i didn't want to make this video but it has to be said freeCAD is currently fundamentally
broken now let me explain as i need your help to see if and in what direction i should take free
cad next on maker tails it's called the topology naming problem and yes i know you veteran freecad
users you know all about this and you're probably sick and tired of hearing it but hear me out
i'm not here to whine and complain and for those of you who are not aware of this problem
or aren't familiar with cad design itself let me summarize all of this into a nice little nutshell
cad design relies heavily on a concept called sketches these sketches are basically 2d drawings
that you can control with numbers to create accurate 3d models from now as you can imagine
just like reality if you're going to be drawing on a piece of paper you need a flat surface to do
it on this is the whole idea of a plane in the 3d space another way of interpreting a plane is just
as a known flat surface in the 3d space so you would expect that a known surface would be the
flat face of a bit of 3d geometry meaning that you would be able to reference that face as a plane
to sketch on and that's exactly it it's one of the fastest simplest and most intuitive workflows
to design things within a cad program you simply click on a face reference that face as the plane
that you want to make another sketch on and get on sketching this way you're able to make ever
more complicated designs relatively easily and considering you are using a cad program
at any point you can go back to a previous sketch and edit your design well you would think so just
as an example this here is what happens in fusion 360. and it's what i would expect from
any cad program be it paid free or open source and this here is what happens in free cad
to understand this problem we need to get to know free cad just a little bit more in the simplest
of terms currently in freecad every body has sort of a list of faces where each face is named
and when you select a face to create a sketch on it you are ultimately locking that sketch to the
name of that face so it's like saying i want to reference the face that is named number 11
as a plane to sketch off it so the question and the problem is what happens when that named list
of faces to a body changes be it adding or taking away a face from that list well for instance in
this example an edit is done to the sketch that is driving body b and coincidentally adds a face
to body b however body c which is driven by a sketch that was referencing the face named number
11 that just happened to be the top face of body b now looks like it's referencing a different face
but in free cad reality the sketch of body c is still referencing the face named number 11
so in other words the list of named faces of body b changed in some way and the sketch just
followed that name reference to wherever that name now belongs on body b and that there is the
topology naming problem now personally i would not call this a problem i would call this a program
breaking bug now don't get me wrong i've already put in over 100 hours into learning freecad
and i quite enjoy using it especially after you get over that sheer cliff of a learning curve with
that said here on maker tales i want to share and teach other makers through my maker journey in the
most digestible way possible so when you encounter this cliff of a learning curve along with this bug
and yes it is a bug not a problem the learning curve turns from a cliff into an overhang now
i'm more than aware of the solutions workarounds and workflows to navigate this topology naming bug
in fact here are some of the most popular ones that i know of for those of you that aren't versed
in freeCAD i warn you here comes quite a bit of jargon just for a little bit manually reassign and
recompute the face reference for the sketch every single time there is a naming list edit don't use
any face references at all and link everything up with origin reference datum planes along with
mostly simple equations to link them up to your bodies or don't even use the official release
of freecad but an experimental release by real thunder who is a sole developer who in my opinion
has nailed it by making his own workable version of freecad while developing a completely different
part of freecad and now to the point of all of this i really am excited and thrilled by the
idea of teaching such a great open source program like freecad with that said i really don't feel
that any of the solutions or workarounds that i've just mentioned are frankly acceptable and
here are the reasons why manually reassigning and recomputing face references is frankly a
task that i wouldn't even give my worst enemy only using origin reference datum planes with equations
yes this creates extremely robust designs and i would even expect serious engineers to use this
workflow even if there was no bug as this would give them absolute control over everything in
a model with that said i honestly would never expect a newcomer to cad design to jump up to
this level of cad understanding to be able to make a few hobby parametric parts but frankly in my
opinion this is shooting freeCADs popularity and growth right in the foot as this bug is perfectly
situated at a point where somebody might finally start to feel comfortable using freecad even just
by messing around and not using any tutorials for example someone coming from fusion 360 and then
they encounter this bug not to mention the sheer prerequisite information and cad understanding
that i would have to teach a newcomer to be able to create a single solid parametric part
and thinking a little bit selfishly here all those videos that if i do create might be completely
obsolete version 0.2 of freecad i guess what i'm trying to say here is that i just think it's silly
to have to teach someone like this lastly we have real thunder's link stage 3 branch of recad i find
it mind boggling that there is currently a version of freeCAD that pretty much works as intended
and it's not the official release of freeCAD and yes i'm not so naive not to know that there is so
much more behind everything i just said from the fact that from what i've read they're currently
committing some of real thunder's developments but that's going to be into free cad 0.2 which
in reality who really knows when that will come out yes the road map says the 31st of december but
there can always be setbacks and free cad is free and open source so there's a whole host of hoops
to go through and so much more overall i like the idea of teaching freecad in real thunder's branch
having said that it is an experimental version of freecad and i'm only about 100 or so hours in
so i might not even recognize when i'm looking at something that is blatantly broken on top of that
i don't know how much and what is different in real thunder's branch that won't be in freecad
0.2 when it eventually comes out so thinking a little bit ahead and a little bit selfishly
i would quite like my videos that i make to be useful for the freecad community com freecad 0.2
i guess what i'm really trying to say here is come on freeCAD community and devs we are so
close yet we are still dragging this bug along and it's leaving such a horrible bitter taste
in so many new hopeful users recently we've had some of the biggest growth in the 3d community
due to the world's current affairs the rise of open source license changes of other cad programs
and the rise of industry 4.0 it's literally been the perfect storm
and i'm sure freecad has seen quite a bit of growth from it however i would have expected
it to have been a lot more explosive and i'm gonna say it i truly believe in my opinion it's because
of this silly bug so this here is where i'm left questioning and i need your help what do i do now
should i just wait for freecad 0.2 whenever that comes out and then start making tutorials that are
going to be digestible to newcomers to the 3d space or do i make over-complicated tutorials
of cad design using a workflow that i've only used every now and then because i find it far
too slow and tedious and that's pretty much going to make my videos obsolete in the future
or do i teach real funders branch of cad knowing that it might be completely
broken and i might not recognize it i might even teach features that won't be in there
come the new versions of freecad which are going to make both my videos and your time obsolete
i would love to hear from all of you be it down in the comments or in the maker tales discord a huge
thank you to my patrons you guys are absolutely awesome and it's what makes maker tales possible
if you're enjoying what i'm making here and you think i'm worthy of your support
i would love to see you there too don't forget that we have that discord and that is linked
down in the description thank you for watching keep making and let the quest continue