Model Monday Live! 1 PM east coast - https://www.youtube.com/live/GDPnhsmn84A

Hello,

I am a fairly new freecad user trying to design a multi colored name badge for an upcoming conference. I designed a backplate in freecad and then added multiple parts, one for each color.

My goal is to get this printed in the WJP process offered by jlc3dp. For whatever reason however, when ever I export my design jlc3dp claims that there are gaps between my parts while I do not see any gaps (and also would not expect any) in my desgin.

I either suspect the export function from freecad or the import functions from jlc3dp. Does anyone have experience with that?

I am on FreeCad 1.1.4 on a 9950X3D with 96GB Ram (I saw on same of the other posts that this may be relevant)

Just a list what I already have tried:

Exporting via 3mf -> jlc3dp cannot read the file as it is created by Freecad. That is the case for the past year roughtly.

Exporting via steps with colors => jlc3dp claims this is an assembly as there are gaps between the components and wants to print teh individual parts on its own which make sno sense

Exporting via the 3D Printer 3mf Workflow macro => results in a 3mf jlc3dp can read and accepts but losses the color information

I also wrote with the service team from jlc3dp and they claim that there are gaps in the step file between the rainbow strips (actually between all components I have but as a minimal example lets focus on the rainbow ;) and the carrier depicted below.

Does anyone have an idea what is goind on here?

Please keep in mind, I am a total noob in regards to freecad, there is a good chance I just did a stupid somewhere so I am happy with any tipps as obvious they may be.

Cheers,

Hello, I enjoy 3D printing, I mostly use models I find in the internet but from time to time I need to design something on my own, so far I've been using TinkerCAD, which is simple and great but it seems sometimes it is too limited and I'd like to finally learn something 'serious'.

I've tried some random tutorials on YouTube but the quality (despite the upvotes) is often questionable, often people just say click this, select that without really explaining why they are taking specific steps, there also seems to be a lot of AI generated stuff, which is usually bad.

Could someone recommend me a channel, or some other source of knowledge accessible for free and dedicated to beginners, where someone tries to explain why they do what they do? Thanks in advance for any tips.

For today's afternoon exercise I wanted to complete the tutorial by MangoJelly (WarGloomy6636) where he builds a studded interlocking brick akin to the ones of a well known company, that is fully parametric and automatically driven by functions from a variable set. That makes it possible to resize the brick in fixed increments and creates a procedural pattern where the number of features will increase and decrease when entering a corresponding integer to the variable set.

In the tutorial I learned how to work with conditional expressions inside functions and how to link that to sketch geometry and 3D-operations. The most eye opening part for me was to enable different variants of a model by suppressing features in the model tree automatically via a function. In this example it's the hollow tubes inside the bricks that have to vanish when the brick gets smaller than 2×2 studs. That sparked so many new ideas in me for how to model stuff in my projects. Highly recommend to watch the tutorial!

https://wiki.freecad.org/Expressions#Conditional_expressions

In my urge to experiment I drove the concept further, added more details like the lettering on the studs that could be activated and deactivated to reduce recomputing load. Instead of the free integer selection for the raster size of the bricks, I opted for a list of fixed raster values that reflect the real-life production sizes of those bricks: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 8; 10; 12 and 16. Every value in the list can be called separately by it's corresponding index number, similar to indexed arrays in bash.

It would take to long for me to explain everything. It was quite exhausting with many hours of head-scratching, but it was worth it. Just wanted to share my joy. Instead I put the link to my file here, so if anyone wants to play around with it a little bit or wants to create a own procedural pattern in their project and needs some inspiration, have fun! Feel free to ask questions though...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BoXwm5FfUvOZ0XDY6dXP3N6lVUFhDWRp/view?usp=drive_link

I've been working on Talk to me, an addon that lets you operate FreeCAD by voice. It runs entirely offline on your own machine: no cloud, no account, nothing you say leaves your computer.

It doesn't generate geometry or code. It only runs FreeCAD's own commands, the ones you'd otherwise click, picked from the current context. Some examples that work:

- "Pad", "Make a fillet", "Isometric view", "Undo that"

- "Switch to Part Design, create a new body and then a new sketch"

- "Rectangle" → click the first corner → "50 by 30"

- "Pad it 12 mm", "XY plane", "Call it base plate"

- "Extrude this and remove it from the body" → finds Pocket from the command's description

The microphone listens continuously, but ordinary talk is ignored ("the circle is a bit too big"). When it's unsure, a small menu next to the mouse pointer asks. It also learns how the speech recognition hears *your* voice. English and German for now; language packs are plain data files.

Status: beta. Tested on Linux with the FreeCAD 1.1.4 AppImage, CPU only. Windows and macOS are untested, so reports from there would be great. Flatpak/Snap don't work yet.

Heads-up on size: the addon is a few MB, but speech recognition (faster-whisper) isn't: about 550 MB for the speech service plus a 75–500 MB model, roughly as much as FreeCAD itself. It's downloaded once from pypi.org and Hugging Face, then everything runs offline.

Install:

1. You need a system Python 3.10+ (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint: `sudo apt install python3-venv libportaudio2`)
2. Edit → Preferences → Addon Manager → Custom repositories: add `https://github.com/Palmstroemen/TalkToMe`, branch `main`, then install "Talk to me" in the Addon Manager and restart
3. Press the microphone button in the new toolbar. A dialog installs the speech service.

If you want to try it without anything happening, there's a dry-run option in the settings that only shows what it would do.

Most useful feedback: sentences it didn't understand, or (worse) ones that triggered the wrong command. Say "Training" to see exactly what the speech recognition heard.

GitHub: https://github.com/Palmstroemen/TalkToMe (issues and discussions welcome)

Mostly eyeballed the dimensions, so it's not 100% 1:1 but it was a great exercise to push what I already learned in CAD and taught me some new things I hadn't tried out yet (the additive pipe for the handle was certainly new for me!)

Hi, I'm new to freecad and i'm confused about how tree view works.

I'm loading an stp file and it shows all parts

But when it's fully loaded all the parts disappear

I've tried looking in Preferences but can't see anything.

Some of you tried PrintView3D for viewing .FCStd files last week. Based on a request here it now also opens STEP files (.step / .stp):

- Shown in 3D through your installed FreeCAD, converted hidden in the background and cached, so reopening is instant

- Assembly parts are listed by name and can be hidden

- Without FreeCAD you still see the file's details: STEP version (AP203/214/242), CAD program, author and date

- Send to slicer: the STEP file itself to OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Bambu Studio, or an STL of the visible parts to other slicers

- It also opens STEP and FreeCAD files from inside a ZIP

Windows, Linux and a macOS beta. Free, MIT licence, offline.

https://github.com/sevagjb/PrintView3D

If you have STEP files from different CAD programs that don't look right, I'd love to hear about it.

I saw a hint of "Graphviz"and thought.. 'maybe it would help." So I went chasing a recent windows version..

As sort of expected.

Another "rabbit hole" that is either NOT up- to-date or shouldn't be lurking. I dowloaded .. tried to install it... found little to no "helpful" documentation to even get it to even start. Seems to be the modus operandi too often!

Sigh.

Anyone using it (currently) in a Windows environment; with any success and or helpful use? Right now... I've "put it down."

Sigh... another unamazing "maze."

I look forward to laughter/help/ or headshaking.

just demo :)

Wanted to spend the nice morning of this Sunday to practice gordon surface from Curves workbench and thickening the surface.

Lesson learned:

1. If it is easier to build a second gordon surface, don't bother with the 3D offset tool. But there are instances where 3D offset (and associated tricks) are worth pursuing.

2. Pulling in a b-spline as an external geometry for ribs slows down my pc. I wish someday b-spline will be a little less computation demanding. Until then, arcs and lines will guide my path.

I was sick of trying to learn a new interface so I've been working make it more comfortable for me. looks and feels like solid works, 100% freecad. so far it behaves just like solidworks when sketching and using feature tool, when sketching your lines even snap to existing edges and vertexs. my goal is to have this be a feature for feature add on to free cad for people like me who love solidworks but hate paying for software that runs entirely on their own machines. phase two of this project will be local ai integration for simulation setup and analysis. THIS IS A ADD-ON NOT A MODIFIED VERSION OF FREECAD

edit: To clear a few things up and wrap this up: stating that I was 'sick of learning a new interface' wasn’t a vent or a complaint against FreeCAD. it was simply the personal motivation and context for why I decided to build the tool. There is a huge world of difference between complaining on a forum and actually sitting down to write code and share a free solution.

As for the idea that commercial CAD users are bringing displaced corporate anger or lacking collaboration skills: building a free, open-source add-on and giving it to the community is the open-source ethos in action. Open source has always thrived on decentralized, independent passion projects where people solve their own workflow problems.

Whether someone started in SolidWorks, CATIA, or FreeCAD from day one, bringing familiar workflows and making the software more accessible to others helps grow the ecosystem, rather than gatekeeping what 'proper' motivation looks like.

I built this because it helps me (and hopefully others who feel the same way), and it's out there for free. Appreciate the discussion, but let's leave it at that.

edit 2: a alpha will be coming soon!

edit 3: I'm finding a lot of negativity towards this project, and well I don't care. for those who some here with hate, cry about I really could care less it won't stop me from working on my project.

I tried to do something simple without lessons and this is what happened

Mitcad is brand-spanking new, and it is more Fusion-like than FreeCAD and can read and process FreeCAD files and give you a full timeline. I invite anyone to try it out.

https://github.com/mitcad/Mitcad/releases/tag/v0.28.0

That link goes to what is currently the latest version. If you read this more than 12 hours after I posted there will probably be a newer version. The software can auto-update. Nice.

Hi all,

As a long time SW user, I’m building (with Claude Opus 5.5) FreeSolid: a SolidWorks-like interface (feature tree, rollback bar, ribbon) on top of FreeCAD’s engine. It covers sketches, extrude / cut, fillets, shell, loft, sweep, surfaces, equations and basic assemblies. Files stay standard .FCStd.

It’s free, open source, and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. It’s still an early prototype, so I’d love to hear what would stop you from using it for real work.

https://github.com/Emilien-Etadam/Freesolid

Thanks.

Our built-in render engine for FreeCAD has been updated! This update includes several UI improvements as well as render and performance enhancements. You don't need anything extra to use the application—simply drop it into your FreeCAD macros folder. The render engine is self-contained. Best regards to everyone, and enjoy!

https://github.com/sedatkrn/FC_YBTRayTracer/releases/tag/v1.6.1

I created this in the Part Design workbench, and would like to flatten it so I can print out a template to use to cut it out from flat stock (e.g. plywood). Is this possible? What's the best way to do this? I'm a fairly novice FreeCAD user.

Before I took the screenshots it was even worse but it stopped on its own without any input of mine. Strange.