How To Use FreeCAD The Realthunder Branch | Sketcher Workbench | Lines, Tools & References | P. 2

let's begin to truly understand the sketcher  workbench what's up i'm jonathan and welcome   to maker tales where i'm sharing my maker  journey to help you go further in yours   so don't forget to subscribe and hit that little  bell icon to never miss an opportunity to keep   making this video is sponsored by thangs.com  and here we are with the end result of our   first video we have a fundamental understanding  of what cad design actually is we know that we're   not just using the normal version of freecad  we're actually using a link branch version by   real thunder we know how to edit the ui we  understand workbenches and we have a general   understanding of how to get to this end result  if you don't have an understanding of all of that   i really suggest that you go to the first video  before you dive into this one now let's go ahead   and understand the sketcher workbench a little  more we're going to do that in a new file so let's   close this file create ourselves a new file and  save it with control s i'm going to save this as   understanding sketcher hit save and now do  you remember the file structure that i told   you you should usually use go for a part then  go for a body and then you can go for a sketch   now we have to say that it's going to be  on the x y because that's usually where we   start from the top down and we'll hit ok and  now we'll be back in the sketcher workbench   so as the schedule workbench is so fundamental to  what we're going to be doing here we're going to   break it up into three bite size ish videos this  video is going to cover all of these line making   tools along with some extra operations here and  there then we will cover all the constraints both   geometric and dimensional and then we will put  them both together to do some direct modeling   to create our 3d printed box at that point we will  have a full direct model 3d printed design ready   to be turned into a parametric design this way we  will have a full understanding of what exactly is   being influenced when we change designs into  a parametric design and you can see the real   difference between direct and parametric modeling  now with all of that said let's dive straight into   these tools to activate the tool you just go ahead  and left click it and that will be it active now   a whole bunch of these do have shortcuts which  is another way of activating the tool itself   once active you will have an icon that follows  your mouse of the active tool for instance we have   the point of the marker tool active and that's  following our mouse to deactivate it just right   click and that will deactivate the tool starting  off with that pointer marker we'll activate it   we'll left click and place a few of these down now  do keep in mind these are not vertices these are   very much markers or points of interest in fact  within the preferences they are called markers   so here you will see marker size what we changed  to 15 that is those now we'll quickly cover   selection selection is super simple left click  to select one left click to select another you   don't have to hold down any key to select multiple  things when you click outside away from something   that will deselect everything and then we have our  simple click and drag selection box to select many   to delete it's just the simple delete key we'll  go on to the line tool next which has the shortcut   of L so let's hit L and that's another way of  activating tools it's very simple left click left   click you get a line a quick note i am not going  to be telling you all of these constraints that   are coming from these tools right this minute  that's all going to be part of the next video   where you'll truly understand what all these  constraints are that are defining the lines   themselves next up we have a couple of different  ways of creating arcs and circles this first one   is a center and endpoint arc so as it sounds you  click the center and then you click the two end   points of the arc once again that is the center  and two end points very simple and intuitive   next we have end points and rim now that might be  a little bit strange what on earth is a rim point   so you left click left click those are the two end  points and this rim point is where do you want the   edge of this arc to meet another way of creating  it now that you understand what a rim point   is you'll understand this circle very quickly  this is a center and rim point circle so center   rim point also known as the radial  distance right there of a circle   now we get a little bit crazy we have a three  room point circle so as it sounds this is three   rim points making one circle so three clicks makes  that circle now we come to two tools that i don't   use at all which are conic and b spline let me at  least show you what we have here we have ellipses   we have arcs and parabolas honestly i don't  use them but by all means feel free to go   ahead and use them i just don't know the  math to truly constrain things properly to   get outcomes that i want and then when it comes  to b splines they're fantastic and all but you   can't really control them to really be able to  understand exactly what is going on or at least   i don't know how to control them if you know and  you truly have an engineering degree you go for it   that's where they are you go nuts with that and  now we get to the underdog of the line tools   the polyline the shortcut of a polyline is M just  think that you're creating an M with a polyline   that's how i like to think of it and that's how  many people sort of think of using the polyline   it's a way of creating nice jaggedy straight lines  but oh are you so wrong the people who are in the   know know this press M again to cycle through  behavior let me show you just the magic that   this can create you go ahead and you create  yourself a simple little line you can now   press M and you get yourself a perpendicular line  press M again you get yourself a tangential line   press it again you get yourself a tangential curve  press it again you get yourself a perpendicular   curve and yet again you get a perpendicular curve  in the other direction i'm telling you you need to   master this it will make modeling so much faster  if you really take the time to master this tool   i know it will take time because i can tell you  right now i myself am still trying to learn this   to a degree that i feel i could really go ahead  and make anything with it but for those that can   really make something super interesting  with this you basically get an incredible   time saver of creating lines with all the  constraints that we will cover in the next video   the next three tools are very similar to one  another they basically create shapes starting with   a rectangle tool so we'll go R for rectangle click  and click you get a rectangle do be aware there's   no way of holding down shift or control to snap  this to a square shape because that is the whole   point of the next one which are predefined shapes  so you've got triangle square pentagon hexagon   heptagon octagon and a regular polygon if you're  wondering what a regular polygon is it's basically   you define how many edges this shape is going to  have and it will create that shape with a whole   bunch of constraints for you and you might also  be wondering what on earth is that blue line don't   worry you'll understand what that is by the end  of this video then the very last line making tool   is this slot or this pill shape very much like the  rectangle tool except it creates a rectangle pill   shape for you with a whole bunch of constraints  which you will fully understand in the next video   many makers have told you about thangs but you  really know why you should care and what it's   all about instead of telling you that thanks is  the fastest growing 3d model community with 3   million free models to download i'll let you know  that it's made by the world leader of 3d geometry   deep learning technology in other words when  you upload a file over to thangs it gets put   through some incredible machine learning tech that  helps you share and search files faster just as   an example you can already download a file from  things remix it in some way and then re-upload   it to thangs and thanks will automatically link  them up just to make this searching so much faster   and this is just the tip of the iceberg so make  sure you check things out using the link in the   description and that there is the last of the line  making tools now we get to the operation starting   with the fill it now we need something to fill it  so let's press R for rectangle create ourselves a   nice little rectangle click on the fillet tool  and there's two ways of using it you can either   click on a point or you can click on two areas on  an edge and the further you go on these edges the   bigger that fill it's going to be it's going to  sort of do an average between the two distances   and create that fillet now there is a little catch  here what happens if i wanted to be pedantic and i   very much wanted to do a dimension from one point  to another when i do a fillet i lose my point   well not if you use the drop down fillet here a  constraint preserving sketch fillet you'll see now   that when we go and do that exact same thing we  get an extra little point here which is basically   tied to the intersecting point of those lines  so you can go ahead and do a dimension between   those two points one of my favorite operations  is the trim tool right here so let's create   two rectangles and let's go and use the trim  tool it does have a shortcut but i can't seem   to get it to work so if you get to find a way  of working it let me know you have to find an   intersection point pick one side of it and then  you'll be able to trim away just be aware that   you can't just trim things that don't have an  intersection with them so you have to delete those   manually and that there is the trim tool now let's  go from trimming to extending with the extend edge   tool let's bring in three lines here to showcase  this and then we're gonna click it to turn it on   because i can't seem to get the shortcut to work  you click on an edge you drag it out and that's   it extended you can also click on an edge and  drag it out to another edge you can also click   on an edge and drag it out to a point and it will  extend it to that point that there is the extend   edge tool now from this point forward things are  going to get just a little bit more complicated   starting off with these three tools here i'm just  going to skip them over for right this minute as i   want to cover some other tools just before we dive  into them the three after this i'm going to just   not cover in this video at all because two reasons  one i haven't needed to use them in over 200   hours of free CAD and two i don't know really how  to use them and the use cases for them once i do   learn it i think that it's useful for you to know  i'll be sure to add it in future videos so for now   i'm going to go ahead and just drag this along  to just hide them because i no longer need them   however for now let's go ahead and dive into some  of the tools up here i'm not planning to showcase   them all as some of them really do need some  constraints to showcase them but there are some   that i really think are useful to know right  now while you're doing the whole line drawing   aspect of things the first one is symmetry  now let's create two simple lines for this   here we have them i want to create a symmetrical  copy of this line on the other side of this line   using this line as the symmetrical axis the one  we're looking at is right here create symmetric   geometry with respect to the last selected line  or point so that means select what it is you're   wanting to do a copy of then the last thing  you select is going to be your axis of symmetry   and then you click that button and lo and behold  the tool does what it says does there is a small   caveat though keep in mind that this tool  here does not keep dimensional constraints   when you do that symmetry so just keep that in  mind now let's talk about three operations that   you might not expect to be closely related this  is the move copy and clone operations so let's   create a nice simple rectangle here and of course  first and foremost if you want to move something   just select it and then you can go ahead and move  this line by line but it's a little bit of a pain   to be able to just move a sketch well that's where  the move tool comes in have everything selected   and then deselect where the main point is that  you're wanting to move from because that's how   these operations work the last selected element  is pretty important for most of these operations   now the move copy and clone all live right here  now let's just click move and you'll see we get   this strange line coming off as you can expect  wherever i click this line it's going to move the   sketch over there with relationship to the last  selected thing now i'm not going to bother with   the whole last selector thing anymore i'm just  going to select it all and tell you the shortcut   for moving is control m and there we get that  strange line once again we click and we move it   okay let's go ahead and copy this now i'll just  select it we'll go to the little drop down here   and we'll hit copy as you can see like the move  tool we have this line and as you can expect   when i do a click it's gonna go ahead and copy  that exact same sketch wherever we do that click   now jonathan surely a copy and a clone are the  same thing right yes they are but no at the same   time let me show you this but to do that i need  to go ahead and put a dimensional constraint i   know we weren't going to do constraints but you  already know what a dimensional constraint is so   i'm going to go with a shift v to do a vertical  dimensional constraint set that to 25 something   nice and simple and hit ok ok so let's go ahead  and do that copy once again we'll select this   go over to our copy tool click copy and as you  can expect when you click on this copy we have   a copy with the dimensional constraint great but  this doesn't tell you much about what a clone is   surely that's a clone of what you just created it  is but at the same time you'll understand right   now what i mean let's delete what we've just  created there select this and now let's click   the clone so again we get this nice line let's  do a left click but now there's no dimensional   constraint what on earth is going on now this is  because i haven't explained all the constraints   just yet this constraint right here is called an  equal constraint which means that these two lines   have been constrained to one another saying  hey no matter what length this line is here   you need to be that length as well so if we  were to go ahead and change this to 30 now   and hit ok it's going to change that one so this  is a direct clone of whatever is happening over   here now here comes the little bit of a caveat and  a bit of a connection that i'm not too happy about   there is a shortcut to this and the shortcut for  copying is called control c yeah as you can expect   however because we just did a clone this is going  to create a clone not a copy so i'm going to go   ahead and delete the clone we'll go and use the  tool as a copy now i will now delete the copy   and now i will use the same shortcut ctrl c and  now we're going to do a copy instead of a clone   i know it's a little bit weird it's a little bit  strange basically the last operation that you use   of copy clone is what is set to the shortcut now  let's go back and take a look at the three tools   here that i completely skipped over we're going  to focus on this middle one first which copies   the geometry of another sketch we understand how  to copy and clone within one sketch but what about   from another sketch that's what this tool is all  about a quick note at this point things can get   just a little bit more complicated and i'll do  my absolute best to simplify it all the way down   and we'll try and be as clear as possible we'll  start this off by creating a nice simple rectangle   right click to cancel the operation and then we'll  either close this hit escape or you can click   this button here we're back in the part design  workbench now with a sketch of a nice simple   rectangle now we're about to say sketch and  many words far too many times so let's try and   simplify this all the way down by being super  clear of what's going on here in our tree view   i'm going to double click our body to make that  the active body i'm going to right click it and   go to rename and i'm going to rename this body  as body one and this sketch i'm going to use the   shortcut which is f2 to rename it as sketch one  perfect let's go and create another sketch now   creating another sketch we'll say on the x y plane  once again we'll hit ok and we'll go straight to   the model view i need to rename this sketch to  keep things clear f2 and we'll go for sketch two   all right we're inside of sketch two and this  is the active task this is why it is yellow so   here this task the active task of sketching is in  sketch two and it's yellow i hope that makes sense   let's double click into sketch one i'm only  doing this so that you can see that now sketch   one is going to be active because we're inside  of sketch one we'll go back over to sketch 2.   we're inside of sketch 2 now however we can see  sketch 1 within sketch 2. we don't see any points   any constraints but we see the lines we can't  interact with it with any way but using the tool   we can so this will copy the geometry  of another sketch that we can see   keep in mind that you can also not see this  by just going a space and it will be hidden   or with a little i but also keep in mind that if  it is hidden and you want to see what it is just   mouse over it and eventually you will get this  sort of selected view that comes up while your   mouse is over it so inside of sketch 2 we're  going to use the tool by clicking on sketch   one and lo and behold we have a lovely copy of  sketch one within sketch two and this is a copy   not a clone which means that if sketch one changes  it's not gonna go ahead and change sketch two   so we'll hide sketch 1 just to show you that  sketch 2 now has that exact copy right here   there is a caveat to this though you can get  something called an out of scope copy or an out   of scope reference whatever you want to call it  which basically means you won't be able to copy   the sketch and this usually happens when a sketch  is outside of the body that you're trying to copy   in so we will exit this task we'll close this i  just want to show you it quickly we're going to   delete this sketch i'm going to very quickly  create another body we'll rename this body as   body 2. then i will create another sketch within  body 2. again on the x y plane i'll click ok   and now we can see we are inside of body  2 we will rename this sketch as sketch 2   and we have body 1. you cannot see sketch one  right this minute so let's go ahead and turn   on sketch one so that we can see sketch one  inside of body two let's go and use the tool   like we would think we'd be able to and you'll  get this big error it's not possible to do that   you just cannot do that copy across two  bodies i like to think of it as think of   a body as two separate rooms you can't copy a  drawing from somebody else in a different room   unless there's some sort of magical thing  going on and there is a way of doing that   which is actually what we're going to be covering  in the next tool here so let's go and cover this   next tool again we need to do some prep so we're  going to close this task we will just completely   delete body 2 now we will create yet another  sketch inside of body one i'll select it just   in case it doesn't do anything crazy for me  i'll go here say on the x y plane once again   and we'll hit ok i'll go back to the model  view quickly change this name over to sketch 2 and now we're ready to play about  with this lovely operation here   these are external geometry references now they  can get quite complicated quite quickly so i'll   go really steadily through it but there's two  ways of doing this there's an external geometry   reference and then there's something  called a defining geometry reference   so let's start with a simple one of external  geometry reference take a look there's a shortcut   xx so i'll go ahead we'll press x x and here we have  the tool now active so we are inside sketch two   i can see sketch one i can now click on sketch one  and we will get these purple lines what on earth   are these purple lines let's close this and let's  try and move them well we can't move them over in   our task we can see that they're here and they're  external edges what about if i go into part design   and i hide sketch one you can't see them so what  does that tell me about these references that   we've just made it means that these references  aren't seen as lines so to speak but you can't   move these so how would i move them then well what  i'm creating here is a link with sketch one so you   would actually have to change sketch one and  then in sketch two those referenced lines have   moved now this is very powerful when you go and  mix it up with a whole bunch of constraints but   as is this means that those are sort of useless  without constraints and all the rest they are   powerful it's a way of linking things up but what  if i wanted these to actually be lines to go ahead   and i don't know let's make another shape from the  shape that we already have inside of sketch one   well that's where the next one comes in  that's what a defining geometry references   what is defining geometry well these lines  here they're defining lines they tell you   what exactly is going on within sketch one now the  shortcut for a defining line is xc so let's go xc   and we get this nice pinkish sort of looking  tool and now when we click on these lines   you'll see we get these pink lines instead of  the purple lines let's go back over to the part   design workbench to take a look at what's  going on you can see now that sketch 2 has   two lines that are seen as lines as defining  references but they're driven by sketch one now if we go back into sketch two we can't change  these we can use a whole bunch of the tools   underneath these and those let you detach them  attach them toggle them freeze them and fix them   but in reality only if things go wrong you start  using these or if all of a sudden you've decided   actually i love it where it is right this minute  but i no longer need it to be referenced that's   when you use these tools so i'm not going to show  you them they very much what you read and what you   see is what they do there's not much to it now i  want to turn these into defining geometry as well   so i'm going to go ahead and select it and just  delete it i'll select this one and just delete it   and now use the shortcut xc and let's create those  into defining references as well now we're about   to do something very strange that you usually do  not do at all in cad design but i just want to   show you how these are now defining references  we'll go into our part design and sketch 2 now   is completely created by defining references  of sketch 1 which means that sketch 2 can now   be padded out or made thick using these defining  references so this pad is now driven by sketch 2   but sketch 2 is controlled by sketch one i know  it's very weird let's go into sketch one let's   just quickly change this in some way go back to  our part design workbench and you can see that   that is change sketch two which is driving the  pad all right now let's talk about what exactly   is meant by geometry because i've just gone  and showed you all of that referencing on lines   well let's delete this pad delete this  sketch and now we just have sketch one here   sketch one is ready to be padded out so let's pad  this we've padded it we'll go for ten we'll hit   okay brilliant now i'm about to do another pad  so we need to rename this as well so i'm going   to change this as pad 1. padawan let's go ahead  and create yet another sketch now this sketch   though is going to be a side face reference we did  this in the first video so we know what's going on   here we're basically just saying use that face as  the plane we'll click ok and you can see we're now   using that face as a reference let's go and rename  this here we'll rename the sketch as sketch 2. and now when i say geometry i very much mean  anything that is defining geometry edges are   defining geometry sketches are defining geometry  so let's create some defining geometry not just   external geometry they are powerful but i want  defining geometry for this one and we're going to   define geometry using the edge of the pad itself  okay now we have a defining geometry from a pad   i hope you see the power in this let's go  and use our multi polyline multifunctional   tool here to create something crazy to go  and just pad this out later on so do that   and brilliant we have a closed shape we'll go back  to our part design workbench by closing the task   and let's pad this sketch 2 out we'll pad it  out hit ok and i'll rename this pad right here   now let's fully understand what's going on here  pad 1 is driven by sketch 1 and now our sketch 2   is driven by a reference of pad 1's edge  which means that if i change pad 1 to be   let's say a padding of 25 millimeters that  referenced edge that is driven right here   is now going to change the shape of our actual  sketch which changes the pad i hope that makes   sense it will take time to fully understand this  and to get to grips with it but that there is   such an incredible referencing tool and in all  honesty it's what all cad programs basically do   they do this incredible referencing technique  like though but now let's go back and delete   these pads so we don't need these pads at all  we're gonna also delete this sketch two i'll go   back into sketch one i want to clear this little  error because i don't like having that there   and now let's talk about the very last tool which  is this one here let's go ahead and just say it   this tool basically doubles everything  that i've just shown you in this video   to create something called a construction  line what's a construction line you might ask   well a construction line is basically a line that  is used for the construction means of a sketch   so we can select this entire sketch right here  press this button and it's going to turn it into   that blue line that we saw where do we see that  blue line well when we're creating our own custom   shape here we can go ahead go like this and you'll  see that we have that blue line that's what that   blue line was it was a construction line now  construction lines are extremely powerful when   you mix them up with constraints and dimensions  and wow just for instance this shape right here   this is all just constraints to this construction  line with a number of edges and that's how they've   created that shape now the way of using the  construction line is you can either change   lines into construction lines or with  nothing selected change the entire tool set   into construction lines now with that lovely  bombshell i'm gonna leave that video there   because we have covered everything to do with line  drawing and a whole bunch of extra tools as well   well done for getting through that  first video of line creation as you see   there's a lot of different ways of creating lines  within freecad and then there's a lot of ways of   editing those lines and doing other operations  with them not to mention in the next video when we   talk about constraining lines and then bringing it  all together in that last video a huge thank you   to my patrons you guys are absolutely awesome and  it really means so much to me and it makes maker   tales and these videos possible and if you're  enjoying what i'm making here you think i'm worthy   of your support i would love to see you there too  don't forget that we do have a discord and that's   linked down in the description thank you for  watching keep making and let the quest continue

Channel: Maker Tales

Views: 12,336

Keywords: freecad, freecad tutorials for beginners, freecad tutorial, freecad 0.19 tutorial, freecad sketcher tutorial, freecad 3d printing, free cad software, free cad software for 3d printing, free cad, free cad 0.19, fusion 360 to freecad, fusion 360 alternatives, cad beginner course, cad beginner tutorial, cad beginners guide, beginner cad software, cad beginner, 3d printing, 3d modeling, 3d modeling for beginners, realthunder, how to use freecad, drawing, technical, sketching, lines

Id: LIDak5PHO5I

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021