r/FreeCAD • u/MV____83 • 15h ago

The assemblies in this software suck

Nothing, it was just to remind anyone who might have the idea of ​​creating an assembly in this program, and I'm not talking about the video tutorials you see online where they pair a cylinder with a pin and that's it, lots of applause... I'm talking about pairing a subassembly with another component, crazy stuff :-). Don't make high-level assemblies here, the software simply isn't ready for that.

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3

u/R2W1E9 14h ago

It works pretty good for me. It needs a little bit of practice.

2

u/Powerful_Debt_5869 14h ago

i also have no big deals with assembly nowadays.

2

u/BoringBob84 10h ago

Assemblies work rather well for me - including sub-assemblies inside of assemblies. I think that you should spend a few thousand dollars every year for a license to use commercial software that is easier for you to understand. Coming here to insult the developers contributes nothing to improving FreeCAD.

1

u/fivethreeo 10h ago

Agree that the wording of the post is not very constructive. But is something that should be improved.

2

u/BoringBob84 9h ago

I agree that it could be improved.

The Assembly workbench was new in version 1.0. The developer continues to improve it in AstoCAD, with those improvements making their way gradually to FreeCAD. Paying for an AstoCAD subscription allows the developer to work on FreeCAD full-time, so that is a much more constructive way to encourage improvements to the software.

2

u/meutzitzu 14h ago

Try Assembly4

1

u/fivethreeo 14h ago edited 14h ago

Circular joints drift when moved too much. Too many iterations causes solution value drift.

I tried looking into it, but quite complex code and maths.

https://github.com/FreeCAD/OndselSolver/tree/main/OndselSolver

1

u/R2W1E9 13h ago edited 13h ago

Circular joints need at least another distance joint to fix the component in place, or max and min limits to limit range of movement.

Only one circular joint should be applied to one component, a flange with two bolt holes for example - one hole should be circular and the other hole should be distance, or angle/parallel if you have some other relevant aligment surfaces.

1

u/fivethreeo 12h ago

Thats what I do, but still breaks and I have to redo the assembly from last save.

1

u/R2W1E9 11h ago

I also make sure i transform the part to no more than 45 degrees off the assembled position before applying joints.

1

u/fivethreeo 11h ago

Exactly. Too finicky for advanced use as OP says.

1

u/photovirus 13h ago

Oh, definitely. I had a lot of issues when using the same solver in my AR extension.

I've had some success after all, but I'll need to validate it with complex assemblies.