some distance for this to be away we're going to stagger them like so so when this is repeated the hexagons will fit together if we think about this and it's repeat down here they will actually slot together and if we place them in Array across here then we build up a mesh full of hexagons the easy way to constrain this is to use the polyline tool and what we'll do is connect up these two points with polyline come out and create a triangle with the point pointing downwards hit the right Mouse button to get the mouse put it back and we'll make all these equal so all three make those equal but just clicking on them so if I move this triangle the space between these will increase and decrease just by changing the size of the triangle that sets the length on this triangle and this is the spacing so if I place this at three millimeters away we can see everything's constrained now one other thing we have to do is finally set this triangle all three sides by clicking on them this is known as a hungry selection because we're adding to the selection we don't have to use the control key we just click on them and we'll use the toggle construction geometry this is now construction geometry so it won't be shown in the font sketch if we close that now we have our two hexagons if I click top you can see how they're staggered now we have to array these so now we've got this sketch the idea is to actually extrude this over in the part workbench after we've arrayed it a number of times that's come over to the draft workbench to do our array select draw for a bench we've got this Grid in this come up which we don't need so we can turn that off with the griding down the bottom and we select our sketch account of modifications array tools and array left hand side we see the number of elements now I'm just going to go across this way first so I'm just going to change y to one and I'm going to deal with the x-axis so two along the x-axis I'm not going to change the X interval because I'm going to show you how to change that from the data tab we scroll down we must make sure that link array is checked so this is more efficient when we create the copies going across I say okay what you'll see over the right hand side we've got another copy of the hexagons let's come into this array and look along the left hand side and have a look on the data tab and the properties we have we scroll down we can see the count and we can see the number along the X we also got this interval X if we open this up and we can change the X interval so if I change this to 40 you can see that changes where that's going to sit now diagram 2 is 20 so we can change that to 20 and it will place it in the right place now I've got those set we can change the count along the X to count here let's change this to something like five and five for these going to cross now that's the fact the y-axis so number one y at the moment is one set this to two zoom out and you can see we've got the top hexagons here so we've got to close this Gap so we've got number y we've got to change the interval along the Y so this one here so we've got the number on the Y is two that's come up to the Y interval and we can reduce this down and click off and see where that places at I'm going to reduce this down to 36. and we can see how that's fitted in there again we can come in and now change the Y interval to what we want so I'm going to go four and we get this honeycomb sketch that's up to you how long or wide you want this because this will be all down to the surface that you want to create with this honeycomb sketch that's come back over to the part workbench and start our Boolean operations so at the moment we've got the array we can use this array and extrude it now I'm going to screw this along a length that's greater than the thickness of the base that we're going to be using so let's say about 20 millimeters so we've got this Extrusion here let's create our base now we can use either a sketch or with this one I'm just going to use a cube Cube has been placed in position click on the cube and I'm going to set some length and we'll go 100 you can see that there and width of 100 now let's go for something like 110. that's you how why do you want this and our height there is 10 so that's going to be within this I'm just going to go for five for the time being it's important now to make sure the base is within the honeycomb so at the moment it's actually in line with the bottom which is not what we want so we need to take the cube or the base right click transform and pull this up to make sure it's within that honeycomb structure now when we remove this look out for the sides so we're going to boot in this against this honeycomb and it's up to you of what kind of effect you want on these sites at the moment this is going to be removed and we're going to have this Gap in so if needs be we can come back over to the extrude and we'll drill into it click on our array and we can just increase the number so I can increase this Say by six number and Y by 5 like so and I take the cube right click transform and I'm going to pull this back into position so for instance I'm going to make sure it goes through the middle of these hexagons and we can do the same say about here something like that and okay that now got it positioned I'm going to come over to the tree view click on the extrude and let's collapse the extrude click on Cube this is the one we want to keep click on the extrude the one we're going to use is the cutting tool and then come up to part Boolean and cut and now we've got our hexagon mesh if this isn't the effect you want what we can do is come back into the cut and right click on the cube transform and we can transform the visible Cube we can enable the visibility by pressing the spacebar on it and if we go up to edit refresh you can see that automatically updates so we can use the shortcut as well on ubuntu's control ARB on Windows it'll be something else and we can decide what kind of effect we want so I'm going to go for something like this I'll hit OK and we've got the hexagon mesh so this is good for planes or even cubes for instance I can come into the cube and increase the height as long as we don't go above the height of the extrude will be okay because once we start going above the height of the extrude let's set this to faulty then I cut will only be part of that Cube which might be the effect that you want if that's not the case then we come over to the extrude and we just change the length forward to say 80. and hit enter and that's gone all the way through like so what happens if we want this say on the cylinder well for that we're going to be using the curse workbench so for the next part of this tutorial we're going to be looking at changing this so it wraps around a tube for that I'm going to get rid of the cut get rid of the cube and get rid of these truth so we're back to our right I'm going to press the spacebar and race so we can see the array I'm also going to reduce the array down just to one along the X and one long y so we get our original sketch back but this is the right now to grab this around the sender let's say go for a tube and remember the more complex we make this the larger we make it the more time it's going to recompute so I'm going to say the outer radius is of 40 mil and in a radius we could say take the outer radius so outer minus five millimeters to make that 35 so if we change the outer radius to say 50 then we've got this link in here and we get a recalculation so we've got 45 there may not change you can see the inner radius hasn't actually updated with that grayed out value but it's still 45 you can see it's actually changed in there let's go for 40 and hit enter we also need to set the height so the height I'm going to set to 30. so this is the tube that I want to unwrap and create hexagons around here to remove from the tube to do that I'm going to come over to the curse workbench and that's installed from the tools add-on manager and the curves workbench as a number of tools to deal with curved surfaces and nurb surfaces we're going to be using the sketch on Surface so select the face that we want to unwrap of the tube use the tool or come up to surfaces sketch on Surface we get a new icon in our tree View if I open this up you can see we've got map sketch I'll double click the map sketch will be flipped around and you'll see that this face has been unwrapped so anything we draw in here will get mapped to this face so this will only work if we take a simple object like a tube and unwrap it anything like b splines or tapered Lofts Etc then we get a different layout of the sketch and we have to actually create the sketch and figure out the circumference of the object and recreate this sketch in here will appear as a small sketch basically at this point but this is unwrapped fine so this is the circumference of this circle our aim is to take the array and array this across behind the sketch to cover this and also allow for the best fit for when it comes around and joins a seamless fit the way I'm going to do that is come over to the model and click on the array now we can modify this array while this is sitting here for instance I can change the X to four and we'll click off nothing happens but if we go to edit refresh then that will actually refresh take note of the refresh key mine's control because I'm on Ubuntu on Windows it'll be something different or Mac it'll be something else so that's set the array back to number X as one and hit Ctrl r the diameters of these hexagons is 20 millimeters so I'm going to divide 2 5 1.327 this value here and divide that by 20 and we get 12.46635 so if we're coming back to our array what we can do is come down to the X and we'll put 12 instances across here come over hit Ctrl r and see how that lines up now I may want to drop this to say a lever instances and space this accordingly so come into the array and set this to 11. and that gives us some more spacing to use across here but I'll look at this and thinking 12 is fine because we've got the remainder so we set the x 12 and now we need to tweak the placement of these so come back over to the array interval X and we can use the X pressing the up Arrow Ctrl r and what I'm looking to do is place this line through the middle because if we look on the other side right in the center there we can see our hexagon sits in the center if it doesn't then we can come over to the array and move that using the placement to come out to the placement position and we can move this along the X to get in the right position let's come back over to the right hand side and zoom in thank you come down to the interval X pressing up key controller just goes into position so I can see this is going to be 22 point let's go for 22.8 Ctrl r and we can just tweak this until we get into position we can work this out with maps if we want to but 22.85 puts me into the right position there remember to do the vertical as well so we come into the white and we'll set this to say free it doesn't matter if we go outside this boundary hit Ctrl r that's a bit too much we want to be as close as boundary as possible because we'd be less recompute time so that set this to 2 Ctrl r there we go so we've got that there and we can make some adjustments of the array position to place it in the correct position along the y-axis so if I take the array look along the position again in the placement position along the Y we can just tweak those values until we get the hexagons in the place that we want I'm going to go for something like that this rectangle which is this face unwrapped whatever's inside here is going to be wrapped around this circle or around this tube but we haven't placed it on this sketch we're going to be using something called an extra object let's come up to tasks and hit close you can't see that boundary we're actually upside down at the moment so let's flip ourselves up to the top and see where we are so we can't see that boundary at the moment it's coming to sketch on the surface and scroll down we can see the extra objects on the sketch on Surface click on the extra objects click the button on the end and now it's going to ask us for the link word of warning don't click it from the actual screen so click Arrow from the screen so what happens when you do that the sketch is highlighted we don't want that if I hit clear that removes that from there so we need to click the array from here or select array from the Tree View select the array we can see the array is highlighted in green and hit OK we get a tick I mean it's ready for recompute and what will happen we'll wait a while and that's been wrapped around that tube let's click on the array and press the space bar because we don't need that anymore and we actually don't need this tube anymore if you wanted to we can hide this tube and click on the sketch and we need to use the fill faces as true click off let that recompute and this is the reason why we don't add too many faces here I'm running on a slow machine a very slow machine and the very old machine so this will take a lot longer than what a specter will do for you the thickness if we set this to say free which is three millimeters it will go outwards if we set this to -3 it will go inwards now if we bring back the tube we can see how that sits there and I'm going to booting this away from this tube now we can see that the hexagons are extruded out the bottom so we can use an offset as well sketch on Surface offset using the minus value we'll push it inwards using the plus value will push the offset outwards so I'm going to go one on the offset click off we can see the hexagons on the outside now now if I did a Boolean cut against this it will just take it away from this ring going around the outside if this went all the way through just by setting the offset to say minus 10 and hit enter then that encapsulates that tube or ring there and we can come over to the part workbench click on the one that we want to keep which is the tube the one we want to remove next is the sketch on Surface and then use the cut we now have our hexagon mesh on our surface but we do have some problems we have this here so you can see in the cut these haven't been removed if this happens we can explode this because it's a compound object I can come up to part compound explode compound and what will happen this will explode out the cut and you'll notice we've got some different items within here so we've got the different pieces so the pieces that haven't been removed are available and we can just click on one delete and just delete the ones that we don't want away from here just leaving that Final Cut so let's have to get a hexagon mesh on a tube and also on a planner surface I hope you enjoyed that video and I hope to see you again soon if you like what you've seen please subscribe to the site I also have a co-fire or a coffee site that you can donate to if you so desire and that's at Ko hyphen f i.com forward slash m-a-n-g-0 also run a patreon where you can subscribe and get extra content and that's at www.patreon.com mango jelly Solutions any money that's kindly donated will be used to span the channel thanks a lot for watching and subscribing and I'll see you again soon

Channel: MangoJelly Solutions for FreeCAD

Views: 25,182

Keywords: CAD, three, 3D, CNC, Printing, solidworks, autoCAD, freecad 0.19, freecad 19, freecad basics, basic course, fundamentals, learn freecad, freecad beginners, freeCAD 0.20

Id: th4eQmskTnc

Length: 24min 37sec (1477 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022