FreeCad Tutorial #11 | Designing configured parts with Spreadsheets in FreeCAD

hello and welcome back to K-Tech designs my name is Seth in this video I will demonstrate how I use the spreadsheet feature in freecad to make configurations and to drive dimensions and other parameters the model I'll be using for this demonstration is this Cable Management clip I'll just show you quickly you can configure from two to five Clips very easily you can expand this to any number that you like and with that let's get started so always from the start page and you can see which version of free cat I'm using click create new we're going to create a part container and in that part container we're going to create a body now we need to insert a spreadsheet so we'll go down to the spreadsheet workbench this creates a new spreadsheet um I'm going to see if I can trick this into well I was gonna see if I could trick it into going above the body let's just delete the body I'm a little bit anal retentive about organizing models so I just like to have the spreadsheet on top and that way any new feature can flow from the bottom and the spreadsheet doesn't move around so the spreadsheet does need to be inside this part container um in order to drive the configurations in the part let's go back to the model and make that body there okay make sure that's in the part that's right should have double clicked the part in order for that body to get created inside there don't worry about that uh now let's set up the spreadsheet initially so the way configurations are going to work is there's going to be a configuration name here and there's going to be parameters like named Dimensions or calculations you'd want to use to drive let's say a linear pattern and um we're gonna have to create what's called an alias in order to reference that so let's start with our column headers I'm going to go with config name fake name let's go with clip width clip count uh clip spacing and we'll go with rail length now these are just the column headers to give me a reference for what I'm going to put in each column uh let's go with a clip count two just plug in some numbers it doesn't matter we'll uh update that later I have no that's okay then let's just copy this paste it down here so from here on down will be the actual configuration names and this row will represent the currently selected configuration but now we need to create our aliases let's call this one clip width okay you can see that this cell changes to Yellow once you give it an alias and that gives you an indication that you can reference this cell value somewhere in the feature tree uh let's call this one clip count this one will be clip spacing and rail length now this cell name is very important because this will create a parameter inside of the part called configuration which will allow us to select different configurations so let's right click on this cell and we're going to create a configuration table and the property we're going to call it is configuration and I don't believe I need a group for that so just click ok possibly I do need a group so let's try that again right that's what I missed properties should be part dot configuration that way you're you're saying that this configuration is at the level of the part now let's click OK and now if we go to our part we see that there's a new property called configuration which has a drop down for a configuration so if I was to take this copy it paste it here call that three uh recompute that now if I go back to my part you can see I can now select a clip count of three and I find it important to set up the configuration table first because as you're building the model it's more convenient to go ahead and reference the dimensions or the counts that you need instead of creating the entire part making your configuration table and then going back into the part and resetting things but if you have to do that like you don't know how many column headers you need you're not exactly sure what it's going to do then you know don't beat yourself up about it you might have to take that extra time to make the part first build your spreadsheet and then go back through okay so these configuration properties um going to be a bit arbitrary but the count makes sense we're going to do 2 3 and let's just copy this four five six and seven and then of course we'll just do five uh four five six and seven because that's the number of clips and our clip width is not going to change but it is a value that I'm using in a calculation over here so that's why I've included that column now the clip spacing this is for the linear pattern that we're going to use and the way the linear patterns work in freecad is not by setting a quantity and setting the spacing between those quantities between each quantity it sets the start to finish length and then your quantity will divide that length so in order to create the correct clip spacing you need a formula of let's go with equals clip width let's try this again equals B4 times uh we'll go with the spacing I always get this wrong apologies let's try this again equals E4 times C4 minus one to give us 14. this is not Excel so that always makes me confused we can click Ctrl C to copy and Ctrl V to paste and it will honor the other row next let's set the overall length and it's just going to equal B4 Plus D4 all right so actually our config table is all set up now uh let's not worry about that I guess let's go to clip two and why is there a nun interesting I didn't know I could do none we'll just leave that alone I'm gonna start with A Primitive additive box it's fine right there let's select the bottom plane as a reference change the length of 14. actually we can do the formula now so what you want to do is type in spreadsheet and this is the name of the spreadsheet in our feature tree I was typing rail length because that's the overall length of the part 28 and uh click let's make this 16 and this will be 14. now this we could also set up to be spreadsheet Dot clip width now I don't really want this box to be well I want it to be symmetric on the the axes here so I'm going to move it around really quick negative seven on that and negative eight let's click a new sketch just so I can see where the planes are yes all right and um I want this to be overlapping a little bit and you'll see in a second when I model the cable two hole all right great now honestly if we uh if we go here we can already see that some of the parts will be working because we've set up that configuration go back to two and let's build our show the body here it's interesting okay there we go not that I really need to see it but let's build our cutout so let's start with a circle on the axis here croissant nose hide the Box I'm going to create a reference line over here make that horizontal and horizontal to there let's make an outer Arc coincident to that and take a line up here over here and down and I'm just going to make these horizontal so that's locked in place now referencing the body we want to have this over here because this will be our cut that looks good now I want this Center to be 7.5 millimeters from the bottom and I want this this leg to be oops let's pick the right dimension three millimeters and this outer radius is 14. sorry that's a diameter so then let's divide this by two that didn't work let's just type in seven now let's check our box that looks okay uh now we're not done um we do need to create an opening here and we're also going to trim out some of this stuff down here so let's begin with the construction line going radially from Center and I'll create a parallel line to that and I'll set this at uh let's do it from here instead of setting an angle let me just set a distance and I'm going to make it one millimeter meaning that the total opening will be two millimeters as we make this symmetric so I can grab this line this axis make that symmetric we go ahead and make those connected uh and I'll make these symmetric now let's take the trim tool and remove those inner spaces there and I also need to remove this face because the cutting area should be this and that's reference make these symmetric as well and then I'll simply set a height of Dimension to a line 15 let me just check if that's high enough yep that's high enough something doesn't seem quite right there it seems a little bit taller than it should be and it's possible that I missed to mention the Box yes it should be I'm gonna clear that actually 14.3 there we go so now one thing I do want to add though are some fillets here and the reason why I want to add sketch fillets is because there's such a big problem with freecad and uh references face references entity references the naming reference issue that is just going to be easier to have these fillets in the sketch so I forgot to add those no problem we can add all of these references back in selecting all of the fillets at once and then setting a radius we'll set them all equal and I'll make it uh yeah 0.5 is okay so then we need to re-add our constraint here and uh I'm going to create an intersection point so let's make a line from here to here and here to here this line needs to be tangent with this Arc unless it already is I don't think it's already tangent there we go and then U should be parallel to U and now you intersect these apparently not selecting properly there we go and that's all fine and good we lost that reference so let's pick those points okay how else is it free to move must be on this side so Let's uh mirror this actually grab these two grab our Center Line mirror those points I bring these together make this line in this arc tangent make these parallel and then finally get up we'll make those symmetric now of course we lost our symmetric constraint over here so I'll just pick the centers of the circle as the reference for submit symmetry okay we got our fully constrained sketch back click close on that we can re and show our box again and we can do our cut um I did do this incorrectly didn't I um let's move this sketch out I know it's a little bit wonky but Let's uh just move that out um to eight because it's 16 thick and then we'll cut that through all all right perfect and now we can create our linear pattern so we'll take the pocket select a linear pattern we want the x-axis all right we can set our occurrences to spreadsheet Dot clip count we can set our length to spreadsheet Dot clip spacing there you go and click ok and now you're pretty much done but there are some things that we could do to clean this up a bit and that would be Let's uh rotate that over adding a cutout here to make the the cable slide in a little bit easier than this this will be a little bit too Square and so an easy way we can do that is to create a sketch on this plane close it there okay spin that around a bit and I will work from the left hide that again let's create a circle on that axis and we'll um let's add this as a reference let's go back let's try polyline I don't use polylines enough over and then down escaped cancel that next line I want these coincident I thought that was I thought that was the correct oh I'm just uh editing from the wrong side there we go make sure everything's connected correctly like that now let's make this um let's add a point here so I can Dimension to the top of this circle okay make those coincident and from the top of the circle to the axis I apparently had more things selected than I should have let's make that 15. let's make you actually why don't you make make those two tangent that would be perfect um the diameter of this part should be 16. which of course is the width of our clip and we'll Dimension these just one millimeter above just to make sure that we clear that part and then we trim off the bottom that we don't need trim that okay I'm struggling there we go and again I'm just going to set this to seven negative negative seven and we'll again cut through all perfect now you'll see that I did cut a little bit above it's not a complete circle and you can do this whichever way you want but I really just wanted to round this Edge and you can't really do that with a fillet feature of course so this cut works for that and it's through all which means that every time that we update this part that cut will find its way all the way to the end and that's it that's that's the basics uh there's some things you could do like uh fixing these edges you know or treating these edges with a fillet or a chamfer but it's uh it's not a really good idea to do it in free CAD because even though these are always going to be the same edges of this box as it grows the named reference is going to change which is a real pain in the butt and if you're going to 3D print this which is what it's designed for you don't have sharp edges like this especially um in this orientation so you could get sharp edges here as the tool it's these corners but I'm printing it out of a flexible material so even though it may be a sharp edge like a layer's Edge is going to be soft and it's not a big deal but it's something to consider another thing you could do and I don't recommend this but if you really wanted to uh have those rounded edges is to create a cut feature kind of like we're doing with these other pockets for the uh the chamfer for the fill it there and you drive the length between the cuts inside the sketch with the uh the spreadsheet so no matter what length you're choosing it's always going to place those cuts here and that's fine for the corners but then how do you take care of these and you you can do it sort of so if I go back to this pocket and I put it we'll see you might want to have this first before the linear pattern but it doesn't really matter if I want to put a chamfer in here I know it's too big let's try point two okay well that's another issue with free cat chamfers is they really don't like things that are a little too complicated like this year because really what it's looking for is it's noticing that this Edge is tangent so all of these are tangent so technically if I click I was in SolidWorks and I clicked this Edge and I try to chamfer it it would try to do all of this okay and it's it's mathematically tricky to do that if not impossible so a lot of the dress-ups I've just resigned myself to not really have when it comes to free CAD but that was a bit of a that was a bit of a tangent so I digress uh now the model is complete now I showed you how to use the spreadsheet table to create Alias ranges and how to use the configuration table feature to create configurations I hope you enjoyed that video I hope you uh got a quick and easy introduction into configurations within freecad it is a very powerful CAD feature to create configurations you know you can create the basic concept the basic design and then easily configure it for a wide range of applications alright so that's it for this video I hope you enjoyed it please leave a like if you liked it please leave a comment to let me know what you thought and again thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: KTEC DESIGNS

Views: 1,152

Keywords: 3D Modeling, FreeCAD, 3D Printing

Id: en2Pga9OfZ4

Length: 28min 31sec (1711 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022