FreeCAD Beginner Tutorial : Part Design
In this tutorial is explained how to use the part design workbench of FreeCAD to create a sketch. After that a 3d model is extruded from the sketch. You can read this article and also follow along the video tutorial.
The sketch is created from the right ortho plane, this means we are looking onto the right side of the model.
For the sketch the polyline tool is used, which can also create arcs when pressing the M key (3 times), to change the line type.
To the center of the arc, a circle is sketched for adding a hole to the mesh later on.
After that we use constraints for the radius of the arc and also for a circle, and then lentgh constraints for the vertical and horizontal lines.
When the sketch is fully constrained it can be closed. Then a pad is created and the length of this defnes the extrusion depth for the model.
The next step is to cut out a part from the center of the mesh, but the rectangle for cutting will be on a plane on the front side of the model. To do this we can create a so called datum plane with the face at the front side selected:
For this datum plane again a sketch can be created, that defines the rectangle shape that we want to use for cutting into the mesh:
The sketch is quite simple, just a rectangle that is centred to the Z-axis by using a symmetry constraint. For this draw a rectangle, then select the two upper points, after that the Z-axis and then add the symmetry constraint:
Then the sketch can again be closed and used to cut into the mesh. For this, selected the sketch and choose Create Pocket:
After that increase the length of the pocket, to cut deeper into the model.
And that’s it, the model is created. If you want to hide the datum plane or other parts select it and press the spacebar.
