FreeCAD - How Do the Workbenches Work Together? |JOKO ENGINEERING|
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This is the "ah ha" moment for thousands of us. BRAVO!
"It maybe confusing when I'm just say it without doing it"
This is a great statement for anything in studying these days. Theory is confusing without practice.
Jeepers FreeCAD is the most confusing SW I have ever used, so keen for my kids to enjoy FreeCAD 1.0 one day.
I've been looking at a bunch of other tutorials, and none of them cover this as well as you do. Awesome work dude!
I had thought that you could only have one object at a time because of that error message. Thanks for explaining that i just need to add another body! The rule about once your working in Part Design workbench you kind of have to stay in PD WB is a good rule of thumb too. Thanks!
A LOT of people had this question. Good job!
YOU NEVER KNOW UNTIL YOU DO IT YOURSELF, practice makes perfect
Love this topic and your explanation, the comapatibility problem between the workbenches is really difficult to the users. Thanks for your sharing!!
Very helpful
Please post more on overall workflow
and logic / thought process for design process you choose when designing
love your video on freecad joko.
Great timing, I had that exact error message for ages yesterday when trying to edit an 'unactive' body in the part design workbench after making an edit in the part workbench!
I am left with the one question, unanswered. Given the level of incompatibility, why would I use Part Design at all? Where are the advantages? That seems to be what I missed. Great video and appreciate the insight. This is something so subtle, I would have otherwise struggled. Thank you. ~P F360 Refugee
Hi sbirdranch;
Part design is my default goto for modeling anything. Part is based on a constructive solid gemetry workflow which is an older kind of modeling, part design provides a newer workflow that feels like other modern cad platforms like SolidWorks, Onshape etc. I don't think it costs anything to use the part design workbench because you can use it in the part workbench whenever you want. I think Part design will work and feel a lot more like f360 for you!
Your videos are so awesome and helpful!! Thxs!! It would be nice that Freecad gets a big update to become cleaner and more intuitive!
Extremely helpful, thank you!
Very helpful. Thanks!
Thats what I was looking for, thanks😃
Nice information. Thank you.
@5:30 select Fillet, switch to Part Design and then click Create Body icon. This will create new body with BaseFeature and now you can add any feature from Part Design workbench without any problem. When you make changes in Fillet from Part workbench new BodyFeature will be updated.
Just noticed your comment, would you take a look at mine?
Yes, this is true, you can edit objects from other workbenches in Part Design, as you described.
Another exact demonstration: I created a sketch in Part Design, padded it, switched to Part and added a sphere, and performed a Union between the Body and the Sphere. Then, back in Part Design, I created a new Body, and dragged the Fusion (the Union) into the new body to become the Base Feature. I then went back and a) edited the sketch b) edited the Pad and c) edited the sphere, and all changes were reflected in the Base Feature in the new Part Design body. I even then went back to the sketch and d) added geometry, such that the Pad caused the Union to no longer be a contiguous solid (a circle in the sketch, in the middle, makes a hole in the Pad), and nothing broke, since I guess it's OK for the Base Feature to be a non-contiguous solid.
I really like these videos, but I think the statement starting at 6:55 that "Part Design will not edit something from any other workbench", and the couple of sentences after that, the "hard and fast rules", are false. Perhaps there is some other point he was trying to make that I didn't understand, but, from my perspective, it's misleading, unintentionally I'm sure.
This is a great tip to integrate the workflows for newbies. Couldn't understood till now what a "BaseFeature" of a body in PartDesign referred to and where it was supposed to have originated from.
thanks again joko expecting more tutorials
Very helpful!
thank you very much
To be honest I do as well think that the workbenches are logical from historical and contributor standpoints, but make little sense for using them. It is also a real pitty, that the somewhat very important part design is so incompatible with other workbenches to loose history and just work on copies.. These, along with the mess of not having Realthunders fixes in the main branch seem to be FC's biggest problems at the moment. I really really do hope they come to acknowledge this and work on an inclusive software and grow to outrule them all.
Thank you again for this wonderful videos! I was reading about the relation between "Part" and "Part Design" workbenches in the FreeCad forum: forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=31064
Turns out that it is possible to create or modify something in the Part workbench and later use it in the Part Design workbench: all we need to do is select the interested part in the tree view, and click the "Create a new body and make it active" button of the Part Design workbench. This will embed the part into a new body: at that point, we can modify it with the Part Design features.
This is helpful. I have used the ShapeBinder if all I need to do is reference the geometry.
You can edit objects made outside the part design workbench in the part design workbench, by creating a "BaseFeature". I agree fully that it's not a logical way of working. In some cases can it be convenient though
please explain base feature in detail
i am very new
thx
@@Just_An_Idea_For_Consideration select fillet created in Part workbench, switch to PartDesign and press Body icon, this will create new body with BaseFeature. From now you can use any feature from PartDesign
Thank you @Hedzer great tip
@@voytechj Thanks! How on earth is anyone supposed to know this? It feels like freecad is making the user manage it's internal data structures!
I'm not sure if it's the best way to approach it, but I have done boolean operations in the part workbench. After that I wanted to work on it in part design workbench. All I had to do is create a new body in part design and drag and drop part into body. Seems to work for me with cubes, spheres, cuts, fusions, etc. Again not sure if that's the right way or not.
The Workbench structure is unnecessarily complicated. I just recently started using Fusion 360 and it’s UI is far more intuitive. I’ll continue learning FreeCad on the side just in case but, I hope they restructure their UI.
Agree and I think they will merge and simplify over time. The one thing they will likely never do is force cloud monopoly and cloak it as 'collaboration'. That said all the time we spend skilling in Freecad won't be a waste of time.
If you sign up now for a free / personal use F360 account you will find it is very restricted in terms of features and number of projects you can have, to a point it is almost useless.
Thanks
Thanks a lot for the video. It took watching it a second time after reading the comments to get it.
However now I wonder what's even the point of the Parts Design workbench because it seems that it's just more difficult and adds extra complexity and limitations VS the Parts workbench superior compatibility.
I had the exact same question. Guess no one can answer.
Very useful. I just wish more operations were available in a parametric part design way.
Is there a way to import a step file as a base into part design for example? What about 3D sketches?
Very helpful, thank you! Any chance you could do video on why the Part Design workbench is generally not compatible with the other workbenches?
I think the reason is on the development side which I'm not very familiar with. I can tell you the part design workbench is much newer and probably has newer features that wouldn't be backwards compatible with the Part workbench but I think others could probably give better reasons.
This good news for me, I had no idea that you can creat 2 bodies, and idk why I’ve never seen someone explaining it
Could you make a video explaining how to use the Draft Workbench? I'm particularly confused with using the Dwire/line tool.
Ahhh............ So that's what was happening with my tree, and the parts I made. I've just had an Acts 9:18 moment.
Thanks very much.
I am gently becoming to understand Freecad 3D modelling for designing things to print on my printer.
I see the part workbench as a set of simple preformed blocks that can be added or subtracted from each other. The part design workbench allows complicated blocks to be formed.
I'm new to FreeCad from SolidWorks.
Your video cleared a lot of questions. ty.
If you make a mistake and add something in another workbench and save your work, then go back to part design, is there a roleback history like there is in photoshop or SW?
Binge watching your videos on FreeCad :)
Yes, when you work on a part design part in the part workbench you have an item in the history tree that contains the part design history
Thank you for the video. It seems that is you have experience in other design programs ( solidworks ) you recommend part design as the workbench to use because of a familiarity to SW but it does seem limited in a workbench compatibility view. Full compatibility between workbenches is achieved with the part work bench. Do I have that right?
Just use Part Design, boolean operations is not a standard technique in CAD development. Furthermore the FreeCad version (FreeCAD Assembly 3) on realthunder's github allows to use the Solidworks "Convert Entities". In sketcher use the tool "Defining geometry" under "external reference". Also this version won't break your model if you need to update for example the extrudes
Have you looked at Realthunder's branch lately? Seems it may be at least partially incorporated into the next release.
Nice video. Just discover a problem that was naging me.
Now, the think I don't understand is "SCOPE". I alway seem to go out of scope. And i.am not sure why
So which should i use if i want to design patametric part? Should i shy away from part design wirkbench?
Part, part design and almost all the workbenches are parametric. Part design, in my opinion, feels the most similar to SolidWorks or other parametric platforms one would have used in the industry.
What are the advantages of Part Design? I'm fairly new to freeCAD and I always start with Part design until I need to substract or do some boolean operation but I mainly do that because the tools are more unified there and I don't have to keep changing workbench from Sktecher to Part. Is there any other advantage apart from that one?
Booleans are not standard in CAD design and Graphics (it causes all sort of problems down the line). Just use all the tools in Part Design which is the standard in Engineering, it's the closest to Solidworks.
I'm just curious, why are you using 18.4 vs . 19 beta? I've been using the latest 0.19 builds and it's been fine but a little crashy, not sure if it's more crashy then 0.18.4. which do you suggest that I keep learning CAD on? I don't know fusion and at this point only know freecad and I'm really trying to stay committed to it because I don't want to relearn things as much as fusion changes. Freecad seems to stay consistent among versions. Am I getting the right impression?
Interesting. What I now do not understand is the purpose of Part Design. What is its function if it seems to just replicate Part?
If I understand correctly, it is possible to make much more complicated shapes faster in Part Design. It is also less resource-intensive.
Hi Joko, I tried to work with FreeCAD recently but none of the anti-aliasing settings work. The navigation cube is un-readable because of the transparency layers. I Googled the problem and can't find a solution. Is it because I have an old RADEON graphics card or is this a common problem. Thanks.
I believe you can insert some function from one WB to other WB by customize the toolsbars
I appreciate your videos very much. I hate to bother you but, is there any way you could do a video on the proper use of datums? I am using them but wind up with errors when I do and the error messages are not very helpful. Thank you for all you do for the community.
What kind of errors do you have?
@@JokoEngineeringhelp Hi Joko, I get two separate errors. The first is "Unhandled Base::Exception caught in GUIApplication::notify.
The error message is: Access violation" and the second is " AttachEngine3D::calculateAttachedPlacement:InertialCS: inertia tensor has axis of symmetry. Second and third axes of inertia are undefined." They started cropping up after I added a couple of datum planes to my sketch.
@@brucewilliams6292 Very interesting, would you be able to email me the parts that are throwing these errors? Email is in the description
Thank you very much Joke! I have a question for you:
-What version of FreeCad do you have installed?
-What O.S. do you have installed?
I am working in Windows 10 and I have some problems with Freecad 0.19.
Thank you very much in advance!
@@dim6892 Thank you very much. Today, I am configuring my laptop to be dual boot. I love Freecad and I will try it with Ubuntu or Debian. Thanks!
@@dim6892 Release 0.18 works fine in Windows. There is some minors bugs, but I understand that could be in others O.S.
Open source and open hardware are the present and the future of the humanity. The gap between commertial and open, are really smaller and many times, insignificant. Congratulations to FreeCad team and all the greate community!
How to install FCGear on 0.18 FreeCad?
I don't think you can anymore. Something changed at GitHub and that's why the addon manager doesn't work anymore.
Best practice is to start using FreeCad version 0.19 from the GitHub repository. I believe you need to download the Conda package for your OS from GitHub, extract it, and then look for FreeCad.exe in the bin folder to start FreeCad.
@@1951split Found a bug in AddonManager module, space is missing in AddonManager.py and module works, only FCGear can't be seen on list.
Replace re.findall('title="(Macro.*?)"', p) to re.findall('title="(Macro .*?)"', p)
@@TechnikZaba Ah... so it's a different problem then. I only know that the addon manager wasn 't showing the workbenches because of a change in the GitHub API a few weeks ago.
@@1951split After a million tears and sweat, I made it. It is painfully simple. After downloading the zip from GitHub, I extract myself to the Mod directory and that's it
At about 7:00 I think you say once a partdesign part is operated on outside the workbench you cannot get back, but take a look at: gitlab.com/russhensel/freecadtest/-/blob/master/partdesign_part_partdesign.FCStd which is documented at: gitlab.com/russhensel/freecadtest/-/wikis/Example-Moving-Between-Workbenches . I would be interested in what you think.
I think this is the same as what voytechj said 2 months ago?
I'm pretty sure FreeCAD has been improperly specified if even, this is why nothing works together as you would expect.
This is just a bunch of stuffs loosely tied together, some happen to work with each others , most of the time it will give you cryptic error messages or crash.
Since the part design workbench limits its models to using only it, while the other ones don't, my conclusion would be to make the parts workbench my main one, and avoid the parts design workbench like a plague!
That can be a really good approach for some workflows. The part design is appealing to many because it feels similar to most other platforms and can help prevent errors, but there is no right or wrong and every project is different.
Use Design456 workbench. It combines Draft, Part and other tools with many new tools.
So basically, if you want to edit something made in part design, make sure it's "finished"? This is a bit of a light-bulb moment for me.
Yes but if it is not 'finished' part and other workbenches can continue editing
Freecad was designed with all the forethought of a shart, which is a real shame!
So why bother having Part if you can do everything in Part design. It seems a shame to have dogs now that’s not linked in other words parts should be something that integrates the ability to add things in a faster or different way
I don't understand why the advice for beginners is to only use part design. It's worse than useless on it's own and it doesn;t play nice with all th other workbenches.
The reason i say WORSE than useless, is because after you spend a bunch of time modelling something in part design and you HAVE to use a draft or surface or part tool to achieve the shape you need next, then you are screwed and have to start over in part workbench.
It feels like the whole part design work bench is holding freecad back from being amazingly versatile.
There are several reasons why beginners should start with the Part Design workbench in FreeCAD:
1. Transferable Skills: Part Design's structured, parametric workflow is similar to other CAD platforms like SolidWorks, Alibre, and Onshape. Beginners transitioning to platforms such as these will find Part Design familiar and easier to adapt to. As a corollary, beginners with experience in other platforms such as these will also feel most at home with the parametric part design workflow.
2. Modern Approach: Unlike the older Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) approach used in the Part workbench, Part Design offers a more modern parametric modeling experience. Part design has been developed more recently and is made to work like contemporary CAD platforms.
3. Integration with Other Tools: Although Part Design doesn’t handle surfacing directly, it integrates well with the Part workbench. For surfacing needs, you can switch to the Part workbench to create surfaces, then return to Part Design to continue with parametric modeling. It also works with curves, for instance in extracting subshapes from a part design body.
If we are talking about draft as in drafted faces, part design does have its own draft tools. If we are talking about draft as in the tools within the draft workbench, I have also been able to utilize those tools with my part design body, just given that the body is then pulled into the CSG workflow, which should be of no consequence if the part was instead started in the part workbench.
Overall, since Part design uses the modern parametric workflow, and the part design bodies can be used within the CSG workflows offered by the Part workbench, a beginner would be learning the most modern workbench first, and be able to integrate the functions of the other workbenches as their skills grow. You’re absolutely right when you say Part Design can’t produce surfaces; however since the part design bodies can be used and integrated into the CSG workflow I would see that as not being a high consequence. Hope that helps, and best regards.
@@JokoEngineeringhelp THanks for the detailed reply. Mainly i just found that the parametric properties got lost or the chain got broken when switching between part design and other work benches.
My first project in freecad has been a thing that needs to be hydrodynamically optimised and contain some specific shapes with exposed sensors through the shell. Including equation driven curves defining the shell shape... Part design has been worse than useless. Every time I try to use part design the model stops being parametric -_-
@@SidekickElements That sounds like an awesome project. I can see how the need for parametric curves would create a harder workflow. I think that would be hard to start in part as well. Good luck with everything
This video really pinpoints what always has kept Freecad back from conquering the world. It is IDIOTIC from as a users, well anybody's really, perspective.
MEEEEOOWWWW?????
I am fighting had to understand F-CAD ...
I think your videos are great ... but ... I don't know ... I am too dumb!!
WTH are these WorkBenches ???
If you're unfamiliar with the workbenches, I would say only use part design and model from there.
Think of each workbench like a different set of tools. Part design is the set of tools you need for making the model.
Need special tools to make curvy shapes? Curved Shapes has tools for that. Need special tools to make gears? FC Gear has tools for that. Etc. Focus on getting good at part design and the other workbenches' tools and working between workbenches will start to feel more natural.
I cant stand this software.
Maybe i dont have enough brain cells but whatever.