Learn FreeCAD Curves Workbench [01] Sweep Along 2 Rails, Join Curve, Nurbs surfaces Practical Guide

hi viewers and welcome to the channel and today we're looking at the curves workbench and i'm going to go through the sweep along two rails and from here we can make such things as this spade you can see the profile at the back and the front are differ and we've got a nerve surface between those two i've also done the same with a shovel there slightly different profiles and also we've got something totally different this corrugation effect the front and a straight effect at the back and this also curves upwards as well like so and we're going to be looking at the different features in the curse workbench to do this i'm going to try to go through all the features in this series and we're going to be looking at the drawing curves which is essential for creating a single b-spline from multiple lines wires etc that we need for rails and a supporting tree in this it all sounds too complex but it's not we're also going to be using the approximate points to nurbs curved surface and we're going to be using the suite profiles on two rails so these three are the main ones we're going to cover with this tutorial enough tutorials we're going to go through all the others so i'm hoping to do a full curves workbench experience for you so you can understand how to use those what you can use them for because it's always good to get a demonstration what you can use them for i hope you enjoy and let's get to it 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 slash mang0 so for the first demonstration i'm going to be creating a simple shovel and we're going to be using that to demonstrate sweep across two rails now sweep across two rails is in the curse workbench and we'll be using the part design part sketcher and the curse workbench to do this now the reason why we're using the part design is because we're going to be using the datum planes so i've just jumped into a new document and i'm here already in the part design i'm going to create a new body and i'm going to create a new sketch now the first thing i need to do is figure out how this is going to be built so if we're sweeping across two rails we're basically going to draw the outline of the shovel and when i say join the draw the outline i mean drawing the left and the right lines the profile at the front and the profile at the back this is the reason why you need that and planes because you're going to place a datum plane on one of those profiles because we can only do x y x z and y z for our sketching but we need another plane probably along the zx for the front of the shovel so i'm going to start on the x y and we're going to be looking down the shovel and we're going to be using the vertical and the horizontal guidelines here and we're building the model around the center the reason why we're using these lines is to connect up each of the profiles and also to do symmetry across those so the first thing i'm going to do is do the sides and i'm going to use the arc tool here now when you normally come in it's got the arc here this one selected and i want the end points and rim point because what i can do i can connect to this line and then using the auto constraints because that's done a point online constraint i can bring this up and i can place it about here and just bring this out into a kind of shovel space shape and we can just do some amendments on here to get in the right shape something like that will do and then using this line and this vertical line here we're going to do a symmetry so click your arc control click your vertical line you can take your finger off the control now you just got the mouse movement and we're going to use the sketch sketch tools and symmetry always over here on your toolbar and here it is create symmetrical geometry respects to the last selected line or point now we last selected this vertical line here so that will make a symmetry across there like so which is exactly what we want we can put some constraints in here if we so desire so i'm going to put these two points and make sure they're horizontal and these will be on this line so automatic horizontal and i can set some lengths in here if i so desire or i can set the distance between these two like so so 100 and i can restrict that down if i so desire we're not going to bother too much about that so i'm going to close out that and that's the size of the shovel done so let's have a look what i tend to like to do is come into the sketch go to view come down to object style and change that line color i'm going to change it to blue so that gives me an idea of what's up what's down what's left what's right so these two are blue now and you'll see it gets quite confusing in 3d space if we just have a number of lines because perspective sometimes you think it's in the background when it's actually in the foreground so this helps orientate you in the right space when that's going to create the back of the shovel and for that i need another sketch and we're gonna have a look at the planes so i want it on the back here coming down here so that's the xz plane if you get stuck trying to figure out what planes are if you look down here this will tell you what plane we're on so if i click front you can see we're on the zx or xz plane there so that's the plane that we want and click over here or click on that one that's okay that so our sketch is now on here if we put a little bit of angle on there you can see our working plane has intersected those two lines there which is exactly what we want and we can see those sketches in the background now i need to connect up the back to these vertexes here and we can do that by importing this using the create an edge link to external geometry or sketch geometries external drum tree there if i click that and import this line what's going to happen is i'm going to get two points like so along there that's not what i want i want that vertex to come through i'm just going to hit escape and delete that so i've got to click that vertex as you can see it's quite hard to get that but there is a trick if you go to model click on your sketch remember we colored it last time but we can also increase the point size we increase this point size that increases the vertex size and it's easier to select so click on the create national link to external geometry and import that vertex there and also import the other one so we're going to need that and now i can create the shovel back on here which will be merged with the profile on the front when we do our surfacing hit escape it's got mouse pointer back i'm going to use a b spline to create the shape that i want and i can alter constrain it with a point on point constraint important to the point on point constraint there and we're gonna make the back something like and just connect it to that line the light point on object constraint like so remember the auto constraints are on and hit escape and we've got the back of the shovel and we can hit escape again and do some finer amendments to these if we so desire for a different look at the profile there we go like so now again i'm going to do a mirror across here so select this b-spline control and click the vertical and use the symmetry again and what you need to do is make sure that because at the moment these aren't connected up so it's worth connecting these up so i'm just going to highlight those two connect them up and do the same here and connect those so that two or more verses so i've selected those so let's just zoom in and just come in here select those two and connect those up so we're all connected up i'm not worried about the degrees of freedom that's all good so that's our back profile but we've got a problem which can be easily solved with the curse workbench because we've created two b splines we've got more effectively we've now got two rails here two supporting lines that actually need to become one so when we actually do our surface in this whole b-spline needs to become one and the curse workbench has a tool for that it's really easy to use you just click the sketch you click the tool and it's done and we'll get to that in a moment let's close that let's see what we've got so we've got the back and the sides and now we need the profile at the front so we've got one two which will become a surface and then at the moment well there's two rails here which will become one so there's one rail here the sporting line will be called rails so we need to place a rail along here and this is where we need to create a datum plane because look at our origins we've got the zx plane that goes along here we've got these sides sitting on the x y plane well we need to plane along here and well we can't get a plane along here there's no such plane with the origin planes we need a datum plane leave the origin plane icon visible because this will help you when placing the datum plane so what we're going to do is we're going to use this plane that sits on the back here this xz play and we're going to use that to position our datum plane so we click the datum plane so there are no attachment modes that fit selected objects like something else so that's fine look on the task there's nothing being referenced and selecting is visible so if that's not visible just click reference one and click on the x z plane and let's place it along the xz plane and then that's still saying selecting if it isn't click it and then click our vertex and that's moved it into the correct position okay that so that's sitting there now we can hide the origin by clicking on it and pressing spacebar and we'll just move in and create our sketch along this plane hit the sketch and that'll place a sketch along here just place a little bit of angle so we can see what's going on so you can see that's being placed on the front of those vertexes like that and we're looking at it from the front as in the back the shovel if that makes any sense we need to import that vertex and we're doing the same with the create an edge link to external geometry so import the vertex not the line zoom in a bit and see if we can get that vertex there it is red dot in there and we can create the front profile so i'm going to use just a basic arc for that so create an arc by its endpoints and point along an arch so come in here use the point on point constraint on that side and the point on point constraint on that side and create the arc that you want so i want something like that if you want to use a different shape you can but i'm just going for that so let's close that then we now have the outline of the shovel i'm just going to save that so our next stage is to create a surface using these two sides we could use the front and the back it's up to you which way around you want to do this but i'm going to create a ruled surface across these two and to do that we need to go to the part and we're going to use the create ruled surface for me for two edges or two wires so these are the two edges i'm going to use i know they're in one sketch that's absolutely fine and it's also available from the part crate ruled surface there so we need to click on one edge control click on the other and create the ruled surface across those two that's the first stage i'm just going to hide this datum plane now i need to come over to the curves workbench now if you haven't got this installed it's available from tools add-on manager and there you'll find the curse workbench which i've already got installed it's not the curve shapes it's the curves workbench and you can install that there now i've got the ruled surface i can use that with our rails now at the moment we have three rails we've got this front and the two back ones because they're separate b splines so remember we're gonna create these as one so if we take one b spline ctrl-click the other i know they're in one sketch and we're going to use the tools along here now there's one tool along here and it's called the join curves and that's also on curves drawing curves there if i click that you get this join curves icon here so that was the sketch zero one you see it's highlighted in green we don't need that now so just press spacebar to hide that and now we've got this join curves here and as you can see it's one single curve if you highlight it it's now in orange rather than if i hide that and bring in the sketch rather than if i highlight this it's in two parts so orange there and orange there that's great that's exactly what we need don't have to worry about connecting anything up because that's all ready in the right place these are now known as rails we've got the right at the front and the rather back we just changed our terminology here so the sketch at the front is the rail front rail sketch of the back is the back row to deform this surface across these two rails what we need to do is first select the rule surface and then come around control click the back and control click the front and you can see they've all selected there if you look along here you'll see an icon called suite profiles on two rails or come up to the surfaces and sweep two rows there click that and you get something called a point cloud so we see our top curve there for the size of the shovel and the point cloud that will become our surface now it's important that you click on the sweet two rails point cloud there and if we look over here we have some data and you can see there's a number of different items in here so we've got points profiles 20. let's bring this out a bit profile samples 20 and these can be changed but we're just going to keep for the defaults for the time being so i'm going to click on sweet to two rails and come up to one of these icons along here and we want the approximate points to nurbs curves curves or surface that's also available in the curves approximate there we click that what happens is that you get the surface all mapped out for you there you go what we're going to do is offset this now so it becomes thicker and to do that if you jump over to the part and we're going to use the offset tool on here pick the approximate curve and come up here and we've got tools to offset shapes and dropped that down we've got the 3d offset which we'll be using it's also available on the part it's 3d offset down there so we've clicked our approximate curve select 3d offset and that makes two now so you got two two skins and we need to fill the offset like so and we can crease the millimeter of this so we can increase this up so it's increasing you know for two mil i can even send it the other way so i've put a minus two mil for it to go downwards rather than upwards like so hit okay and one thing you need to do is come in here and this approximate curve surface you can see that there that needs to be hidden because if i right click and transform this it will be separated from there so we can come in here and hide that by pressing the spacebar on there and we can deal with our offset now so that's all done we so decide we can add a connection point on the end of here such as a create a tube and give it some radius there something like 20 millimeters so i've just increased the speed of the video here because you don't really want to see me go through this process this is very basic process of transforming that tube also resizing it so i'm changing the inner diameter and the outer diameter the length and also we're doing rotates and dragging that in place with the right click transform so the very basic operations we're doing that so we can union the two parts at a later time and okay that and we can do our usual fusions etc if we so desire so you can select the offset select the tube and use the boolean in there to fuse those together so there's a quick shovel using those sweep along two rails in the curse workbench and also we went through some other tools in there just to recap so we used suite profiles on two rails the join curve to create a single curve for the profile we use the approximate points to nerve surfaces there as well and on the part we use the rule surface and the 3d offset obviously this can be done from different planes as well so it's not just this profile on the front plane on along the zx plane and the size of the shovel you can see the sides are still still visible there so let's just hide those those if you go top along the z y plane so we don't have to keep those planes we can switch between them quite easily for example if i started new and go into the part design and create a body create a sketch in there and this time we started on the other plane the yz plane so along the right and okay that and then we could create a profile along here for the sides i'm going to attach and let's say so i'm going to attach say here and i'm going to come out so it sweeps upwards like so and then we'll create another sketch by duplicating that edit 2k selected object ok that and we don't need that let's get rid of that so this one here we're going to transform that to come down to placement position the x so i can't use placement there let's use the attachment it's not it's actually along with z so let's go along with z so it's pushing it away so go along 100 we've got two there like so let's go a bit more so those are separated out so if we're looking from top those are there next i want to come around to the front and add a profile along here and create a datum plane and we want our origin to show so we want it along the xz plane there so select that in plane map mode the faders come back in this so that's selecting x0 plane there we go so that's correct and then we want to click on the plane so this top one's selecting again and we want to select that vertex so it crosses those vertex like so so this will have probably two datum plays on the front on the back okay that come in click your datum plane do a new sketch on there and just hide the origin which coming down looks like it already has it hasn't there we go that's hidden now we need to import that vertex and the other one which is already imported it's attached to the center there and we can create our profile on the back so i'm going to just use an arc on the back here so connect those two up like so and just decide what kind of shape that i want escape and i'm just gonna hide that datum plane and come out that sketch just bring this around the back you can see when you don't color it how awkward it can be sometimes when you're trying to figure out what way around this is now again just show the origin there bring this around and i want a new datum plane okay that and i want it attached to this plane here set x plane starts and then attach it to that's where it's gone wrong let's get rid of that click on plane and attach it to that point there let's move it into position okay that come in and we'll add a profile along here now what kind of profile do we want i'm going to create a sketch on there like so we've still got the origin showing so click on it hide it and see where that is so i need to come to the right and import that vertex like so escape and i'm going to create a jagged profile so i'm going to click that and i'm just going to come down and just create something like that doesn't match just for demonstration purposes and skate that and those should be connected are they connected yep they're connected so those are done let's close that so we'll take in the part let's take this one and that's sketch free let's see if we can put a ruled surface across there so you can see what happens you try to put a rule surface across there because this is broken so you can see the yellow lines across there let's just hide that datum it's not one continuous line you can see if you place a raw surface across there it only does one line so that's no good so we've got to create that as one so we'll just do a rule surface across these two jump into the curves workbench i need to hide that raw surface and i want to select that sketch and i'm going to create a curve that connects all those up there we go so that's one single connection there i know it's not curved it's still a line that that allows us to create as one so we've got this one and this one and our ruled surface so let's flip this over click the rule surface click the first rail control click that and control click the second rail and use the sweep profiles across two rails we can see our dots are all appearing there our cloud and then must remember to click off click suite two rails and finally choose the approximate points to nurse curve services there and there you go so you've got basically like a corrugated iron effect there if i did this over here then we'll have a nice corrugation effect across that but because i haven't done it there i've just used one then those two are moulded together so there's two examples for that you can even use this for bolt holes if you so desire but i would use something like the loft to do that lottery profiles so there you go hope that's helped and i will be going through the other tools of the curse workbench very shortly if you like what you're seeing please subscribe to my site and also i have a cofy site 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 slash 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: 4,325

Rating: 4.9783783 out of 5

Keywords: CAD, three, 3D, CNC, Printing, solidworks, autoCAD, 0.19, 0.18, 0.29, FreeCAD, Free CAD, Arc, Curve, wb, work bench, nurbs, N.U.R.B

Id: 8JO3kU3Lg-U

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021