FreeCAD Trace a photo of a curved model using B-Splines, fillets, mirror sketch and symmetry sketch

hi viewers and welcome to back to the channel and today we're answering a viewers question and they're having problems with sketching this they've seen my sketching tutorial on the web and they've come across and tried it on their item that they want to sketch but this one is quite curved and they're having a hard time getting these curves sketching the curves in there and i'm going to be using the b spline tool for this and we'll be creating this exactly as it is over here i'm taking out these here i'm not quite sure what this is either but i'm going to show you a method of using the b spline to create this and mirroring parts because it's quite symmetrical in the past that you see here so i'm going to be showing you that and a couple of methods around there so stay tuned and i'll take you through that 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 dot com slash m a n g zero so let's create a new document and what i'm going to do is go into the image and i'm going to import that image so i'm using the create a planner image in 3d space and pull that and i'm going to import that image open that up and i'm going to back it off this xy plane so at the moment it's 0.02 millimeters the reason why i'm backing it off to around about minus one mil or sorry 0.1 millimeters is that that allows our sketch to sit on top of that without intersecting it otherwise we won't be able to see the sketch on there it'll be insert into the image okay that click top and that's our image sitting there and i'm just going to sketch over the top of this i'm not quite 100 sure how big this is let's have a look so distance of 315 mil there and we'll go for that so so you would scale this to what you want so i'm going to click on top jump into the sketcher i'm not going to bother about creating a body yet over a part or part design i'm just going to come into the sketcher and i'm going to create the sketch on this now i'm going to do this with b splines because it's quite a lot of curves in here and i'm going to use the b spline on these corners and i'm going to use something that i call the ruler free now b splines are quite difficult to master in certain programs but once you get the knack and figure out what you need to do then they come become quite easy there's a certain acronym in each program including inkscape gluten illustrator uh that they can differ throughout those programs and freecad is is no different and i tend to use the rule of three so i'm going to create a sketch on here i'm not going to back it off at all so it sits on top and what i'm going to do first of all bit of sketch planning is look at this sketch and it's quite symmetrical so if i sketched this part and then flip it it will sit on this part or if i sketch the top and flip it it will sit on the bottom or even just get sketching one of these corners and flipping it four times we'll get that in position i think that's what i'll go go with the full flip so that'll be the quickest so i'm going to come into this corner so we work on a corner at a time and what we do we look at just taking our time and just doing this part here around about there so looking at the curvature there so beast blind tool and what we're looking at doing is placing a point somewhere down here following this line up that wasn't well placed it should have been placed over let's do that again i hit escape so i can get me b spline tool back point there and what we're looking for is the start of the curve so about there and i want to place one two about the middle we can adjust these and three at the end of that curve and then last but not least one going up here and that's what i used to create the curve hit escape to get the b spline tool back and hit escape to get the pointer and now we adjust this what this allows me to do is get a better curve out of the placements so i need to be mindful of where this is placed and the angle going down into it and we can move this middle point around and we're looking to just clean up that edge there so we can bring this down a bit like so and then we work on this side pulling this curve out and just molding it to that edge just take your time there's no rush and what you'll find is that with this curve you'll find that those will be more or less equidistance between them so i'm just going to come up a bit and that will do me you what you got to do also remember is that the edges as you zoom in is going to bleed off your image so you need to be just be a little bit aware of that i'm just going to pull this up a bit like so and the same with this one let's bring this down so that's it i'm happy with that curve so now we look at doing more of the curve over here and i'm not going to go past this center line this is more or less in the center of this image i should have really moved this image image away from the center so that center point is dead in the center of this but it's not nothing to worry about so i'm happy with that i'm gonna again use the b spline tool and i've got my alt constraints on so all the constraints there are all the constraints on so when i zoom into this point here if i hover over that point you can see the point on point constraint which is the same as this one up here and we'll just click it zoom out and i'm just going to follow this line and what i'm looking to do is just follow it up and when it starts to curve just add a point now what will happen is you'll more or less get two points either side of this line so one about there and one about there so you're looking at the gradient coming up it starts to flatten off and then the gradient starts to come down again so we place one there and one somewhere there hit escape let's get here tool back and then hit escape again now you want probably wondering why you're not seeing any green cones that's because if i can't do my sketch and sketch b spline tools you see we've got these here and if i show high my beast flying comb this is probably what you'll get and i've got this hidden so all these green helpers if you so call them that it shows you how that curvature there you can hire them because they do get in the way sometimes so sketch come down to sketch a b-spline and hide that comb there you probably get numbers along here which you can do the same so go to sketch b-spline tools and we've got point weight not multiplier so you can get rid of those there is one in here forget which it is and it's probably going to control polygon there we go that's gone now you may need that i find that comes in handy because that places a line between these control points but you can do without that if you so desire and also these numbers here i'm not quite sure whether the multiplier yeah they're the multiplier so those are gone now so we can see that that line that i place down is well more or less correct just do some finer adjustments on that okay so i'm yeah i'm more or less happy with that line now what i'm going to do is save time and close that so i've got the sketch there i'm going to save myself a bit of time i'm going to click on the sketch and go out to sketch and i'm going to go mirror sketch now our x-axis runs this way if you remember when we was back in the sketch let's cancel that back in the sketch there's our red line that's the x-axis green line is the white and we can check down here with a little hand like just about here there y goes up x goes right and left so if we close that click on our sketch go to sketch mirror sketch and then you're looking at mirroring it along the x-axis which runs this way and that'll flip it over to this side so let's okay that's it's flipped it down here and we don't have to worry now about sketching along here and what will happen is we got the mirror sketch and the top sketch and we can press down shift we can highlight both of those go into sketch and merge sketches and that'll create a separate sketch and we can delete those and the two are merged in there and we can come in here and zoom in i'm going to use the mouse and the arrow keys to zoom and we can see how this line highlights in yellow and this one doesn't so if i click on that line this one will move just move that into place and then we must check our other line to make sure it's okay which is fine and then we can join these two up so that's all saved now what i could do is mirror it over here as well or i could thinking about it um this line that goes all the way around here let's highlight just part of this beast that bit there and then come in here all constraints at that point zoom out and i'm going to again just put one click two clicks and auto constrain to this point here hit escape get the tool back hit escape again to get the mouse pointer back and we'll just manipulate that line i remember and we want the line about equidistance away from that center point there and we can move if we so desire to move that into position just check all your rests to make sure they haven't moved or they're still online so i'm quite happy with that i'm going to save this before i go any further so i'll do freak out sketch yep so what i'm going to do now is take these curves here and place them over here now i want to highlight these and i'm going to flip this over here now i need a point of reference to flip this with so i'm going to use the center point here that's the last point i selected we're going to use a different tool come up to sketch and come down to sketchup tools and use a symmetry and that will flip it across that center line now it might not be dead on if this image was dead in the center that would actually i've placed it in there so we may need to come in and you can see it's off and just move this into place like so we'll do that with the same here and come down and have a look at this as well that's good and what i'm going to do is pull this over and i want to connect these two together so i'm going to put them near to each other zoom in and just connect those up with point on point constraint there that moved it so that's the reason why i put it near to it and what we've got to do as well is check that it hasn't come out so let's just move that down let's see we'll go over here let's move this out a bit may need some might have should have put probably an extra one or two in here we can just deal with those at the moment there we go and we'll just work the borders with this as well so that's fine that's fine a bit worried about this one because we've got a sharp point there let's bring that in and this may have needed an extra one either side as well bring that out there we go so i'm happy oh we've got to connect that up as well don't forget that put the near to each other click and click and use the point on point constraint there and just set that so i'm quite happy with that i'm going to save that and what i'm going to do is close out sketch and we're going to hide the image plane and that sketches disappear let's bring that back so that's there let's bring the image plane back to have a look it's all good so i'm going to click on that sketch come into the part design i can click on that sketch our forces for so desire and what i'm going to do is add a body to that so in the tasks i've clicked on it we've already got these here don't want those so click on sketch click a body use the xy plane okay and what that do is place the sketch inside that body for that plane and we're going to pad that i'm not sure how much padding is needed on there so i'm going to go 50 like so so that's padded that out like so and now we can work on the inside so i'm going to bring the image back and going to hide the pad and what i'm going to do is do the same on the inside in a separate sketch so i'm going to click on the free cat sketch and you can do this outside it's going to be x y plane as this same as this and i'm going to quickly sketch that that using the same method and work my way around this perimeter here what i'm going to do is cheat with this one and use the sketch sketch tools use the symmetry on that but i'm going to make sure that i've picked a point first as you can see that's one that's placed it down the bottom there which is fine so that's that one done select that and select that line sketch sketch tools and symmetry and that places it over there so i've symmetriced it against that line and i could do it against this line down here but there's a different shape here so i'll just show you that so select all of that that line sketch sketch tools and symmetry so there's two ways of doing that symmetry there but as you can see we don't need it for down here because it's a different shape let's get rid of that and b spline and i'm gonna connect out that b spline one two connect out that one escape escape again that's more or less right there so i can go with that and we're going to do the other one click one two and i'm going to escape that because i'm going to connect this up to that so this is another method that i'm showing you just keep it all in one sketch and use the symmetry with against these lines here so it's always handy to have the image dead in the middle then we can actually use a symmetry or near to in the middle as you can get get it and come over here and we'll crate out one two and three and one going this one hit escape and that's gonna bit not to worry hit scope go and get the mouse pointer back bring this out what's happened there let's get rid of that start that game right so one one two three and last one there we go hit escape bring that in nicely and yeah quite happy with that just saving as i go as well just in case we get a crash baseball tool again just to do this one matter of fact this one i could use a fillet on so let's escape that and i'm going to use the polygon come in here nice and straight so you can see the straight that's straight now and straight down here hit escape hit escape again and then we should be able to move this position like so like so and just be different that's how trim sorry the fillet tool fill it between those two like so that's done and connect these lines up with just a plain line tool there and look at this i don't think i'm gonna get away with a philip because we're coming out at a slope out of this so i'm going to go for the b spline again and do the same it's almost affiliate so one two three and the last one coming out escape zoom in hit escape again get the mouse pointer back and pull that away roll that to the curve let's bring this in a bit and connect those two up actually let's connect those two one point constraint bring this out make sure i haven't affected anything in here so i'm happy with that and come down here looking at this and got a lot of bleeding on that edge so i can't really see there we go and bring this into position there it's more or less and we'll move along and i'm going to use the b-spline again connect up one two hit escape escape again and that's more or less it actually that's good so let's close that oh we've missed a bit i've just got to do that bit let's do that before we move on to pocketing and doing our whole hollowing out and cetera peace blind tool come in connect uh one two and three to connect we will auto constraint hit escape escape again to get the mouse pointer back and just mold those into position i've done this side now i've got this side do to do as well and some minor adjustment on this side connect up hit escape escape again and bring this around like so let's make some fine adjustments up here i've got this one here that just needs to bring down a bit you can see how this one's not moving which is good this reason why you put a number of them in between and we can just do the last bit of adjustment in here that's good so i'm happy with that save that off and now we can do the pads and pockets so this sketch is sitting outside at the moment which is fine it's absolutely fine it's not actually attached to any faces or anything now we've got a pad which is there so we've got us now make this if i look back at the image that's quite that this is looks like a um hollowed out image with this then extruded from the hollow so we can do that so let's have a look our pad we need to make hollow so i'm going to use the make a fix solid or part design apply a dress up feature and use thickness to say not not not possible inside those just because i got to select that internal edge so it's selected to so i'll go select that pad make thick and we want to go make thickness inwards it has done something you can see if i put a bit of an angle on here you can see it's hollowed that out and we're gonna add something like five mil about right and go for five mil that's okay that so that's that thickness on there we could do some finer adjustments to make that a bit more smoother if we so desired let's have a look kind of pad sorry hide the thickness yeah it's about five miles let's bring the fitness back right so now i want to attach the sketch to this base here so select the base come out to sketch match sketch to face or we use set the support sketch there click that one and we want uh ball sketch so that one there so that will be our inner part okay that that's been attached there you can see that so click on the sketch you can see the green line in there it's all attached and what i'm going to do is select that and section so there we go so click that sketch and i'm going to pocket that sorry pad that and we're going to pad that up not sure how far to pad that i'm not sure what the original is 50 millimeters there we go okay that what we've got left on there just high in that body got those holes so i'm going to click the top just create a new sketch x y plane it's not attached to anything but we'll sort that out in a minute come in here and let's create these holes so how about that size you can put some constraints in if you like we're just doing this quickly that's more that's it yeah so let's zoom out click that control c that copies it so you've got the line from there let's move over to the right and place that in there and move that into position if these are constrained by diameters using the diameter radius there so constrained first that constraint will be pulled along as well so close that bring back the body and now i need to that's inside the body i need to place that on this face so select that face use the sketch match sketch to face and we want sketch two okay that flat face yeah that's fine so those are on there and let's let that sketch pocket those and where do we want it that's the first which means that we'll go through all the faces and hit the top face and go through it yeah that's fine okay that that's going all the way through if i take away that image plan click on the image page press space that's gone through and last but not least we want behind the body sketch on this one so let's have a new sketch there x y plane okay click on the circle come in here create a circle like so hit escape bring this into position close that the same again bring the body back this time i want to select this face in here my sketch to the face so this is sketch free which we've created which is this one here the new one okay flat face suggested okay and that's sitting there click on sketch pocket that five mils fine and that's it actually so fit section and we don't need this image plane anymore so we can just highlight press the spacebar on it and i think that's yeah that's it so that's how you would use your b-splines and the symmetry tools you showed you a number of symmetry methods there the mirror sketch and the mirror merge and also the basic symmetry to symmetrize the part of your sketch to another part and using your b-splines and the method i used for those corners there so i hope that helps with basically getting hand on that b-spline tool to make a part similar to this okay and i'll see you again soon 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 whatever your currency is and that's at ko hyphen fi.com ming0 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: 3,729

Keywords: CAD, three, 3D, CNC, Printing, solidworks, autoCAD, sketch, trace, tracing, beginners, guide, reflect, free, 3CAD, learn

Id: 6DZqwQa3jRo

Length: 33min 27sec (2007 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021