Learning FreeCad with These Basic Steps

all right so I know it's easy to find stuff off the internet like from thingiverse or things or cult 3D just to put into your 3D printer and get the object out but there are some times where there are specific things that you need designed where you just can't find online so today I'm going to be showing you guys how to use freecad so let's get started real quick today's sponsor is PCB way so if you're looking for high quality 3D prints or PCB manufacturing look no further than PCB way they offer high quality and affordable pricing with top-notch customer service now designing your 3D prints is very easy you could just use freecad like what I'm going to be showing you in this video all you have to do is upload the STL and you could get a quote in minutes once you place your order PCB way takes care of the rest the manufacture your 3D print or PCB with the latest technology and quality control standards ensuring that it's perfect every time the best part PCB way actually offers free shipping so if you're looking into manufacturing or mass producing your 3D prints or 3D models look no further than PCB way now back to the video at first free cat is actually very intimidating I actually got scared from it and I didn't use it for quite some time until recently and now this is my 3D modeling software of choice you could design stuff like this this is a fan shroud for my M40 GPU I also designed this little thing which is for my sink so I have a sponge holder and some accessories put into the top I also designed a little tray just to hold these little things in like this was in minutes I could design something like that but yeah everything that I do now is all designed through free Cad and I'm going to be showing you guys the basics today um at least to get you to the point where it doesn't become intimidating anymore so let's begin now I am on my desktop which is a Linux operating system it doesn't matter you could use this on Windows Mac Linux like I am and I am actually going to install this for the first time because I don't have it installed on this computer so what I'm going to be doing is looking for a free CAD and there you go 0.2 I think 0.21 is the latest uh beta but 0.20 is the current version you could say so yeah it's gonna grab all the things that you need because I am running Manjaro so Arch Linux I do have a few of these things I should be updating to I guess I'm gonna update it as well maybe I should have updated my computer before doing this because I know this is going to take a few minutes while that is happening I'm going to show you what my idea is so I've been working on my Neptune 4 Pro time lapse setup for quite some time have you seen it on my Twitter um I have a camera with the arm boom sticking out and it's running off of Raspberry Pi zero with the high quality Raspberry Pi camera as right now the Raspberry Pi is just dangling off the ribbon cable which is terrible and I need to find a way to install it to the boom arm this way it's stable and it doesn't fall off so my idea is that I will just attach this Raspberry Pi zero on along this arm so the first thing I need to do is just grab the measurements for this arm and that's all I really need because everything else I can find online now with that information and everything installed on this desktop all I need to do is create a new item just off the bat this looks intimidating like what do I do where do I need to go anyway I'm going to show you what I do and it's how I got it to work in my brain I guess so first thing we need to do is go into part designer and in here we're going to create a body and then create a sketch so in this sketch I am going to use the X Y plane you could use the Z access like if you're going to make something vertical but I usually start off flat on the surface so I'm going to choose the X Y plane and from here you just get this grid now I don't know the measurements that I need for my Raspberry Pi zero so what I could do is just type in zero Raspberry Pi measurements look up images because I just really need the images itself okay here you go this is a perfect image I need because I actually have all the things I have written down all the measurements everything so I'm going to leave this up as I do my free CAD now first thing you need to do is create some sort of a squared shape if you have a bigger monitor you'll be able to actually see all the tools but you could also click click on this right little arrow and it'll drop down the same tools now first thing I need to do is create this little square I don't care about the size because I am going to fix this later on and you're going to notice that this is white white means bad green means good you'll see what I mean in a second first we need to grab all the measurements and align everything perfectly so in this next section of tools can I just like drag this down I can drag this down to make a new toolbar and then I'll drag this down and probably some other stuff later on down the road maybe this one no I don't need this one actually I'm going to drag this down here and now I have all my tools spreaded out in an area except for this maybe I'll move this over here okay now we're going to need these uh constraint tools so right now this is for horizontal and this is for vertical so horizontal I need to click over here to the top bar and the length is 65 63.85 right now but what I do need is 65 exactly and then the vertical would be 30. so let's grab that pop back into our free Cad and I'm going to type in 65 over here so it's going to do that and then for the vertical remember to right click to get out of the Tool uh and then for the vertical I'm going to hit 30. so right now I have the exact measurements of the Raspberry Pi that I need next you need to know is the center of this little dot right over here so I'm going to measure that horizontal from one corner to the center and since we know it's 65 we're going to divide that by 2 and it's going to automatically do the math for you and I'll align it to the center now I need to do the same thing for the vertical so I'll you could choose any dot it's fine because I'm just splitting it into half and I'm going to select that and this is 30 divided by 2 or you could just put 15 you know whatever works and if you notice it went from white to Green which means every constraint is perfect it works out you can't move this anywhere I can't drag it anywhere that means it's stuck in this spot green is good that means everything's in place so I'm going to close out of this task and then go back into model I'm going to go back into the sketch model and here is our sketch that we just made now what I'm going to do is select the sketch itself you can hit spacebar to hide it I really don't need to hide that right now it's just for other stuff whether you're playing around and it's in the way you can hide certain parts so I'm going to hit the sketch and what I'm going to do is hit this button which is the padding now I want it to be three millimeters thick so at this point the length of this I want this to be three and hit OK and now we automatically have our padding for our little base for the Raspberry Pi now next thing we need to do is actually add arms that could grab onto the post so I am going to work on here and I am going to create a new sketch I'm going to press this button over here to the left which is create sketch and then I only have one constraint that I could work with right now which is the center Dot and that's not enough for me so what I need to do is actually add more constraints uh the best way is to use this little blue tool right here external geometry and it's going to grab the external geometry from the top and from the left if you need more you can just select everything you want but you're just using it as a geometry right click to get out of that and now you can start designing the post that you need so I don't know exactly what I'm going to go for as far as the post here but I know I want two of them and we know that it is going to be 12 millimeter the hole itself is 12 millimeters because that's what we measured so from here I am actually going to make up some numbers because it doesn't have to be I'm just going as the flow so basically since this is 7.8 millimeters already let's just make this eight millimeters okay and then same goes for this arm itself you can actually clone the things that you want to do uh you don't have to make double of them I'm just showing you what I'm doing right now and then now as far as the vertical restraint we know that it has to be bigger than 12 because that's how big the post is and if you need more surrounding or out of that so if you want to add two millimeters to each side 12 plus 2 plus 2 is 16 so we're going to have 16 millimeter thickness or the height of that and same goes for this one 16 millimeter height so now we have sort of like a post that we want to go for uh we will now actually finish up the restraint from the top to the middle point and we're going to do 16 divided by two uh same goes for this one 16 divided by 2. and then the distance from the middle and you want this to be kind of pretty close uh uh like more towards the center so since this is giving me 13 I'm just going to stick with 13 and now you see that turn green same thing I'm going to go over here to the center and I'm going to do 13 and that's going to turn green and now that everything is green we are good to go we're gonna hit update if you want and then close out you don't have to you could if you want and then now we're going to take this second sketch and pad that as well let's do 15 millimeters so I'm gonna hit okay and now we have the padded uh example now to rotate your screen hold the middle Mouse button to wherever angle you want right click and then you can rotate whatever you need over here right clicking does nothing middle click uh well not middle click but a scroll wheel will move that and then that's to rotate and then if you just hold the middle click you'll drag the model around now I always get confused with the angles so I go zero one two like your number pad will actually Resort the visual looks of this now next thing we need to do is actually add a hole through this entire thing so I am going to select this and add a sketch and then from here I'm going to need some sort of uh geometry external geometry so I know exactly how far I need to go from each side actually this is Center I just need that bottom of this that's fine then I'm going to create a circle somewhere here so I'm going to choose constraint yeah we don't have to be perfect because we're going to resize this and from here I'm going to hit the drop down and choose constraint diameter and then we'll click on the outside so diameter we know we need is 12 not the radius radius will be six the diameter would be 12. so I'm going to hit OK with that and then now we have to align everything together so first I know I have to align this perfectly in the center so I'm going to click on this Dot and this dot right here which if I could click on it there you go zero so now it's set perfectly in the center and then we're gonna need a vertical so we're going to choose this vertical right here and this vertical over here and we could either do six or we could do 12 divided by two you know it's it's the same thing so now we know it rests perfectly down here now we know it's a little bit too big up here and we'll change that later on down the road so we're going to save this and go back to our padding and from here we're gonna change this and get this down to say nine millimeter actually seems to be perfect maybe eight eight or nine is right around that area so I'm going to do eight and then now I'm gonna choose the sketch we're going to use pocket and now the pocket is actually created that 12 millimeter uh surrounding around here we are going to punch it all the way through until it reaches to the other side you can see that line that is being created and then it's going to get to the other side and there we have it 42 millimeter distance hit okay and now we have ourselves a little clamp that will hold on to our arm that's basically the design concept that I have now we still need to be able to mount the Raspberry Pi onto this board so next thing we need to do is actually which I should have done earlier but I'm doing this in a weird step so you could see the process of certain things that don't go well so what I'm going to do now is create the top part of this board I'm going to create a new sketch and I am going to take this blue thing again to add the external geometry and grab the up down left right okay and then I'm going to create four circles so I'm going to create one here and then one here one here again you don't have to be perfect because we're going to add the geometry there now I have to go look at my Raspberry Pi zero and take a look at this so we know looking at this geometry it's 3.5 millimeters from the top Edge and it's also 3.5 millimeters from the outside edge all right so now that we know the diameter and how far it is from the edges we can now finish designing the holes that we need so we're gonna go in each one choose the diameter and we said it was uh was it 3.5 yes it was 3.5 so we're gonna go there click on these 3.5 3.5 again we could just clone it but I'm just showing you the longer process you could say so now that we have 3.5 on each we're gonna start setting up the horizontal no this is the vertical so I'm going to choose the vertical from that it's 3.5 from the top same with here 3.5 from the top and then this one is 3.5 from the bottom 3.5 from the bottom and then this one is 3.5 from the bottom as well and then now we need to set the horizontal which is 3.5 from the edges sometimes I have to zoom in so we're going to choose that choose this corner 3.5 and now you see how to turn it green and I'm going to use the middle Mouse button and drag it over same goes for here 3.5 and then here with here 3.5 and now everything is green we are all good we could close this out and also set in a pocket and because we know it's only a three millimeter thickness we're just going to switch this down to three millimeters on the left and there we have it now if you want to make this a little bit more fancy because we know the radius of the corners I'm going to grab Each corner by holding Ctrl and then I'm going to spin this around grab that last corner right over here by holding Ctrl as well and now you see how it's green we're just going to fillet the corners and now it's going to add that radius there and we know it's a three millimeter radius so we might as well just stick with it so we're going to do that three millimeter radius hit okay and then go back to our original Outlook which is zero on the number pad and there we have it our little tiny board thing that that's custom made now you might want to add a little cornering stuff over here what's cool is that you can actually do this where it's flat or you could do round again and it'll make it look a little bit better so I'm going to keep it with this do I want two millimeter oh yeah two millimeter looks pretty good so I'm going to save this this is all set we have a full design that we need for the Raspberry Pi to be mounted on the arm so I'm going to hit save we'll just call this um mirror I think that's what it's called newer arm and from here I'm going to go to file export oops I got to choose the body let me know okay on this choose the body so you can see and then now file export and then I can export this as a object STL whatever you want for me I'm going to use STL because this is something that you could actually upload directly to your slicer which is curl or whatever slicer you use and once you have that the Nexus history you just have 3D printed all right now that everything is 3D printed and you can see from the time lapse I can now Mount this directly onto the arm and you can see it's actually snug it actually holds on tight and I can rotate it and it won't fall off and then I can actually attach my Raspberry Pi directly on there by using these plastic uh screws that I have and I'll leave a link to those because they're actually very useful for projects like this I rather prefer this over metal because metal could create contact and using plastic was just a little bit easier so yeah that is it to create a 3D model just like this these were the little basic steps that I learned and I've been just growing from there this is the the hurdle and once I got through this part I was able to design a lot of my own Parts anyway that is it for me if you guys have any questions hit me up on Discord because there's a lot of members on my Discord that actually know freak head more than I do and that's where I've been getting a lot of my help from yeah and if you are new to this channel consider subscribing and also hitting that Bell notification icon so you know when the next video is going to be out and I see my nerd cave Hector hurts

Channel: Novaspirit Tech

Views: 341,447

Keywords: novaspirit, tech, freecad tutorial, learn freecad, freecad part design, freecad 3d printing, freecad basic tutorial, freecad tutorials, freecad beginner, freecad, learning freecad, how to use freecad, freecad basics, 3d printing, 3d modeling

Id: rglvJH9z5ng

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023