What a great channel. Didn't realise how powerful FreeCAD is until I started doing your beginners videos, so thanks for the channel. I did my animation in the wrong order. I sent the washer off before the nut so the washer goes through the nut, which didn't look good, but found a solution. If you click on the 'Exploded Assembly', and then click on the 3 dots under 'Group' in the 'Data' tab and click 'Clear' button on the window that opens. You can then select your objects in the order that you want them to animate and click the 'OK' button and FreeCAD changes them to that order back in the 'Model' tab
Great to see your enjoying the videos and thank you for sharing your findings in changing the order of the animation. I am sure others will find that useful.
This was a really fun Tut, at the end I had my washers doing somersaults around the main flange assembly before settling into their correct positions exploded or assembled. I think it was because I added them in a random manner to the explode groups (no harm done and gets your att, lol ;-). Seriously utilizing outside geometry still a bit out there for Me but I see how it allows much flexibility (sub binder and such). I'm enjoying and actually starting to play with setting in objects to see what happens. Thanks MJ never thought an Old Bloke (62yrs) like Me would get into this stuff!
You probably know it at this point, but I found that you can make special "bolt groups" that can rotate all screws/bolts in unison. Icon in the tool bar is the one all the way to the left. Only thing is that you must select the circular edges of the bolt heads and not the faces like you did.
Actually, you have to select a circular edge for the rotation movement AND a face from which the normal is used for the movement (so two selections for each object)
Icon on far left. 4 black screws click on inner edge of each nut and then on surface of one. Creates a group of the nuts. Then you can set rotation and th each rotate away on their individual axis
Again thanks for this series, but seriously coming from a Maya/MAX/Blender background this has got to be the most cumbersome workflow for something as simple as aligning/snapping parts together. In above mentioned apps it's basically just a question of deciding to what part you want to align/snap one part on to another, which you do by pressing a key and drag the part towards where you want to align/snap the part, vertex, edge, face, mid point etc.
This video is showcasing a specific workbench. There are workbench(s) that may make the assembling process more straight forward, like joining edges and points in a wireframe view.
You can't compare CAD to more organic workflows like Maya and Blender. Maya and Blender get destroyed when it comes to CAD for purposes of doing hard surface and simulations. Good luck running mechanical simulations and check for tolerances within motion using maya and blender. Pick the right tool for the right job. If you dimensional accuracy such as designing products for manufacturing, you use CAD. Maya and Blender are nightmares for this.
@@edh3268 I ofc know that, but I just find it so cumbersome to do simple tasks like snapping, arraying, mirroring etc. however I have since I asked this found those tools and they take some getting use to for sure, but they do the job.
I "enjoyed" that tutorial. I played with it a bit further and ordered the files so that the nuts would unthread from the bolts and move out. The only comment was that the A2Plus files did not change name ie the file name was still M6 despite the Fastener name which had correctly changed to M8. PS Russellw5447 there are some 'boys' older than you enjoying these tutorials. 🦉
In the current FreeCAD release (0.20.1) as well as 0.21 (which I use to get around a constraints color problem in 0.20.1), there is a sort of collision detection which prevents placing the fasteners. To work around this, I went back to the Pipe project and changed the Pipe's OD from 50 to 48 mm. This, for some mysterious reason, broke the Gasket Pad. Checking the gasket sketch, the size of the outer rim of the gasket had changed to 20mm! I deleted the circle and added it again, constraining it to the outer point and the problem was gone. I worked through this problem again, this time changing the pipe's OD to 47 mm. This did NOT cause the gasket's outer circle to resize and thus break the pad! I decided it would be safer to use the smaller OD, so continued with the 47 mm OD pipe. I tried to delete the pipe from my existing assembly, but ran into warnings about some part not having a fixed location. I then deleted the assembly I was working on and started over. The parts now fit without conflict (I'm glad I changed the pipe's OD to 47 mm - I think 48 would have been too large!).
Im stuck right at the start. Putting the 9mm holes in.. I bring in the two edges for reference and I can put a dot on them but the next part - clicking on the two dots and then the dot in the circle for equal distance - does nothing at all. I deleted the 9mm circle and created it well off the center line - still cant line it up.
Another way of setting the outer diameter of the gaskets at 11:00 would be to give the external geometry of the flange a driven constraint. Then the gasket's diameter can be given a constraint with a formula that references the driven constraint. It probably doesn't mater on a completed model, but it might be more robust against the topological naming problem with something you might be going back to and modifying as part of the design process.
Thank you for this. Impressive and informative. I am learning slowly and your videos are a fantastic support for which I am very grateful. So much time and effort must go into these. (My last active experience was with Autocad in the 90’s!) I have a question, I noticed when you downloaded the fasteners, you re-sized them from M6 to M8 after converting them to A2plus. This re-sizing was reflected in the combo view tree for the model in the greyed out original fasteners names where it changed to M8 x 20 screw but the active name, in A2plus, remained as M6 x 12. Is there a way around this other than physically renaming each active, visible, part in the tree? Or could this be better done before conversion to A2 plus, assuming that is possible?
Thank you for your kind comments, ahh the good old days 😁 in the very late 90s I started using truespace and the first release of rhino 3d as a 3d modeler in my first job! Somewhere on the Internet are my tutorials for rhino (if you could call them that). Brings back fond memories 😁. It does take a lot of time to create the videos but its something I love and the community is so supportive that it's a joy to do. It also fills that void as I only was in a 3D design role and training to be a teacher for a year or so before changing career path. Yes I see what you mean about the naming. I am wondering if you can hook up the label to a formular to reference back to the object, that may work. It's something that I haven't really thought about. When I next have freecad open I will give it a go.
thanks. I think the problem I was having about getting the nut to mate with the washer, was due to having moved the fasteners before I converted them in A2plus.
I ended up with an error that I managed to solve! When I tried attaching the washer to the pipe, I got: "The highlighted parts were not moved. They are not constrained (also over constraint chains) to a fixed part" I interpreted this to mean that the pipe and the washer did not have fixed positions. I changed the pipe to "fixed position: true" under the "data" tab, but then I received the error "Constraints inconsistent. Cannot sole System. Please run the conflict finder tool!". I then ran the conflict finder tool (it's near the rubick's cube). Then I tried joining them again. It worked!
Glad you worked out what the issue was and thank you for sharing with others so if they encounter the same problem they will be able to find help in the comments. It all helps 😊
As always, excellent use of new tools. You are an exceptional teacher. But now I'm left to ask before you cover it, or I try it first, what video formats will this export as? I'm just asking because I can't try it for about 18 hours. My learning computer and FreeCAD computer aren't co-located. LOL.
Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad to hear your enjoying the tutorials. So with recording the video unfortunately you need to use a third party screen recorder program. I did a video many many months ago about a way to record the screen by code but it's better to download a screen recorder and go that way. I am thinking I need to get my hands dirty and actually write something that can be installed but it's finding the time.
Great video, thanks. However I have troubles in installation (FC v20.1) Exploded Assembly. It simply do not exist in Addon Manager list of WB when I open it.
How come you need to constrain every single bolt, washer and nut to every single hole? in a project with six holes this is already too much work, in a project with dozens of holes this becomes impossible. It baffles me that nobody has made a comment about this because this seems completely ridiculous to me. if anybody knows of a way to kinda make a group of the whole bolt/nut assembly and than constraining this group to every hole you want it please share this. Otherwise great tutorial, thanks for taking the time to make these.
At about 23:00, when we update the fasteners, the labels don't change! It took me a while to realize that 'update' was actually working - I had to use the ruler to be sure. Once we do this, the labels do not indicate the actual parts used in the design, so it seems this should be avoided in any 'real' design, or the labels should be edited to reflect reality.
Great videos. However, your microphone volume is so low I have to crank my output way up. Not a problem until an ad pops up. Blows my ears out. Can you consider using a higher microphone volume. Thanks.
You be happy to know I have ordered a blue yeti today after seeing one on offer, its one of the things that I feel that needs improving and will help give that extra bit of quality to the videos. 😁
@@MangoJellySolutions it's not the mic the issue but the normalization. Normalize you audio at -14 dB LUFS. ADS are at that volume. On my channel I was -14 but ppl said "it's too loud" (probably not able to use the mouse to low the volume) andthen I decided to go at -23 😂
great tutorial as usual. One thing is annoying in freecad is that: under certain conditions, ctrl+z brakes down something and you get errors when you try to redo the action. At 24:56 I inserted the bolt. Then I ctrl-z the action to redo it trying selecting another circle. Error. Ok let's redo it again as in the video (as I did the first time). Error. I wasn't able to get rid of the error. I deleted everything and I had to re-import the objects. This is not the first time this occur. I got it several times on my projects as well.
Thank you. I totally agree the undo history in some workbenches can be challenging sometimes. I have submitted bug reports and freeCAD is constantly being improved so hopefully the new version will have improvements around this area.
@@MangoJellySolutions another aspect I noticed is that: when the original object is quite complex (by being formed by several parts),the import process takes long ... long periods of frozen application then unblocking and finally a part is imported, then the process restart over and over again. It's a nightmare. So: ti's nice and beautiful, but it has its own drawbacks (for the time being).
Fair point, I'm only very new to CAD but I reckon FCAD is a great product. Also from what I can see for Newbies like Me a deliberate (slow & thought out approach) design process is the way to go.
You should be able to go back to A2Plus wb and select the washer and change the size from the properties. If you have converted to a A2Plus part the original washer will be hidden. Any changed to this should be reflected in the assembly (you may have to hit the refresh assembly button). These should filter down to the explode assembly
I have been looking into that myself to see if anything has changed since I last did some animation work. I had to then use a screen recorder and capture the region of the screen. Unfortunately I can't see any updates for tools inside freecad to do this so you have to rely on third party tools. I may have to get my hands dirty with some geek code 🤣
Yep I have the same problem - only 2 of the bolts are moving. I wonder is maybe the constraints for that bolt aren't quite right?? Anybody have any ideas what to try?
@@scienceofcambridge Same here. I noticed that it's always the last element selected that doesn't get exploded... So for those I created separate group and that worked!
Love the videos but definitely do not like this Explode workbench. Very buggy and hard to fix if things get messed up and need to undo or change trajectory lines. Not intuitive at all like the other ones. It kept messing up and having to redo the entire explode. First video of yours I had to just quit out of frustration.
What a great channel. Didn't realise how powerful FreeCAD is until I started doing your beginners videos, so thanks for the channel.
I did my animation in the wrong order. I sent the washer off before the nut so the washer goes through the nut, which didn't look good, but found a solution.
If you click on the 'Exploded Assembly', and then click on the 3 dots under 'Group' in the 'Data' tab and click 'Clear' button on the window that opens. You can then select your objects in the order that you want them to animate and click the 'OK' button and FreeCAD changes them to that order back in the 'Model' tab
Great to see your enjoying the videos and thank you for sharing your findings in changing the order of the animation. I am sure others will find that useful.
there is also a place before button which i used to fix the same mistake i made
This was a really fun Tut, at the end I had my washers doing somersaults around the main flange assembly before settling into their correct positions exploded or assembled. I think it was because I added them in a random manner to the explode groups (no harm done and gets your att, lol ;-). Seriously utilizing outside geometry still a bit out there for Me but I see how it allows much flexibility (sub binder and such). I'm enjoying and actually starting to play with setting in objects to see what happens. Thanks MJ never thought an Old Bloke (62yrs) like Me would get into this stuff!
Great to see your learning and most important of all, having fun. Glad your enjoying the videos, your never to old to learn new tricks 😁👍👍
Nice feature. Thank you for posting!
Marvelous Demo!
Thank you
Thank you. Excellent work. Really impressive.
Thank you, glad you enjoyed
You probably know it at this point, but I found that you can make special "bolt groups" that can rotate all screws/bolts in unison. Icon in the tool bar is the one all the way to the left. Only thing is that you must select the circular edges of the bolt heads and not the faces like you did.
Actually, you have to select a circular edge for the rotation movement AND a face from which the normal is used for the movement (so two selections for each object)
Icon on far left. 4 black screws click on inner edge of each nut and then on surface of one. Creates a group of the nuts. Then you can set rotation and th each rotate away on their individual axis
Thanks for adding this and sharing what you have found out. Thank you 😊😊
Again thanks for this series, but seriously coming from a Maya/MAX/Blender background this has got to be the most cumbersome workflow for something as simple as aligning/snapping parts together. In above mentioned apps it's basically just a question of deciding to what part you want to align/snap one part on to another, which you do by pressing a key and drag the part towards where you want to align/snap the part, vertex, edge, face, mid point etc.
This video is showcasing a specific workbench.
There are workbench(s) that may make the assembling process more straight forward, like joining edges and points in a wireframe view.
You can't compare CAD to more organic workflows like Maya and Blender. Maya and Blender get destroyed when it comes to CAD for purposes of doing hard surface and simulations. Good luck running mechanical simulations and check for tolerances within motion using maya and blender. Pick the right tool for the right job. If you dimensional accuracy such as designing products for manufacturing, you use CAD. Maya and Blender are nightmares for this.
@@edh3268 I ofc know that, but I just find it so cumbersome to do simple tasks like snapping, arraying, mirroring etc. however I have since I asked this found those tools and they take some getting use to for sure, but they do the job.
Very informative, well done, thank you.Cheers
I "enjoyed" that tutorial. I played with it a bit further and ordered the files so that the nuts would unthread from the bolts and move out. The only comment was that the A2Plus files did not change name ie the file name was still M6 despite the Fastener name which had correctly changed to M8.
PS Russellw5447 there are some 'boys' older than you enjoying these tutorials.
🦉
In the current FreeCAD release (0.20.1) as well as 0.21 (which I use to get around a constraints color problem in 0.20.1), there is a sort of collision detection which prevents placing the fasteners. To work around this, I went back to the Pipe project and changed the Pipe's OD from 50 to 48 mm. This, for some mysterious reason, broke the Gasket Pad. Checking the gasket sketch, the size of the outer rim of the gasket had changed to 20mm! I deleted the circle and added it again, constraining it to the outer point and the problem was gone.
I worked through this problem again, this time changing the pipe's OD to 47 mm. This did NOT cause the gasket's outer circle to resize and thus break the pad! I decided it would be safer to use the smaller OD, so continued with the 47 mm OD pipe.
I tried to delete the pipe from my existing assembly, but ran into warnings about some part not having a fixed location. I then deleted the assembly I was working on and started over. The parts now fit without conflict (I'm glad I changed the pipe's OD to 47 mm - I think 48 would have been too large!).
Im stuck right at the start. Putting the 9mm holes in.. I bring in the two edges for reference and I can put a dot on them but the next part - clicking on the two dots and then the dot in the circle for equal distance - does nothing at all. I deleted the 9mm circle and created it well off the center line - still cant line it up.
Another way of setting the outer diameter of the gaskets at 11:00 would be to give the external geometry of the flange a driven constraint. Then the gasket's diameter can be given a constraint with a formula that references the driven constraint. It probably doesn't mater on a completed model, but it might be more robust against the topological naming problem with something you might be going back to and modifying as part of the design process.
Nice tip, thanks for sharing and taking the time to explain that indepth in the comments. I always appreciate that as it really helps the community.
@@MangoJellySolutions just normalize your audio at around -16 or -14 dB LUFS
Thank you for this. Impressive and informative.
I am learning slowly and your videos are a fantastic support for which I am very grateful. So much time and effort must go into these. (My last active experience was with Autocad in the 90’s!)
I have a question, I noticed when you downloaded the fasteners, you re-sized them from M6 to M8 after converting them to A2plus.
This re-sizing was reflected in the combo view tree for the model in the greyed out original fasteners names where it changed to M8 x 20 screw but the active name, in A2plus, remained as M6 x 12.
Is there a way around this other than physically renaming each active, visible, part in the tree?
Or could this be better done before conversion to A2 plus, assuming that is possible?
Thank you for your kind comments, ahh the good old days 😁 in the very late 90s I started using truespace and the first release of rhino 3d as a 3d modeler in my first job! Somewhere on the Internet are my tutorials for rhino (if you could call them that). Brings back fond memories 😁. It does take a lot of time to create the videos but its something I love and the community is so supportive that it's a joy to do. It also fills that void as I only was in a 3D design role and training to be a teacher for a year or so before changing career path.
Yes I see what you mean about the naming. I am wondering if you can hook up the label to a formular to reference back to the object, that may work. It's something that I haven't really thought about. When I next have freecad open I will give it a go.
thanks. I think the problem I was having about getting the nut to mate with the washer, was due to having moved the fasteners before I converted them in A2plus.
Those tools are on the A2Plus drop down, solver submenu.
I ended up with an error that I managed to solve!
When I tried attaching the washer to the pipe, I got:
"The highlighted parts were not moved. They are not constrained (also over constraint chains) to a fixed part"
I interpreted this to mean that the pipe and the washer did not have fixed positions.
I changed the pipe to "fixed position: true" under the "data" tab, but then I received the error "Constraints inconsistent. Cannot sole System. Please run the conflict finder tool!".
I then ran the conflict finder tool (it's near the rubick's cube).
Then I tried joining them again. It worked!
Glad you worked out what the issue was and thank you for sharing with others so if they encounter the same problem they will be able to find help in the comments. It all helps 😊
Thank you so much. I try to learn. Great 🙂
You're welcome 😊
As always, excellent use of new tools. You are an exceptional teacher. But now I'm left to ask before you cover it, or I try it first, what video formats will this export as? I'm just asking because I can't try it for about 18 hours. My learning computer and FreeCAD computer aren't co-located. LOL.
Thank you for your kind words, I'm glad to hear your enjoying the tutorials. So with recording the video unfortunately you need to use a third party screen recorder program. I did a video many many months ago about a way to record the screen by code but it's better to download a screen recorder and go that way. I am thinking I need to get my hands dirty and actually write something that can be installed but it's finding the time.
Great video, thanks. However I have troubles in installation (FC v20.1) Exploded Assembly. It simply do not exist in Addon Manager list of WB when I open it.
It's worth clicking on the refresh local cache button at the bottom of the screen. This will force freeCAD to update it's addon list
Did the Battery warning get you? It did me.
How come you need to constrain every single bolt, washer and nut to every single hole? in a project with six holes this is already too much work, in a project with dozens of holes this becomes impossible. It baffles me that nobody has made a comment about this because this seems completely ridiculous to me. if anybody knows of a way to kinda make a group of the whole bolt/nut assembly and than constraining this group to every hole you want it please share this.
Otherwise great tutorial, thanks for taking the time to make these.
Cannot align holes in a gasket with the holes in the second pipe. Always fails computing the constraint
Great video, thanks. Once you create a group in Exploded Assembly can you go back and edit it to add or subtract components?
At about 23:00, when we update the fasteners, the labels don't change! It took me a while to realize that 'update' was actually working - I had to use the ruler to be sure. Once we do this, the labels do not indicate the actual parts used in the design, so it seems this should be avoided in any 'real' design, or the labels should be edited to reflect reality.
Cool stuff but I think the workbench needs some refining.
Great videos. However, your microphone volume is so low I have to crank my output way up. Not a problem until an ad pops up. Blows my ears out. Can you consider using a higher microphone volume. Thanks.
You be happy to know I have ordered a blue yeti today after seeing one on offer, its one of the things that I feel that needs improving and will help give that extra bit of quality to the videos. 😁
@@MangoJellySolutions it's not the mic the issue but the normalization. Normalize you audio at -14 dB LUFS. ADS are at that volume.
On my channel I was -14 but ppl said "it's too loud" (probably not able to use the mouse to low the volume) andthen I decided to go at -23 😂
great tutorial as usual. One thing is annoying in freecad is that: under certain conditions, ctrl+z brakes down something and you get errors when you try to redo the action. At 24:56 I inserted the bolt. Then I ctrl-z the action to redo it trying selecting another circle. Error. Ok let's redo it again as in the video (as I did the first time). Error. I wasn't able to get rid of the error. I deleted everything and I had to re-import the objects.
This is not the first time this occur. I got it several times on my projects as well.
Thank you. I totally agree the undo history in some workbenches can be challenging sometimes. I have submitted bug reports and freeCAD is constantly being improved so hopefully the new version will have improvements around this area.
@@MangoJellySolutions another aspect I noticed is that: when the original object is quite complex (by being formed by several parts),the import process takes long ... long periods of frozen application then unblocking and finally a part is imported, then the process restart over and over again. It's a nightmare.
So: ti's nice and beautiful, but it has its own drawbacks (for the time being).
Fair point, I'm only very new to CAD but I reckon FCAD is a great product. Also from what I can see for Newbies like Me a deliberate (slow & thought out approach) design process is the way to go.
@@russellw5447 this has nothing to do with the points I highlighted but ok
I am curious though, how to resize the washers after completing the exploded assembly.
You should be able to go back to A2Plus wb and select the washer and change the size from the properties. If you have converted to a A2Plus part the original washer will be hidden. Any changed to this should be reflected in the assembly (you may have to hit the refresh assembly button). These should filter down to the explode assembly
Any way to output the animation to a gif or video file?
I have been looking into that myself to see if anything has changed since I last did some animation work. I had to then use a screen recorder and capture the region of the screen. Unfortunately I can't see any updates for tools inside freecad to do this so you have to rely on third party tools. I may have to get my hands dirty with some geek code 🤣
Not working. Not all the bolts came out. Tried several times to do over with same result.
Yep I have the same problem - only 2 of the bolts are moving. I wonder is maybe the constraints for that bolt aren't quite right?? Anybody have any ideas what to try?
@@scienceofcambridge Same here. I noticed that it's always the last element selected that doesn't get exploded... So for those I created separate group and that worked!
@@JohnnyBit I added top face of the pipe (which is parallel to screw head) to the simple group. Then all screws moved together.
@@Grimm356 great technique. Thanks for sharing.
Love the videos but definitely do not like this Explode workbench. Very buggy and hard to fix if things get messed up and need to undo or change trajectory lines. Not intuitive at all like the other ones. It kept messing up and having to redo the entire explode. First video of yours I had to just quit out of frustration.
@25:27 I thought that was my battery low charge 😂
Lol 😂
how i move sketch rotate free 360?
aaaa its blender and press mouse wheel down
i have the 1.1.0 dev :0