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4×4 Bar Modelled in FreeCAD
The Wrong Course
Let's go back in time. Its 1989-1991 and I am at Brighton Polytechnic's Chelsea School of Human Movement, studying for a BSc(Hons) in Sport Science. I have the idea I want to make exercise machines so I ask the lecturer how I can do this, "Engineering" she says.
Its 1995 and still have many ideas about designing machines, but as I train at home I decide to design a power rack because there aren't really any decent ones for the home on the market.
I come up with the 2/4 Rack. Its brilliant of course. I then come up with the 4×4 Bar and then the 2/4 Bar and then the Hex Table. They are all brilliant. Similarly I come up with innovative machine designs. I photo-realistically model the first three designs in Blender. Everything is genius, but I then stop designing.
FreeCAD
Those models were all drawn by hand drawn. By about 2000 I buy Autosketch a 2D CAD software and put the models into it. However I always had the notion that I wanted to model them in proper 3D CAD software, that way I could have much more flexibility to modify designs as well as actually see how they work in 3 dimensions.
By 2013 I have started working as a quality engineer so over some 10 years I get to understand metrology, datums, GD&T, rotation matrices, least squares, geometry, etc. I also marvel at the fellows in the drawing office on Solidworks 3D CAD software.
By 2024 (now) I decide to look at the opensource alternatives for CAD software and am surprised to find that FreeCAD has been around for about 10 years. I therefore download it.
At first all I can do is use it for simple geometry. Its quite useful for calculating angles and distances without having to calculate them, or alternatively it can be used to verify geometry calculations entered into spreadsheets like Excel. However despite watching tutorial videos on Youtube I can't figure out how to actually model the brilliant designs I had come out with all those years ago.
I couldn't find any tutorials of a similar nature to my models. I figure I need to reach a tipping point of understanding FreeCAD, so I keep chipping away and gradually after a couple of months it starts to make sense. If you click on the picture at the top of this article it will take you to a video of me modelling the 4×4 Bar. It took me a couple of months to figure it out, but in the video I do it at a leisurely pace in about 28 minutes.
If you are a beginner to FreeCAD, you may find the video helpful if you plan on modelling similar items. I will now start modelling more brilliant designs. Naturally you won't have my brilliant design talents, but we all have limits.
21st April 2024