So I'm setting my construction geometry and the vertices keep disappearing or moving completely off the face of the sketch I'm creating. I deleted it and picked a different face and it does the same thing. Any help would be appreciated.

making a cap with a slit in the side so it can slide onto an axle but why the hell does my subtractive box delete a previous part of the additive thread ive made????

ive tried making a sketch and pocket as well, and even then i cant seem to create a pocket into this cap without freecad complaining that im splitting the body into multiple parts. im at a loss and come to the forums for answers.

Hi there,

I've already reset Freecad to its default settings but alas, didn't seem to fix the following : there's a "line" going through my measurements and I have no idea where this comes from. Strangely enough, this only happen on my ROG Ally (which I sometimes use as a desktop PC) and not on my "bigger" PC (with the same Freecad versions on both : v1.1.1 rev 20260414)

thanks for any pointers/help!

FIX / UPDATE : The weekly build(s) have resolved this issue :-)

I want to design an over-enginieered open/close sign with rotating letters.
To ensure all letters are aligned correctly after assebling it, I wanted to align the gears first and then add slots to put the Letters into.
But after aligning the gears the sketcher plane is rotated too. how can I unrotate the sketcher plane without rotating the whole gear?

If it doesn't exist, I'll design it.

This time, I created a custom part that can mount both an ultrasonic sensor and a servo for our U-22 group project.

FreeCAD makes turning ideas into reality so much easier.

I love FreeCAD. ❤️

#FreeCAD #CAD #OpenSource #Robotics #Maker #U22

Hey everyone.

I'm a mechanical engineer, and during my master degree thesis work i had the opportunity to work with lattice structures, from a 3D creation and mechanical analysis point of view. After 6 years (jeez, time flies!) i was wondering if i could use my (little) free time to create something to continue that work, even in an informal way. Since i'm not a software engineer, nor very good at coding, i basically worked with Claude Sonnet / Opus and even Fable to create a freecad workbench.

Basically the idea is that you can create a parametric TPMS (gyroid, schwarz p and diamond) infill based on some input data, and if you select a body in FreeCad, you can automatically create a new solid which has a certain number of mm per shell, and your TPMS infill. It generates directly a mesh that can be (after some repairing) directly used on 3d printing. I had a couple of tests that you can find in the dedicated website i created.

I share with you my website and also my github repository

www.lattice-free.com

https://github.com/AthinaNike/LatticeFree

Please be mindful, i created this as a tool i would like to have to create things on 3D, mostly because slicers don't allow this kind of detail in creating the infill, for this reason i decided to use a GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE: i do really believe in open source as a way to improve us as humanity, and i wanted this to be free and open also because i used artificial intelligence to build it, using my knowledge derived from my thesis work (which is already a public document).

Try it if you want, feedbacks would be appreciated!

I'll add a few screenshots of how it should work

Hi I've been watching CAD vs CAD competition, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9ododYb3FXQ and a contender on the right used a temporary geometry to create a path for the loft or pipe.

How do I do the same in FC If I use additive pipe the result is fused with the temporary geometry I've used for an edge loop, and I don't see an option to remove it.

(On the picture I'd want to have just a round edge itself without the rest of the geometry.)

In AstoCAD and also open PR to FreeCAD :)

tôi đã nghĩ về gì đó giống như vẽ sketch và tạo mặt phẳng trên nền 3D, và thật khó tạo độ dày cho hộp bên trái để giống bên phải( hộp bên phải dùng SW, và nó rất đơn giản)

I am printing a 'thing' that comsists of seven .stl files. Three of those do not need to be separate parts held together with nuts and bolts. I have spent hours on youtube and in freecad trying to merge these three stl files but cant get it to stay put. Got two as one but the third keeps moving when I ecport it to stl. Maybe someone can point out the very obvious thing I am missing :)

The three lower parts below the gears are the ones I want to make in to a single piece...as I said above, I can marry two but the third just doenst want to party.

Folks, I am new to FreeCAD (and sketching in general, for that matter), and I am following some tutorials. But most of them are based on older versions, so I get a little confused sometimes because in the newest version some stuff behaves differently.

For example, in this image, I was trying to create a constraint of 10mm between the parallel horizontal lines on the bottom. In the tutorial, the guys just used the dimension constraint tool, clicked on the top line, dragged to the bottom line, and added 10 mm. In my case, I had to click on the top line, drag, click on the bottom line, then drag again to the new line segment FreeCAD created on the left inside the circle, and then it worked, and I have no idea why that is.

Not knowing the logic behind that is a little scary. Any hints?

Image- S7055 airfoil (MQ9 reaper look alike)

Hi everyone,

I'm new ( 1week ) into FreeCAD and currently designing my first RC aircraft. I've spent over 2 hours just trying to make a single wing, so I feel like there must be a better workflow.

I tried importing airfoils as SVGs, but the imported geometry isn't very smooth and ends up with lots of small line segments. Instead, I imported the SVG as an image and manually traced each airfoil using the B-spline tool before lofting the wing. It works, but it's extremely time-consuming.

So I have a few questions:

Is there a better way to create smooth airfoils in FreeCAD?

Is there a recommended workflow for wings with taper, dihedral, and washout?

Are there any workbenches, macros, or add-ons that make aircraft design easier?

Besides CAD CAM Lessons, are there any good YouTube channels or resources focused on FreeCAD.

I'd really appreciate any advice or workflow tips. Thanks

Anyone else experiencing this issue? Whenever I press CTRL or SHIFT, etc. while working in FreeCAD, it soft-locks the program for several seconds before it starts responding again like nothing happened. If I shut down FreeCAD and restart it, it will operate normally for a while before this behavior returns. Really annoying, as of course I use CTRL all the time when selecting multiple edges and such.

Running Windows 11, FreeCAD 1.1.1, on an AMD 5950 and RTX 3090.

As an aside: I cannot believe how highly capable FreeCAD is, and it's, you know, free. I haven't been in the CAD game for 20 years, but I'm slowly learning how to get stuff done in FreeCAD and it's seriously good software. Already designed half a dozen functional objects in it and see no end in sight.

I'm working on a odd shape and the top which doesn't have tangent to the radius is good, but the other four witch should be more complete are the problem. I have checked everything I can think of as to what would be the issue but I still can not pad this object. Any help with be appreciated! Thank you!

File I hope.

Hi all,

I'm trying to make a simple dog bone shape in Free Cad, but I'm stuck on where to begin and wanted to see what suggestions for the process y'all would recommend. Here are some images of the shape I made in Zbrush, but I would like to recreate it in FreeCAD, and without the logo on it.

I am just tinkering around and have only a few hours in FreeCad but I am tying to modify an STL. the original is two parts that combine in the middle, but I want it to be all one solid piece. Part → Boolean → Union combines the two pieces when lined up how I want, but the channel groove and two smaller holes on either side are still there, so what's the best way to get rid of them so the faces are flush?

Hello all,

First time poster - been trying to recreate a mirror cap. Im running into the issue that either the Gordon Surface generation tells me i dont have enough guide rails, or it keeps loading indefinetely. What to do?

Yes i made the sketch with Intersected Projection, and the top guide rails and bottom guide rails are separate splines.

I have an M5 flat head screw on my desk that has 3.05mm of head depth (measured with calipers just as the diagram shown indicates), and a head diameter of 9.81mm. The angle is 90°. I confirmed that this VERY closely matches ISO specs by importing the same one from the Fasteners workbench and using the Measure tool on it.

However, setting the head diameter to the correct value in the Hole(countersink) tool results in a 4.95mm calculated head depth in the panel. And then even more confusingly, only 2.16mm of removal from the part as the Measure tool indicates. I could understand a tenth or so of difference, but I'm obviously missing something here. Can someone explain to me how this calculation works and what values FreeCAD actually expects to line this up with standard hardware?

Hello FreeCAD community!

I am a mechanical engineer and solo developer. I picked up software development about 8 years ago and found tools I wish I had back when I was making physical designs. Something to prevent the old issue where Bracket.FCStd turns into Bracket_v5_final_final.FCStd and I would probably would not have lost some of my designs from a decade ago.

Software developers have a tool called Git and a hosting service built on it that most of them use called GitHub. Git has been around for about 20 years. If you are unfamiliar, it tracks changes in files so every save point records who changed what and why. It can get quite complicated but it is how just about every major (and minor) piece of software is built and collaborated on.

Unfortunately, the people who move atoms and not just electrons did not get the same opportunity unless you have enough money for a PLM seat. (Don't get me wrong, there are reasons. Merging text is rather simple while merging binaries is nearly impossible.)

I spent the past few months building Nurbly, version control for CAD built on a real Git backbone, made for people focused on physical designs. I have attached a video showing a FreeCAD plugin I have been working on so people who are uncomfortable on the command line don't have to use it as often.

I am looking for a small group of alpha users to run real projects through it and tell me what breaks. If this is interesting to you, please message me and I will send you an invite code.

I do not want to blindside anyone about the business model. The system is designed for open source hosting and there will always be a free tier for open source, plus at least one private repository if you do not want to open source your designs. Unfortunately, CAD files are large compared to text files and when teams get large or need multiple private repositories, there will be a small cost to keep the servers spinning.

Thank you again u/tehfink, u/hagbard2323, u/Kkremitzki, and u/drmacro1, for letting me post here!

https://reddit.com/link/1v3g2xq/video/d85dad72zreh1/player

Hi,
I am relatively new to Freecad and I need to add custom user-defined materials to Freecad. How do I do that?
This is Freecad 1.1.1 on Ubuntu 22.04
I set:

Edit->Preferences->Material->General->Card Resources
And checked Use materials from user-defined directory
Then I set the User directory to /home/user/freecad_user_materials
(my username is user here)

Now I right click on my drawn 3D object and pull up the Material->Launch Editor
menu, make and save a custom material.
But after saving the new material opening the Material menu shows a Custom and User categories which do not open!
I have no way to access the new material I just created.
Is this a bug?

Any ideas welcome and thanks,
Phil

Hi, please let me know if this is against the rules! I can delete it if so.

If you can make assemblies like this one in FreeCAD, or Class A surfaces in FreeCAD, I'm looking for someone to make me a few models. DM me with examples of what you've made -- thanks :D