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So for those of you who have been sort of
in a make a space and kind of eyeing the
3-D printer, but don't
really know what to do with it, it would
kind of like to try to figure out but
have no idea where to start.
This is the kind of talk for you.
The speaker is a model railway
enthusiast, but he also plays with the
big heritage trains.
He's a physicist, and he described
himself as a standard nerd.
So I guess that's something we can all
agree on that we all know he spent
some time getting to know free CAD, and
we'll let us know about the ins and outs
and what to do and what not to do.
Yes, please go ahead.
Thank you.
So thank you for the nice introduction.
I would like to show you just my
the summary of my first few
months with free cut, and I'm
by no way an expert.
So please be
patient when I'm telling
stuff which you think is completely
wrong.
It might be completely wrong.
What three cuts so free cut is
open source.
It's a cut program.
It can do parametric modeling.
It can do basically everything.
So there are finite elements, simulations
and shipbuilding modules
and everything. So this is a very,
very powerful program
of which I just touch very, very
little off the surface.
But this very little of the surface is
sufficient to do what I need
to do for a model railway stuff.
So we'll do a workshop
after this talk.
So where we I answer questions
and of course, we can do construction
in free cab together.
And so just let's
dove into talk.
So what do I do with the
free cut software I'm?
Basically constructing stuff for my model
railway.
There are some larger structures, so
there's the module Basemark, which is
what?
Or something?
What's medium density fiber board
to hold the
tracks? And I'm also doing some
stuff for 3D 3D printing to
print these little locomotives,
for example.
They are modeled after this
one is modeled after a Portuguese
prototype, but I also do some German
product modeling,
and the manufacturing
is laser cutting for the baseboards
and 3D printing for the
model stuff.
My gut experience
is very little, so in 1992,
I did a school internship
for two weeks and I had some contact with
autocrats back in the
good old days with floppy disks.
And
yeah, it already had a graphic tablet
and a big monitor.
But I think it was everything black and
white as it was in the 90s.
Then in the
early 90s, we had this auto sketch,
which was a very rudimentary cup thingy
which ran on the PC.
And then later on, I did some stuff
in Inkscape and Tinker Cut.
And as I ran
into limits with what ink and tinker
cuts can do, I started
using free card a couple of months ago.
So two caveats.
So first, I'm not a really expert
in cat. And second, I'm very old
and might not be up to date on how
to use modern software.
So why did I choose free cuts,
basically all this think I cut Fusion
360 and everything
cloud based, web based is
quite nice, but you don't
have full access to your data.
So if you save something,
it's in the cloud. And if
fusion decides you
don't have any access to it anymore, then
it's gone.
So I don't have any control about my
data.
My second point is Fusion 360
used to have a free model, and then
it was a free model if you register
every year and then
it turned into a subscription based
model.
And now I think you have to pay something
like 200 something euros per year
to use Fusion 360.
And if I have to pay
200 300 euros
for just printing one
model engine per year, I can also
buy a model engine per year or something
like that. So this is
also kind of no goal.
Step two Open source
cut systems, which are very easy
to find. So one is open cut,
which is more programing
like
this looked a bit scary.
And even for somebody
who's doing his slides with taste,
I think I really like
to do clicky stuff, so I
choose to use free cut.
Free cat is also
free, open source, everything, and
yeah, you can do programing somehow,
but most of you use that infection is
by mouse.
OK. To get free cat free card
talk has the latest
built as binary as you can
also get it the source code
there and just
install it for all major
operating systems.
We can run it on Linux, Mac and Windows,
and probably something else as well.
I've been running it on Mac and Windows,
and
so far no difference in stability
and everything. So it's it's really
working well.
That's one
thing you need to take care.
So I first installed free cut 0.18,
which was half a year ago or so.
And then immediately
after I installed it, 0.19
appeared and I installed zero, about 19
as well.
And at least on Windows, I had two
versions in parallel, so it didn't remove
the old version. You had two versions in
parallel and it
ended up I ended up in, sometimes
using eighteen, sometimes using nineteen.
And then sometimes
my files didn't work in one
version without any
apparent reason until I figured out, Oh,
this is still on the PC, and
I still had a problem with this
old version.
So when you installed the newer version
and you don't need the old version
for anything, just
make sure that you clean it up.
OK, where to learn freak out, so freak
out when when you first look at it, it's
complicated and huge and
it's very overwhelming.
And it also is not the
most intuitive software,
which is because it's a cat program.
Cat programs are not really intuitive.
So there's the free documentation
and also a spelling error,
which I haven't seen, even
I looked at it five times.
So the free card documentation
wiki free card all getting started,
it's pretty good.
It's huge.
And you mostly have the problem.
You don't know where to start.
What I really liked was flower
flow is Connor.
It's a guy called Florian
on YouTube.
He's doing really good tutorials in
German for version 18,
version 19 and
also some other cat programs.
He's a professional cat instructor
and basically
everything I learned.
I started learning
on this channel and then worked from that
on.
If you prefer English, there's the Free
Cat Academy on YouTube,
where some of these tutorials from flowy
and a lot of other tutorials are on it,
easy to remember all but
the slides are in the top description.
So and you can click on that link in the
PDF.
And of course, your friendly
folks off shoulder might have a
training on free cat.
So for example, this guy here
in Australia is a colleague of mine
is doing free cats
trainings at the folks are fully
fit in yet January and
February.
And you might have in your local
fog socially, at least in Germany,
some of these trainings available as
well.
OK.
So let's have a look at the cut itself,
so this is what it looks like when you
start, it's the first time trying
to move there, so.
You start up with this screen,
I already loaded a couple of files
and you have tons of buttons
and you don't know what
to do with it, so the first thing you
notice is you
usually start in this start
workbench.
Where you can't really do
a lot of stuff.
I'm.
Workbenches are one
of the basic concepts
for free cuts, so workbenches
are basically
like like a real band workbench.
It's a sorting of tools,
so you have a specific
task to do and you do that
in in your workbench.
But my stuff, I use the part design
workbench, department bench, the mesh
design workbench and the tech drawer
workbench.
You see, there are a lot of others,
there's funded elements, there's image,
there's points and ray tracing and so on.
I have no idea what they're doing so
far. I haven't used them.
The first thing you will do.
With any
part, your design is you start with a
sketch.
Sketches are the basic
building blocks, they are a 2D sketch,
and from these 2D sketch, you
can get this 2D sketch up.
Padding up means you just add
depth to the sketch
and then you can create
Boolean operations and
modifications of
that basic shape.
So first you do a 2D shape, then you turn
it 3D and then you have something
like a sheet
metal part or sheet.
What part? And then you can drill holes
and transfer edges and do
stuff like that.
This sketching is
done in a specific, coordinated
plan, so when you start from scratch,
you have the basic coordinate planes
in the X Y plane, the
Z, and why is that plane
like your normal car and that system?
And as soon as you have something in your
sketch, you can also choose a face
of that art or
something relative to that part as
a as a base plane
for your sketch.
But normally you can go with the
of planes and then translate depart as
later as well.
There are some problems with sketches
of problems, are some things to
take care of, so you can only create a
continuous body from your sketch so you
cannot create two cubes from one
sketch. You can only create something
which has a continuous surface.
It can have holes, but you cannot create
something, which is two bodies in
one sketch.
So as an example, I
just go here.
To the Starks,
you will file then
go to the party sign workbench.
This is what I need to do to start any
new part.
Create a body, create a sketch
and then select one of the
planes where I wanted
to have my basic my
base set.
Man, for example, I create a circle.
And this I can now
pet.
I cannot pet because for some reason,
the circle.
Wasn't drawn.
OK, now it's drawn, and I can pet
it up.
OK. What?
I don't know why it started, but
you get the idea.
So you draw something and then you
extend it to the third dimension.
If I change that sketch now to have
two circles or another one here, for
example.
The padding doesn't work anymore, so
it's still showing the
first one, but not the second one.
And this might create all kind of
funny effect, so if you have
holes, holes are fine, but if
you have something which is overlapping,
so part of you have one circle
which is extending over
the border of another section, for
example, then you get really funky
effects.
OK, sketches.
Sketches need to be constrained,
constraints means everything
needs to have a measurement to it.
So if I go back here,
create a new body creating a sketch
and then.
Choose this plane
and I draw, for example,
again, a circle.
The problem right now is, you
know, it's a circle, but you don't know
anything about that circle.
So to define that
circle, you need to put measurements on
it and measurements.
Are these red things here?
So first we can put it give it
a radius, or let's give it tiny,
tiny millimeter radius.
Uh.
I need to turn
off caps, lock stock, and then
I need to define
where it is relative to the origin,
and I can do that by
putting horizontal.
Measurement to that.
If I manage to click on the.
Points, so I have now 30 millimeters
from vertical
and measurement,
and then I do another
horizontal measurement.
So one part you see already it's
hitting the points is sometimes
a bit hard because I was
at this point and
this point.
That's the.
Here we go.
13.
And now the circle
turns green, which means all the
measurements are done and
it's well-defined and free cut
knows where it is on the drawing,
so it's also completely constrained
sketchier.
And then I can do news
sketches or I can
also pet it up.
I extended for 10 mm, and now
I have a desk.
With this constraining,
um, if you get
complicated shapes, then you might
run into trouble sometimes
that either
I for one
measurement, there are two solutions, so
something if you just give, for example,
a distance, this line is five
millimeters. So this line, it can be
on both sides of the original
line.
And sometimes
freak out gets a bit confused, and
sometimes your line jumps over to the
other side of your the line,
you measure it too.
And you cannot really get it back with
moving it or by adding
other constraints.
So then safest part is delete
the constrains again and starts
from scratch and
measure again.
OK.
This is constrained, so constrained,
sometimes gives you two solutions
sometimes.
I also had some parts where it went
completely bonkers.
I have no idea why or what.
So the easiest the only thing
I could do was delete the sketch and
start again.
So be prepared if you do something
complicated.
If it gets too complicated, a
mathematics might go into your way and
be freak out.
Sometimes goes strange.
Didn't happen with 19 that often
met with zero, 18 it was quite
often.
The next important concept is this
Model three, so when you create parts
you have on the left
and the model a model tree, so
you have bodies, you have
pads and pockets and
stuff like that, and below that you have
sketches.
This tree is kind of your
history.
So you create a body, a body
is something it's a grouping
of 3D objects.
I think it doesn't need to be continuous,
but it can also have multiple stuff
sitting next to each other.
But it's basically it's something which
has one coordinated system and is
grouped together
under this body.
You start with a sketch, you
pet it up and then you do
whatever you do to pet it up,
things so you can create pockets which
are creating holes into this object,
or you can them for it, which means
instead of a sharp edge, you
rounded off.
And this is kind of your history.
So this champion here, for example,
is the latest action idea to this body
here.
And if I need to change something
before, if I say, OK, this
needs now to be 5mm longer, I can
go to that sketch.
Change that sketch.
And then it transmits the changes
through the whole chain.
And also the is
then moved to the place
where I want to have it.
So this is kind of a history.
Think of your model, but also kind of a
hierarchy of the model and
you kind of have multiple bodies which
are independent of each other.
So then you can create
separate parts of
your model, which you model
independently.
So just let me do an example, so I have
now this pad here,
and I create a new
sketch.
So for example, I can create that sketch
now on this surface to
make my life easier.
I create.
This sketch, as I
select the surface, a select new sketch,
and now I.
Put another
surgery in here.
Measure it, so it gets a radius
of five mm.
And it's.
Measure to the.
Horizontal and
also to the vertical.
Also 35, for example,
done and
now I want to.
Not to add some some volume
to it, but to use that to create
a hole.
So I say, OK now punch
a hole through it and this hole should be
5mm deep.
And now you see, we have a five
millimeter cutout
and you have here in
the history of the original pet,
which I and now decide I want.
Not 20 mm,
but 25 mm.
And try bigger, but the whole
state where it was.
Now I can do all kinds of fancy stuff
so I can select this edge
here and I say, OK, now this edge should
be chamfered.
By 2mm.
And so on, and you'll see this
operation adds to
that history.
So if I have the outside now or
around?
It's added here,
and if I wanted to change the temperature
from two mm to one mm, I can
go back and just do it.
Now, see, the village here is gone
because the chairperson of the active
state and to get the fill it back, I need
to activate the Philip again,
which is just by double clicking our.
And then we're done.
OK.
Uh, this tree
is quite helpful.
But there's also problems
in the internal
data structure of Freak-Out is everything
is relational or
relative to something else.
So this, for
example, this village is
saying, OK, this Phil, it is
added to the edge.
I don't know which number it has at 25.
And there is and
then this action.
Applies to age 25.
If I now do something weird
and delete an edge or
create new edges inside
the earliest stages
freak out, it's doing quite a good job to
keep up to date, but sometimes might not.
And this is really funky.
So when when I when you have
multiple things in your history here
and then you go to the first sketch and
add a line to that sketch or cut
out something?
Sometimes things go horribly wrong.
So my suggestion
here is
don't try to go back too often.
So if you do something complicated,
try to do it right from the beginning.
It's I know it's hard, but.
It helps if you start
here already
with your final results in
mind.
Also, helpful, safe, intermediate steps,
a separate file, so if you if you mess
something up, you still have your back up
from sometime earlier.
Basically, the further you go back in the
model history, the higher the probability
that you mess up something.
There's also something
some operations are more robust than
others, so sketching
and padding is quite OK
with holes like
I did this one here, for example,
this creating this subtraction and
addition is also a case.
But fillets and champers, for example,
they can go easily wrong.
And so if if
I would have,
if I would have more complicated
created a more complicated part
which has more pockets and more
additions.
Create this champers and feel it's only
at the very last step.
So I noticed if you do them too early,
then you'll run
into this problems that
it doesn't really know which edge
humans and stuff goes
crazy.
When you have designed your part and
want to use it.
More times you can clone
it or you can copy it.
Copying is just.
Like, you would copy it with Control C,
Control V or Command Control Command V
on a Mac.
This copy of everything, including the
dependencies and coordinate systems
and everything.
So I have now copied it edited
and I now have something called body
or one which is the same
body.
So let's just move it off
it. It's done by placement position.
And then.
You can move it along the different axis.
And we'll survive it.
And I have two discuss.
And this is just a copy,
so if I change this part,
for example, if I add another.
Transfer to this edge.
It doesn't show up on the air or another.
I need to make that body active to work
on it.
I would click on it.
So like the edge.
Tempered, it doesn't shine on
this one.
If I take this body and
create a clone, that's this one.
Looks the same.
Says body O'Toole.
So let's just north, that's in the other
direction.
And this 15.
But this one is an exact
copy. So if I edit.
And, uh, for example, five mm
for this transfer, it also applies
to this body.
And
you only see that when you go one level
deeper in the trees, so this is a clone.
This is a copy
of everything.
Through this, you can do that
in the party sign bench.
You can also do it in the part workbench,
which has a bit more
options to copy
and clone and Boolean
operations and so on.
So play around with this part
workbench as well.
OK.
Yeah, there's also translating and Mira
rings, or if I
want to create a mirror object of that,
for example, so I can.
There are this one.
Oh, I cannot mirror this one, because
only additive and subtractive feature,
not clones, can be mirrored,
so I need to go to this one.
And at the Colonial.
I only merit the temper I need to
the body.
OK, so I cannot advocate Miro complete
body.
I can mirror some features of that body.
And you don't see it because it's already
symmetrical,
so you see there's all kind of weird
stuff, which I haven't really used.
So I go with
copy and clone and then rotate and
most of the stuff I can do with that.
Also, this is something which you should
do at the very last step, because
due to this relational data, you can mess
up stuff very easy.
If you have multiple copies and then
change something in the original
one and then
something in the relations goes
missing on the way.
Copy clone moving
as the last step.
When you design some stuff,
this is also something which I learned
through pain.
Think about the cemetery and where you
need the final part in your model.
So for example, for
this locomotive, I designed
its choosing if
you head up
in in this axis
or in this axis is sometimes
interesting so far for the
engine hot here, it's probably
easy because you always want to head it
up along the axis of
the locomotive because that's where the
cemetery is.
But for example, here for this, for
the the
for the house, here, for the the cabin,
the engineer's cabin,
you can do it this way or
this way.
And depending on which way you do it, you
need to do where subtraction
of subjects, where shapes are
subject, easy shapes.
Also here for this.
These ventilator thing is
here, it was very helpful to place
to the engine that the
central symmetry axis is
on one of the coordinate system axis.
So the basic what's said
is that y plane,
I think it is is going
through these micro symmetry axis of
the engine.
So I could just mirror these parts
and then need to move.
It's quite a lot of times.
OK.
Also, try to model that you don't have
too many dependencies, so
it's easier to have lots of little
parts, then adding
everything to a big part, the bigger
the pot, the more dependencies you have
and the more chances you have
to mess up.
So each
of these ventilator thingies is
a separate part.
This is a part.
This is about this is about.
So you end up with a lot of parts
and a lot of copies of these parts.
So if you look at these, for example,
these are all the they're loading up
when I move over them.
These are all individual parts
for 3D printing.
It's not not so critical because I merged
the mesh afterwards, but
for the construction, it's really nice
to have simple parts
which don't have too many dependencies.
OK.
Now you have the construction, you want
to get it into
your laser cutter or into
your 3-D printer, and there's gas,
there's a workbench for it,
for laser cutting, it's relatively easy.
You just do a technical drawing
where you need.
So you have your 3D model, you need
to choose the projection you want
like this.
You select the part and then you edit
to the drawing reaction
of a bench, so you create a drawing,
which looks like this.
And then you add this part
in your viewing in a one to one
scale and you're done.
I don't show that yet because we're
getting short on time.
I think that's some time for questions
and then I control that in the Q&A
afterwards.
Then you can export it as the or
SVG file and throw
it at your laser cutter, and it should
work.
If you go for 3D print, there is
the Magna Workbench.
And this is also not really complicated.
So you select your mesh workbench,
wears its
mesh design.
Select the parts you want.
So, for example, I select everything.
Go to mashes and say
create messages from fake and
then it creates.
For each of these parts, a mesh.
So if I turn this on, for example,
then you see, this is a.
At one of these ventilator thing
is as a mash.
It's Chinese, all of.
So these are all individual measures.
And what I did then was
just select them all and merge
them into a big mesh.
But you can do just select all these
measures.
And
where is it?
Somewhere there was a mesh, yet
merged the complete mesh.
And then when you have that
mesh export as a steel
and you're done and
that's here and here we go
and can measure it as soon as the
Hellfire can go in
MATLAB and clean it up a bit.
But so far it works directly
from from precut.
Um, couple
of things so free cat is not
a perfect, photorealistic modeling
thingy, so if
you need something like a threat or
a Helix ID,
free card is using is doing this
as a normal cat drawing.
So it's basically a whole which
has a note on it and saying this is an M5
threat or something like that.
So you don't have the actual helix in
that threat.
If you need to model that Helix,
there's a helix tool to do it, but this
also has some limitations, and you can
also only two full
turns of the helix.
And you might create a
lot more problems with that.
So if you need to print that
threads or the helix for the threat
or screw, this
might get complicated.
So I haven't tried it, so anything
I needed only
had through hold.
So no thread it holds.
But there's a problem
that you cannot create every detail
as you would like it.
Summary, extremely powerful
can do a lot of stuff, has a learning
curve.
But the good thing is it's actively
developed, it's free, so there's
lots of stuff coming on.
So if you follow free cat news on
Twitter, so every day or two, there's
a post on a new module and some
new functionality.
They're heavily working on the UI to
make it more user friendly.
So there's a lot of stuff ongoing,
and I think until it reaches one, that
always will be really awesome.
So far, I've only touched the very,
very surface of it,
and I still run into all kinds of
trouble, so it has a learning
curve.
The only negative thing is this
relational data ship, a relational
data model, which I
mentioned, that sometimes
stuff goes weird when
you delete an edge or something.
This definitely needs some work before
one at all.
But this is also something
where big, commercially cut systems have
problems.
So they are
if you go to any cut or something.
They also had these problems
in the beginning, and this is
nothing bad against the
free cat community or the free cat
programmers.
It's just that this is the
really, really super hard part.
And it's
quite amazing already how stable free
cut is, to be honest.
OK, then I
would be done with my talk, I hope you're
still awake
and would be open for questions.
Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you also for the very technical
presentation, I think that's always
fantastic when we actually get to see
what's going on.
We do have some questions from the
signal.
The question the first question we
actually had is whether you've had any
experience of 3-D
scanning with a cheap stereo camera in
connection with three Afrique, et
cetera. Come on, another tried some
photogrammetry.
Miserably failed.
Uh, the problem with this
stuff is you create marshes
and marshes, you
can edit meshes and free up, but
I think they're better tools for it.
So if you look at this, for example,
these are I don't know how many vertices
and if I so I have no idea
how to edit these, actually.
I think you can edit them,
but I'm not sure if you want to edit
them.
So I what I would
try blender or something, which is more
mesh oriented.
OK, understood. I think that hopefully
answers the question. The second question
we had was kind of free card import
step files and say, What is a step files
import? Yes.
Export?
Good question.
Would choose something before I export.
Oh.
Never tried it.
Step with colors, step.
So, yes, it's possible,
I don't know how, if it's working well
or not. So.
There are a couple of formats for
different cut formats format,
so I
should try that.
I don't have it on my laptop here, but on
my work laptop, I have an x cut
and could try to import the step there.
But there is an interface interface
to various in both directions,
to various cut formats.
OK, perfect. I mean, I guess that answers
the question, anyone who wants to try it,
feel free.
What's your best non-technical tip
for someone who is just starting out with
3D printing and car design?
Are non-technical people
so patient, so
this is something.
I think construction is painful, and
there's a reason why engineers have to
study so long for it.
I'm a physicist, so I'm also just an
amateur and that
there are a couple of things where
you need to take care with 3D printing,
like thinking that you're always
adding some stuff to layers
and layers and layers. So if you have
something which would float
in the air when you create this layers,
then this is something you need
to take care of.
But I think the
best thing is just
try it.
Be patient and try it so you
will mess up. You will create horrible
spaghetti stuff out of your 3D
printer are a horrible mess
of of what you called this liquid
stuff off of acrylic.
But you can
clean it up and start again.
So it's just do it.
That's part of the fun, right?
Spaghetti stuff everywhere.
So don't don't let it run unattended
overnight. So this is, if you do it, the
first time since next
life pro tip.
We do have a question about 2D
architectural plans.
Can I do something like EWG files?
The X Files?
Yes. Uh,
as well.
If I already tried.
There is also an architecture model
workbench, so
there's a special was it this arc
workbench, which has special
building and
drawing features and but
I also haven't tried it.
So there's.
Create a building, create
a layer of that building, so
this is, I think, very
powerful, haven't tried it.
But when you when you follow free
news on Twitter, they post a lot
of building projects done with the
Freak-Out.
OK, so very definitely possible.
So thank you so much for your time.
Thank you for the presentation
here for the actual doing it.
I think that's always great.
And I guess we'll move on to the
question answer.
Thanks so much.
OK, then see you there in a
minute. Thank you.