Learning FreeCad with These Basic Steps

Seriously.... After DAYS of looking through tutorials, i literally learned more in these 20 minutes than the hours i wasted on other videos.... Superb!!

One heck of a tutorial. Fast... No bloat... Just the needed skills shown! Good job!

Equal, horizontal, vertical and symmetrical constraints will improve and speed up your workflow quite a bit. Especially with the holes, create one and the rest will automatically follow the constraints. This is key when your designs become more complex and requires changes. Also note that you can adjust the way the mouse navigation works in many different ways - in preferences > display > navigation

I learnt more from this video about using Freecad than anywhere else. Thanks! What I realised is that most of the time I know what I want to do, but do not know the terminology used to search about it. For example, it would not be straight-forward for a beginner to guess that you need to use a pocket to create a hole. Keep these tutorials coming :)

Thanks for teaching an old man how to do it. I learned more in this <20 minute video than I have in hours and hours of the freecad tutorials. So practical what you have taught here, and yes I am sure there are plenty of shortcuts to get it done faster but the basics you have shown are golden for a beginner. You talk a little fast but that makes it quicker to rewind important points and hear it again without taking all day. Don't change a thing!

It really does not matter for the part you created in this video, yet worth mentioning; instead of increasing the depth dimension of a hole, choose the feature "through hole" (many CAD systems offer an option to select last surface to "punch" through. When designing plastics parts a general rule is to ad a rounding to all concave transitions of stressed/load bearing features. And lastly a DFA tip: always add a chamfer to surfaces that has to be pushed over another part (and a rounding to any feature that has to go into a hole ... but here the boom arm is already round).

Freecad is pretty great. It's not perfect, and not as polished as some commercial CAD programs. But for hobbyists like me it's perfect. There are heaps of tutorials on youtube, too.

Direct and straightforward guide... and fun as well. As a mechanical engg it's great to see that I can stay on linux and not need to switch to windows all the time when I need CAD software. Thanks.

Trying to get away from Fusion 360 I've watched 10+ videos on basics of FreeCad. This is by far the most helpful and straightforward one I've seen.

Been using freecad for a long long time. Thanks for helping beginners out, it's a very important part of Freecad. Getting started is the hardest part. After a while you find it fun to figure out the easiest or best way to do stuff.

I've learned how to model in OnShape, then Fusion 360 then back to OnShape and all along tried to model with FreeCad but gave up before getting to make anything in FreeCad, until watching this video. Thank you for keeping it simple enough to get a model finished with FreeCad. I now know that I will be able to use FreeCad to create all my 3D models. I really wanted to use FreeCad because it's the only free CAD software that allows me to create things I want to sell. I'm going to be watching your other FreeCad videos, thank you again!!!

I just started playing with FreeCAD and obviously came in contact with the wall of daunt. Thanks for this it's just what I needed to go forward! 🙂

You can actually import an image such as the one for the Pi . Then adjust the scale so that it is correct with respect to the FreeCAD units. Then you can build your model around the image. If you can get 3 axis view images ,then you can attach each one to a relevant plane in the 3D view

I love walk-throughs like this that are straight to the point. I'm just starting to learn so this was very helpful. Thank you.

This was FANTASTIC, I am super bad at math and design but after watching this I feel like I have actually learned something. I am just now getting into 3 D printing and I really wanted to learn to make my own useful items but had no idea what to do. This I feel is a great starting point for me. Thank You so much for this!

Love the straightforward, teach by example route. Exactly what a beginner would need to learn this quickly. Great tutorial.

Man this was my hurdle too. I'd been trying to apply TinkerCAD principals to FreeCAD, which was tripping me up really bad. But now I can get some basic, precise designs in, all in about 15 minutes. I love the fast pace you taught this, as it kept me from getting bored and matched about how fast I like to blow through things. Thank you so much!

Perfection! I am a game designer, with extensive knowledge on Game Engines and their UX/UI. This tutorial was a great, well paced, perfect beginning examples with demonstrated steps that can be easily followed along with on a second monitor. Only fumble was the right-click to get out of the tool at the beginning, but you hammered that point home for the rest of the tutorial. Well done, you have my gratitude!

This was brilliant! Many thanks. I had to suffer through many FreeCad tutorials explaining lots of minute detail, but this taught me so much in a short space of time! Thank you

You'll get better over time quickly. You can constrain opposing corners symmetrical to the origin to lock down the original Sketch faster, and you can Mirror one post across the centerline to get it on the other side rather than draw each and lastly apply Hole through all rather then needing a dimension. If you draw the circle starting on the vertical line, it will already be constrained to center left and right. Same thing, Mirror the holes and you can constrain them equal as opposed to dimensioning each. But kudos for already having a design sense of how to realize what you have in mind. That's a critical skill. Also, a "fill-lay" is a "filet" or steak. But a CAD rounded corner is a "fill-et", with a hard T sound.