FreeCAD Simple hinged box for 3D printing. Beginners Part Design Tutorial Linear Pattern for hinge

hi viewers and welcome to the channel and in this tutorial we're going to make this 3d printed box using the part design creating the bottom and top and a pin and creating this hinge to allow us to open and close this box and allow us to print it in situ if you like this video please hit like and also subscribe to the channel i also have a kofi site where you can actually donate to my contributions to the community and that's at ko hyphen fi.com min g0 so we're going to start with a new document and i'm going to go over to my part design and in here i'm going to create a new body and a new sketch i'm going to place it on along the xy plane as usual so depending on the application depends on the size of the box also on the size of the hinges so something like a tackle box it's going to be quite large and robust so you need bigger hinges but we're going to go for a small box for the time being so i'm going to do a box that's something like 200 by 200 so a square box and also the same depth as well so we get a cube so i'm going to place the square in the screen let's give ourselves some space to work with let's full screen that there we go i can make these two sides equal and then i'm going to set the length of this side i'm going to use the fix horizontal distance i'm going to make that 200 millimeters there we go so we've got a nice square there and i'm going to place it in centered in the middle so i'm going to click this one and this point at the top we're going to use this center line here the y axis and when i hit the symmetrical constraint we may get some over constraining in there and it's saying we've overscreened that constraint over there but the idea is to actually get that symmetrical to that line and same constraint five we've got a problem with now can i either go and find constraint five on here or we can just click to select and then move down there's constraint five so that's a horizontal constraint we've got problem with so let's delete that that's better and we're gonna do the same on this side and i'd expect i'll get the same here with a vertical constraint so click those two and then the last one you will select is that x line that goes right across the center there and do is symmetrical constraint upon that line so again over constrained it's probably constraint constraint seven now click to select constraint seven's appeared see constraint seven there see highlighted in green there as well so you can see the constraint that's the problem so we're just gonna click on that and i'm gonna right click and delete or hit the delete key and delete that off so that's gone green now that's fully constrained we're all good let's close that and what i'm going to do is put some padding on there so i'm going to pad this up by 200 so hit pad and hit 200 and actually that's going to be the box but we want half the box so we want to work on half the box at a time so we'll make this 100 bit of a tip here if you've got some obscure length in here you don't want to do the maths just place divide by two so dividing the box by two to get the two halves and hit okay and you get your 100 so once you go back in there you can see that's set to 100 now okay that now i like working with a draft plane so you can actually see what this is sitting on so like looking at the axis cross so i need the toggle axis cross which is on view toggle axis so i know where that axis is right in the center there i'm going to pop over to the draft and what i need in the draft is the this plane here so that's enabled now now that's on here i can get to it this one here so i can turn that off and on by that one there i believe it's also up on i believe it's utilities and toggle grid there if you don't see this plane if you don't see something small along here you can actually change that and if we go into edit preferences what you're looking for is the draft there's the draft and you're looking for grid and snapping and you're looking for grid size so let's have a look always snap grid shows so group box grid size that's the one you want good size so 1 000 lines there so i bought this down hit okay you won't see nothing changed until you jump back to one of the other workbenches that gives it time to refresh and you can see when i jump back to the draft that's refreshed now so i can jump back to the part design and we're good to go so that's my half a box sitting there next thing i want to do is hold out this box now there's two options depending on what application this box has if you want to hollow out and leave a wall that's the same size around this side say it's a 200 millimeter box so you wanted to leave a 10 millimeter wall going all the way around then the easiest option is to click that top face and use the make a fix solid or part design and content dress up and use the thickness there and what that does is it doesn't look like it's done anything but if you add a bit of a angle to that you can see it's great thick walls so that's what thickness is it makes the walls thick maybe a bit confusingly looking for hollow but it's called thickness in freecad so it's made those walls thick and i'm going to change this to 10 millimeters so the thickness see the thickness has gone outwards and it's rounded off this side but i want it to go inwards i wanted this to keep still keep the shape so what we do is just come down here and make thickness inwards let's place that thickness inwards for us like so and then we can okay that and we'll get the thickness here if we didn't want that what we can do is let's get rid of that we can select this pad and what we'll do is create a sketchup on that pad and say we wanted this side a bit thicker than all the rest so you couldn't do that with a thickness or a hollowing so you would actually have to create a sketch on your pad and using your create an edge link to external geometry we'll go out to sketch sketch geometries external geometry you can import the points by just hovering over them see they light up there just click and those points import from the base geometry and this allows you to do constraints against them so i've done those i'm going to place a square inside here like so and i'm going to say that the front of this is going to be 10 millimeters so i'm going to use those two points and use a height constraint in there 10 millimeters and also a width constraint so selecting those two points coming in and doing the width constraint of 10 millimeters so that's constrain that side this side is constrained it won't move up or down but it will move left and right so we need to constrain that one so click on that point and that points those two and using the insert length the width constraint you can see that's gone green now in the background use 10 millimeters so that line is constrained now so we also want to constrain the bottom as well so we come down to the bottom and we can make this bottom actually wider if we so desire so i'm going to go for 20 millimeter on here so i'm just going to use these two bottom points and do a height constraint on there of 20 millimeters we close that that's all done and then we use the pocket tool which is in here create a pocket or part design and go into the it's attractive features and pocket and we want 90 in there because it's 100 so take off 10 10 millimeter thick wall and there you go so that's done so that's how you would do it with a pocket i don't want to thicker wall so i'm going to come back in and click on that sketch i'm just going to change that to 10 mil i'm going to keep it at that so let's close that so back to basically square one but this time with a pocket so this point it may be that you want to duplicate this up to make the top but you don't want to start doing that just yet it's best to start on one side and finish one side and then use that as a mirror to the other side because otherwise you can run into a few problems so we're going to start on the hinges for this side now so i'm going to create a hinge on this now depending what the application of the box is depends what type of hinge you want to create on there so for instance if this was a tackle box i would use quite chunky hinge because it's going to go through quite a lot of abuse it's going to be taken outside it's going to be put in back of the car it's going to be rolled about a lot open and closed a lot so we need something that's going to stand up to abuse if it's going to be a small ring box or jewelry box then it's going to be quite small and dainty hinge because it's only going to be open once or twice the ring taken out placed on the finger and placed them back into a bedroom drawer so you can get away with more discrete hinge on there you also got external and internal hinges and we're going to go for external hinge on here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to come in and click on front and push this for myself so i'm in line here and this is where the hinge is gonna sit and i'm gonna click on this face so the face there and that's the side of the box and i'm gonna create a new sketch on there so let's create a new sketch and that should attach to that face so have a look at that pocket we've got a sketch that's on phase six so that's on there so the first thing i want to do is import this line here and this line here and perhaps this point so we can do some constraints to the side of our box so we'll come up to the create an edge link to external geometry and i'm going to import this side and this side so we've got the two sides and the point imported we're now going to create two circles in here so come up to the circle and our hinge is going to sit about around about here so i'm going to create a circle and i'm going to constrain this to about 10 millimeters come over and diameter of that is 10 and we're going to constrain another one inside that to around about five millimeters so make a circle click on here create another circle in here hit escape click on that circle and make that one five mil so come in here diameter and five millimeters that's good we can move these constraints out of the way so i'm going to perhaps move them up so that's it now let's get these constraints out the way i'm over here matter of fact let's come down and just hide those constraints so they're out the way see we don't see them so that's all constrained now and i want to put a piece of construction geometry that connects it to this line here just to keep it away and i'm going to use line tool and i've got my auto constraint on so if we come down auto constraints on that means that when i roll over that middle point that lines can be constrained to here now this can be construction geometry so don't worry click that point and i'm going to click this point here as well that creates that piece of construction geometry and keeps it in line with that so if you think about it if we take this part of the box which is the bottom part box duplicate it and put it on top then our hinge will sit here in line with those two that have closed now we need enough lines so i'm going to escape that and click my line again and we're going to place some line along here but first i've forgotten to change this to construction geometry so i click on that line and we need to change that to construction geometry now there is an icon along here somewhere there it is so toggles the toolbar or selected geometry to from construction mode but we can get from that to sketch geometries and toggle construction geometry when we click that that turns blue says construction geometry at the moment so that doesn't have any effect on our padding or pocketing next thing i'm going to do is take this line tool and i can connect it because all the constraints on to this outer circle i'm going to come down and connect it to the side of the box like so and we're going to take this line and this line that goes along here click on them and i'm going to put a constraint on there and that's the angle constraint and i want that 45 degrees because it makes a nice strong angle for the hinge okay that so now that's there i can decide how far out this is going to sit so i'm going to say i want it about be quite discreet so i'm going to come in and have it there so now that's sitting there i can just put some constraints in here to keep it that far away so 6.39 and i'm gonna make it seven so seven millimeters away so that's constrained nicely to there now we've got the shape of our hinge if you think about this would be our hinge and when we pad we'll pad this way and we'll do it so many times along here that we will then flip this over and the hinges should fit in between each other but we're jumping the gun there let's get this one done first i'm just going to click right again to present that now what i want to do is be able to pad this but first we need to close this sketch up and trim it down to make it into a shape so i'm going to use the line tool here and i'm going to connect to that point and connect to that point so that's almost close that shape up saying it's over constrained so let's click the constraint come down and there it is so just going to move that down i'm going to delete that constraint from there so if it goes over constrained just go and find it and delete it by using the click on click on the constraint and off you go now i want to place a line that connects this outer to that point there we could use this line here this geometry um but i'm going to leave that there because that makes a nice constraint keeping this away so i'm going to come in here and where these two connect there place the line on there and i'm going to connect it to that point so it's connected there and connected to that point i'm going to hit escape and i'm going to move over to the trim tool so this one here trim and edge respect to the position or go to sketch sketch geometries and come down to the trim edge and i'm looking at the edges to trim so i want to get rid of this edge here like so you probably start to see the shape of what's actually happening now so now we've got this i want to move this over here so we've got these constraints along here i'm just going to remove those constraints from this line that goes along here because what's going to happen when i pad this it's going to go into error so i'll try to pad that now there we go it's gone into error so i should have done this before but i just wanted to show what actually causes the errors that you get with this kind of thing this needs to be slightly over here for to allow for the pad so it's actually sitting on here and what i'm going to do is i need to break that constraint so click on that constraint because that's constrain it onto that line and delete that and we'll just move that over and we need to do the same with this one here as well so we can just click on that one and delete that and then just move that over you can move that underlining on the line one there as well so move that over and then connect those two up make sure that's positioned correctly so i want that position there and you can see where we need some more trimming in here so around about there so we need to take this line and make sure it's vertical there we go so that's all good and i'm going to take this point and just make sure that there's a constraint between that point and that point there 0.32 and 0.5 so it just overlaps there now i can do some extra trimming in here because if we try to pad this this can go into error because of that there you can see that for close and pad it goes into error at this point in the video i forgot to explain the reason why it goes into error now if you look at the sketch you'll notice that there was a point on object constraint rather than a point on point constraint and when you're padding sketches then that constraint if we move it we can actually move it off that line to create a space in there and that doesn't work in our sketches so we have to make a solid connection i want this sitting on this line but let's trim that first so click on the trintel just trim that out and then we can move hit escape and move this back down and then we can move hit escape and move this back down onto there and then we should be able to pad that there you go you can see the pads works there so i'm going to cancel that because we've still got some additional work to do in here with constraints and we've got this constraint going up and down so i don't like that so i'm going gonna click on that point and that line and just place that back on that line so that's nicely constrained now so we have a hinge ready to pad out let's close that so that's sitting nicely there and now we can start to pad this hinge first of all i'm going to come in to the sketch i'm going to rename that to hinge sketch so we know what it is and then just reset our view ready to go so the hinge we're gonna just pad that and what we're gonna look at is figuring out where that's going to pad to so it's padding forward at the moment so if i do 100 on there that's going to pad forward this way we could reverse it send it the other way we've got to figure out how many of these we want to go along here so i may do two on the bottom and two on the top and make sure they intercept each other so i'm going to be looking at using one of the tools that are up here so create a linear pattern feature with this as well so our box is 200 millimeters so i'll do the whole length of that box and basically we want two hinges on each side so enough oh if the hinges are interconnected there'll be four hinges so i'm gonna do 200 divided by four in there and that will give me the size of the hinge now i may need a little bit of leeway between these hinges to allow for the movement in there but we're going to go for that for the time being and click ok so that's done now that's our pad done and that's sitting there so what i can do do a linear create a linear pattern and feature and we're looking at this path i'm going to click on that pad pad 001 okay that and you can see it's duplicated up along this axis at the moment and if i come down what can do is change the access so we want the same x axis is going this way let's try vertical axis which vertical axis is long there so normal sketch axis places it this way and that's reverse the direction so it's there and we look at the length as well so at the moment there's 100 millimeters length there if i did four and you can see where that's placed they placed it together there so if i change this to 200 i did four you can see how they have moved along there i just put 22 in here bear with me let me just change this back to two there we go that's back to normal remember right the length of our inch was 50 millimeters so if we minus 50 off of here obviously we can just place 150 in here or put minus 50 like so now place it in place so you can see how we can place these in the correct place now i'm thinking 100 millimeters we'll place it in the right position there so what we've got now if this is a 15 millimeter gap between here so we've got 50 100 150 200 so what will happen is when we duplicate this up and flip it over they should fit in between here so we've got these two hinges actually fitting in between here now depending on the hinge setup you want you may want to do this differently to make this stronger you may want to have additional hinge here that connects up and it's up to you but i'm going for these two here so let's okay that now we've got our linear pattern sitting there we can test it by just collapsing the body down and i'm just going to do a quick test i'm going to click the body go ahead up to edit duplicate selection okay that and i'm not going to worry about that let's get rid of that so let's duplicate out the selection now so we should have two bodies so we've got body one and body two which is sitting there and i'm gonna click on this body here i'm going to transform i'm just going to rotate it so let's see if we can get the right handler here so it's this green handler let's rotate this over like so and transform it up you can see how they connect there nicely it's okay that minute and see the placement of body one so it's placement of 180 which is right and the position is 200 millimeters up which is correct so we just need to place a pin through there so you can see that we just need to place a pin through there and then basically we're almost done we've got the two bodies and let's name them so we got this one here rename that and that's the bottom rename this one as the top so we've created our box and we want to place a pin through here to keep this all together and allow it to hinge now i'm going to print this in situ which means with a 3d printer i'm going to flip this over like so and have it printed this way with a pin that runs through here so that means when i take off the 3d printer that pin will be all connected i may want to back these hinges off a bit because i may want to stylize the pin that goes through here so i could have a ball end on on here and to stop it from using extra dress up to push this up off the base then i might want to push this back and use that on there but that's getting too far into it i need to create the pin on here now what i'm going to do is click on the left so i can have a look at this yeah turn around to the right click on the right and i'm going to create the pin as a new body come over here create a new body now this is going to be for the pin let's give it a name now when i create the sketch i don't want to create the sketch on the body directly on this body because what will happen if i do new sketch there and if i look at what plane i want to place it on so the yz plane pick the wizard plane what will happen is that our sketch is you can see where our sketch is intersecting which is no good so that sketch will actually sit along along this plane here and i can show you that by placing just a square in here and you can see how that's intersected that's no good we don't want that so close that and get rid of that sketch and what i'm going to do is use a datum plane so what a datum plane allows us to do is we'll create a plane on hit to sketch on and we'll reference the dash and plane against this object so click on your body important to do that and click on the datum plane and that will place the datum plane inside this pin so inside that body and we've got to select a edge so i'm going to come in and i'm going to select circle around here and select that that places the datum pane on that circle like so and we can change the connections if we so desire place them in different points deactivated normal to edge you can see how they're being placed concentric et cetera that's fine that the way that's been placed is there the reason why so i'm going to cancel out the reason why i didn't place the datum plane and referenced this is because it's placed it down here we can move this by using the x and y not the z we want to move along the x there we go and along the y we can move it but i don't want to do that i want to actually just get it into position so i'm going to cancel that through that datum plane didn't have to do that but that's required again so click on the pin click on the datum plane and then we'll position the datum plane along that circle edge there like so and we'll okay that and we're going to do a cross reference so that doesn't plane sitting along there along that edge and now we can sketch upon there so i'm gonna create a new sketch and you can see that that plane has now been placed in the correct position i can come in here that's perfect that's right in the center there so i can actually constrain to that as well let's place a circle connected to all the auto constraints it's there and bring this up and i'm going to do about that much which is good close that so there's our circle there it jumps about a bit but that's okay and now we can pad that and i'm going to do it reverse i'm going to do it two dimensions actually so two dimensions first length of about one millimeters come out so it pops out at the top and the second length is 200 so if we just move this around we can have a look and see it come out there at the end so second length 200 see it popping out the end there do it 201 there we go so that's popped out at the end there okay that so that's our pin done but it's going to fall off it's going to fall out of there because it hasn't got any heads on or anything let's go back to this side and bring it around i'm going to do is use the fits the selection content of the screen that fixes our rotation then so we can rotate that nicely come in here and i'm going to click that face and do a sketch on that face so new sketch on that face and that's sitting there nice and just checking where that is and i'm going to place a circle on there or to constrain it to the center and i'm going to come out just outside that like so and i'm going to pad that up let's put some constraints on it actually so get the idea of what the diameter is for the other side so diameter on that 5.7 millimeters so i do 5.5 okay that so that's good close that and now we can pad that let's pad it that way i want it to be dimensions i could reverse it like so do that as one millimeter or 0.5 millimeters you can see how that's working there let's just bring that up a bit there we go so we've got a little room on there okay that and do the same on the other side so we know what our dimensions are no no we're going to come in here click that face don't need that in plain because we click click on that face click the sketch and just position ourselves there we go click on the circle and it was 5.5 so that's all constraints there yeah and bring this out like so hit escape click on that go to the diameter 5.5 close that and now we need to pad that let's come in and again click that and use the fit selection i need to zoom in anyway so there we go so i'm just clicking that and just circling around that and we want to make this one 0.75 wasn't it 0.75 and do the reverse so there we go so that's our hinge done and that's position ourselves it's okay that pad before i forget there we go so we've got a hinge going all the way through there and now we've got a nice hinged box okay now we've got this box all done i want to open this up and i'm going to show you how to rotate it around this point and for that we're going to use the draft workbench and there's a knack for this and we'll show you how to do that so in the draft workbench coming here the reason why we're going to be using the draft workbench is that if we try to if we go back to the part design try to go back and click on the top and right click transform then you notice that the handler is in the middle because we built the box around the center the center of the sketch and that's not a problem because that's steady in the center which is fine but being able to rotate that you see this doesn't actually allow for rotation around this pin and we may want to do that to have a look see what's like inside so i'm going to just come out of there go to the draft and in the draft workbench we've got a number of tools we've got this rotatal this is the one we want now what we have to be careful of is when we rotate we don't want any we don't want anything affecting the rotation so you have to be careful the placement of the rotation and if i show you what happens if i click on top use a rotate tool and come in and what rotates all is allows you to select a point and rotate around that point so i want to select the middle of this point here and then i'll click and i want to rotate like so so that's opening and closing that rotation that box around that rotation there so you can see it's rotated there now there's not to using that tool you see i just basically used it and it opened that box up but you can see we've got a bit of a problem in that the rotation was off and it split the box like so you can see that it's off kilter so we've it's open the rotations opened it here and that's because the draft is really for 2d but can be used for 3d as well but if you think about when you're drafting you're working with 2d shapes so rotation is in 2d space and what's happened is because we're working in 3d space and rotation is slightly off and the axis is not directly moving in a straight line towards us when we rotate that's controls add that close that box back up there's a way around here you click on left so you nice and flat and now do it so we come in and use the rotation click there and i'm just going to click anywhere and start rotating this you can see that's a much better rotation but we've we're slightly off as well we're slightly off there because we haven't gone to the center point we get a better rotation there now hit escape so put it back in now to get to that center point we're going to use our tools here now this is the snapping tools we've got a stat and lock at the moment and normally what will happen is by default these are all selected like so which is pretty useless so first thing we need to do is unselect all of these like so and we're coming here and first we select the lock so it activates these tools and then we can pick the snap center it's that special whatever which ones we want in here so i go for snap center this will actually snap to the center of the object so i select the rotate tool and you can see we've got centering happening here so you can see because this is a separate body see that little dot that appears that's exactly what we want so if i click there and click up we should get a nice rotation now around that center you can see how that's rotating now and zoom out and we'll just open it up and there we go that's made a nice rotation around that just give us a bit more screen to work with full screen there we go and open the box let's just get rid of that plane i'm working plane there we go so our box is open i'll go through that again so click on left so it's nice and flat zoom in make sure our snap center is selected highlight there and we want to click on our object first so the top this has been highlighted top use the rotate tool or come up to drafting and it's one of these where is it the modifications rotate you see when we get close you see that little white dot appear in the middle of here get to it so a little white dot appears and we click see i've got the my crosshairs on that circle there so this is the middle of that's that circle if i came in here well i'll still be able to do it yes i will so clicking in there you still be able to do it as well and we can just move that into position let's try a angle as well so i've angled and i've got my top selected used to rotate and we can see that's appearing let's give it some arbitrary angle we don't have to worry about where we place this line so just place that line there and you can see because we haven't gone and clicked on left so it's flat that's come out as an angle let's control that said that and then we can use the rotate after selecting the top rotate click on the center click somewhere and rotate this out there we go that's our box opened up and ready to print you may want to print it opened or shot it's up to totally up to you so that's how to make a basic box with hinge using the part design using the linear pattern tool for the hinges and using a number of bodies there one for the top one for the bottom and one for the pin so i hope that's helped and i'll see you again shortly if you like what you're seeing please subscribe to my site and also i have a kofi site um where you can actually donate a few pence or a few pounds dollars or whatever your currency is and that's at ko hyphen fi.com ming and there you'll be able to help me fund my site and all the money that i actually get from any funds will actually get pushed back into the channel thanks a lot for watching and subscribing i'll see you next time

Channel: MangoJelly Solutions

Views: 4,355

Keywords: CAD, three, 3D, CNC, Printing, solidworks, autoCAD, 3d printing, 3 CAD, 0.19, 0.20, 0.18, beginners guide, free CAD

Id: JmWt8XP_Eds

Length: 48min 48sec (2928 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021