The only goal of this post is to keep a more-or-less updated list of good resources for learning FreeCAD. I'm sure that -most of- you redditors have passed the ritual of searching through google and youtube looking for FreeCAD tutorials, either as a comprehensive introduction for beginners, or as tutorials on certain workbenches and workflows. And you'll probably have a bookmarked list with those that worked best for you.
For me, it's been a couple years since I started using and learning FreeCAD, sparsely in the begining, then progressively more and more (and hopefully better too). But I haven't joined the subreddit until recently. Judging by the amount of both old timers and newcomers that post looking for help (myself included), I thought it would be a good idea to have a list, a compilation of useful guides, docs and tutorials all together in one place, a quick reference for those looking for help.
So just tell me in the comments what you'd like be added to the list, and I'll update it. Or if you think the list should have a different structure. I'm totally open to it, I just want to have the best format for it to be useful for the community. Just a quick disclaimer: I don't intend to -and literally can't- review all the provided references, so let's try to have a little criteria when proposing already covered topics, unless -obviously- they can improve on the existing one.
Before the list, a reminder: FreeCAD's wiki is the main documentation anyone should first look up. The forum is another precious repository of accumulated problems and solutions, as well as interesting discussions and insight on many topics that you, FreeCAD user, will undoubtedly face at some moment.
FreeCAD wiki tutorials
You have them in this link: https://wiki.freecad.org/Tutorials. Also, you can check just the list of all tutorials, without any other context. They might not be the most didactic, but they provide a good base, and cover some complicated aspects that might be harder to explain in a video. These are some examples covering different workbenches:
Arch tutorial (The old Arch and BIM workbenches are unified under BIM workbench as of v1.0.0)
FreeCAD for makers is as new a discovery for me as for many of you. This book published by the members of HackSpace magazine in 2022 will start at complete beginner level, then take you through sketches, curves, assemblies, surfaces, projections, circuit design, meshes, sheet metal, pipes and give you a heads up on how to follow up (animation, architecture, etc.). Enjoy it!
The amazing @MangoJellySolutions youtube channel. This man doesn't stop, he already has a bunch of videos for v1.0.0!
@ObijuanCube has a couple dated, but in many aspects still valid FreeCAD courses in Spanish. I know they've been a life saver for me, and would have probably never gotten seriously into FreeCAD if it wasn't for him. These belong to a time when the amount of resources available for those interested was much, much scarcer, so Juan, thank you for your good work!
@mwganson has a very rich library of close to a hundred videos, covering an ample range of examples and practical uses of many of FreeCAD's tools. His videos are focused and quite in depth, and also cover things such as modifying imported mesh files (both .stl and .step), which is not that common to find. So this might be ultra helpful for those of you 3D printing.
@Adventuresincreation is another channel I didn't know, with a wide collection of vidoes and still going hard as of v1.0.0.
@JokoEngineeringhelp, unlike most channels here, is not dedicated to FreeCAD, but to CAD in general and many different tools for it. However, he does have a couple in depth videos, and also takes a look into more-or-less complex assemblies and exploded views.
@CADCAMLessons has a HUGE collection of short and very specific videos, especially appropriate for those that enjoy their lessons to be well segmented.
Stolz3D is for the German speaking public! This channel that mostly focuses on FreeCAD has material starting in v0.18 and all the way til v1.0.0 at the time of writing.
Computerized Engineering has an ongoing series on FreeCAD 1.0. While he has videos designed as "Beginner tutorial", these are not that well suited for complete beginners. Instead, his videos show the process of designs that involve more advanced concepts.
Rafael 3D is a relatively small channel in Spanish, but with lots of videos covering both particular examples and a more structured course, which is still ongoing. He also has material on LibreCAD.
DigiKey has a quite recent 10 part course on FreeCAD targeted for 3D printing, covering the following sections: introduction, sketches, shape-binder/expressions/spreadsheets, heat set inserts, patterns and boolean operations, revolutions/pipes/lofts, sweeps with guided curves, curved surfaces, assembly, and the FEM workbench.
Limited resources (kind of partial, or not as complete resources at the time of writing, but might be worth keeping track of)
Darn I’ve tried FreeCAD over several years and every time it was a waste of time. But suddenly now version one comes out and it’s beautiful!!
And stable!!!
I’m cancelling my Solidworks maker subscription.
With Solidworks, you sit around waiting forever for it to load, they update the software constantly so when you want to use it, it’s not ready to be used, and they put you in a stupid online system that is broken half the time and it has features that you can’t possibly understand as they designed it for people in aerospace engineering.
This is part of the open source PUMA microscope project. The CNC stage is still in the early development phase so you won't find it on the GitHub just yet.
I have designed a window in Freecad that was designed off the center point of the sketch. It had 7 Grids wide and 7 Grids tall. I found out that this made the window too tall and reduced it to 5 Grids vertically. Trouble is now the sketch is not centered and the height dimension has been changed. If I try to center this using symmetry it skews messes up the dependent constraints that are located off the primary exterior shape. Is there a way to select all items in a sketch and have it recenter while keeping the dependent constraints locked relatively to the outside shape?
I tried the standard CAD procedure of one File one component in my latest project.
Then in the Assembly File, Every object is Linked in the tree view.
Know I wanted to share the project with my friends, but it says reference lost.
I know there is the one File multi Body approach, sharing is easy through this Methode.
Is there something like a Pack and go option, like in solidworks that saves the file in a way that a different computer can open the file without any problem ?
I'm new to FreeCAD so sorry if this is a simple question (haven't made anything yet) but I couldn't find a good answer / make this work on my own yet.
Basically I'm trying to add threading to the inside of these holes but I can't even fill them (with "Pad"?) to use the "Hole" tool to add them in because I get "Cannot use selected object. Selected object must belong to the active body, Consider using a ShapeBinder or a BaseFeature to reference external geometry in a body." error.
Can anyone help me with this?
The models are available here in case you want to see them yourself:
I'm still pretty new to freecad and am still learning how to do things. I am now adding some simple decorations to a project that I'm making (with the goal of 3d printing). For the current stage, I am putting a meteor and a couple stars on the side of a cylinder. I've basically got it via the curves work bench. The issue is that I'd like to have the meteor have have a an extruded core, then a gap, then extruded fire pattern.
With a regular sketch, this would be trivial. You have the sketch that looks like the below, then you select parts of it to pad (the part with the red xs is the part I don't want to pad):
However, apparently curve work bench sketches don't interact with the part work benches pad tool, and you have to pad them by setting properties of the sketch on surface? And when I do that, it doesn't do what I want, instead extruding the whole shape
(I'm not sure why it mirrored direction either, but I don't really care - I've already adjusted for that.) Any Ideas? I also tried removing the inner most circle, in the hopes that the pad thing would leave a hole, and I could just add a cylinder back in the middle with a separate sketch, but no luck.
EDIT: When carbon copying the sketch onto another portion of the cylinder without the inner circle in the sketch, the pad process did leave a hole - but only in the new places. The original location has the hole filled in. If I can figure that out (any ideas?), I'm currently going back to the plan of "leave a hole and fill it with another sketch on surface later" - but if anyone has a better idea, I'd love to hear it. Based on how long it takes for the project to update after I modify it, I have to guess that I'm not doing things in the freecad way.
I am having a lot of trouble finding which freecad tutorials fit best for beginners who know absolutely nothing about the programme. I started using ArcSite first, the interface is more friendly and easier to understand but I didn't want to pay the premium so I'm looking at other programmes.
I have been having some issues with importing my dxf files from ArcSite over to Freecad.. but I also realized that my mastery of the software is quite poor.
Can anyone recommend any tutorials for Freecad that can explain the software to me like I'm 5?
New to Freecad. I’m familiar with parametric modeling, but I’d like to find resources for CNC toolpaths for wood window components. YouTube tutorials I’ve found are 2D cuts, but I need to understand more advanced 3D cuts - designing the 3D toolpath as well as CNC setup. I’d like to also find G-code tutorials.
Hi everyone,
I’m trying to arrange multiple keyboard switch holder bodies into a strip in FreeCAD and connect them smoothly. Here's what I’ve done so far:
I’ve modeled a switch holder body in PartDesign.
I used Draft → Clone to make three copies and positioned them in a line.
I turned the clones into solids with Part → Create Simple Copy.
I fused them into one solid using Part → Boolean → Union.
Now I want to connect these bodies with a smooth transition, but when I try to use Part → Loft between the faces, I get the error:
"At least two vertices, edges, wires, or faces are required".
My Question:
How can I connect these bodies into a smooth strip? Is lofting the right approach, or is there a better method to achieve a continuous, 3d printable solid?
I'm following a tutorial fcb lounge-2 m x 2 m room. I wrote down every move. "click means push and release" for constraint "push and release shift"
my biggest issue was that I had to use end line snap and I could not get the "y" axis dialog to stay active so that I could tab tab to enter the length then press enter and hope for the best.
I obviously did not write all of the directions just for that step here.
I feel I have a win of the day here. btw I did the construction square and offset just fine.
I keep trying freeCAD every once in a while because I want to switch, but keep finding that there are many frustrations.
I feel like my main issue is that I don't know how to interate on my designs.
How do you all do that? Are there good tutorials for that?
For me, I'm used to Fusion. I know I shouldn't expect them to work the same, but at its core my workflow there is:
Create a rough design. Usually 1 to 3 sketches.
Any dimensions are parameters set to an approximate value. The plan is to change them all later. I start knowing my measurements are "wrong" and the whole project needs to work even if these numbers change later - because they will.
Create rough object(s) from those sketches as proof of concept.
Iterate on the concept as needed (example: maybe adding more holes or adjusting where parts attached, etc)
Then measure everything down to an exact figure and update the parameters, which updates all the sketches/objects
Repair any timeline issues.
Fillets or other final touches
Done.
....ok actually that one measurement was wrong, so adjust, re-save. Done for real now.
Is there a workflow similar to this in FreeCAD where you start out making everything parametric, and get the whole way to a proof of concept knowing that you'll be making final adjustments later?
Or is this maybe one of those "that's not how FreeCAD works situations?
I cant extrude my sketch in the part designer. I get the error message: "wire is not closed.". However I used the new constraint coincident tool and it is still not working.
i'm really struggling to do something that i think is super simple, and can't find any documentation to follow on how to do it. I'm just trying to create a flat surface that i can punch some holes into and attach some posts. I did something like this like 4 years ago in FreeCAD, but now i cannot for the life of me recall how to do it.
Very simple object (I think). Sketch a slot 10mm between centers, 0 degrees, 2.5mm radius.
Pad 3mm with -10 degree angle.
This object as described passed the geometry check.
Now in the Part Design workbench use Thickness with a thickness value of 0.5mm and unselect inside thickness. This will not work. You have to change the 'join type' from 'arc' to 'intersection', then it works, however you get the shape above which has geometry faults a-plenty.
Any thoughts on how to make this shape without geometry problems? If I extrude a rectangle with an angle that's great, but I can't get rounded ends in a proper way (that I have found) because of the angles.
In this model, I tried to use the Fillet tool in PartDesign which simply would not work. I thought to try applying the fillets using Part WB on a simple copy, which worked great! So I wondered if I could get it to work on the Body from PartDesign. Yes, it did.
Crazy thing is... I went back to PartDesign to recreate the problem from yesterday for this post, and now it's working fine in PartDesign. I have no idea what to think about this.
What's different today? Well, I installed the Telemetry addon which required additional supporting application installs. And I installed the Curves WB Addon. I don't know if that's relevant or just a coincidence.
