Newbie here. FreeCAD is v1.1.1
Is there really no way to do simple manual vertices manipulation?
Coming from Wings3D. Found the Fase feature (PartDesign_Chamfer) which is a good start for my usual extrude/bevel workflow but I can not for my life find out how to manually select and move vertexes manually / individually.
I learned about converting a part into a mesh but even here I seem to not have the option to move vertices around freely?
Do I really have to go down to a 2D drawing first and work from there?
We don’t do manual vertices changes here (at least to my knowledge). That is something which you can do with a 3D modeling software.
Now that being said, you can do the same style of change, how you do it depends on what you are trying to do.
You can select a face and make changes to it like a sketch. So push pull twist, or if you select a vertices you can chamfer or filet.
Your other option is to manipulate the base sketches vertices or take your vertices and make a sketch on it to make a series of operations to get a similar change.
The reason being, in CAD, you can undo or change underneath and if you can it by vertices, which one did you select if you go back and add a new face? FreeCAD specifically has a hard time keeping track of which vertices is which on a recompute.
The other thing unlike modeling CAD is all about measurements, so making sure that the change is anchored and can handle an entire model change is part of the good cad design. For example if you need to pad out a width in step 2, and in step 30 you modify your vertices, but after a print you realize that you padded to much in step 2, your design should be able to handle changing the pad and not breaking at step 30. (Note this is not easy to do in FreeCAD without practice)
Here are a few of my designs if you need a reference of a workflow: https://github.com/the16bitgamer/16BitVirtualStudiosDesigns
You can select a face and make changes to it like a sketch. So push pull twist, or if you select a vertices you can chamfer or filet.
Think this is the part I’m missing - as in I didn’t find the option yet. For this particular case I want to increase the height of the selected
partface.Thanks for the detailed explanation!
It’s located in the part design workbench, I can remember if you can make a cube first the edit it in a part design. But my workflow in CAD is.
Sketch > Part Design > Sketch > Part Design …
In the Part Design work bench you will find additive features (extrude or revolution) as well as Subtractive tools (Pocket or Groove)
You do that by extruding edges. But I believe you’re looking for something like Blender instead of CAD software. CAD is all about dimensions and constraints and not about freeform vertex manipulation.
Hm, nope, not getting it :( If I can extrude edges, or use that fase feature, it should also be possible to define the resulting lengths of the operation too, no?
I do not need this to scale later on.
Bringing Blender into this is total overkill for “I just want to set that inner height”, no?
I’m not sure what you wish to accomplish. Maybe there’s an easy work around? I’m guessing you chamfered a corner but wish to have different side lengths of the chamfer perhaps? Maybe you can post a screenshot with some annotations to make it more clear. I’m by no means an expert in this particular software, but I do know my way around CAD.
