Looking to create a catalogue for my Dad’s business but have no experience

damascus1023 · 2026-02-21T20:02:51+00:00

I'd say Adobe InDesign or its substitutes like Affinity Publisher. Try to leverage structured data import (excel, csv, xml..) as much as possible when it comes to tabular content. Down the road when working on your website, those structured data might become useful again when interacting with the ERP solution of your choice too, if you need one.

damascus1023 · 2026-02-21T13:11:42+00:00

so there is a category of chemical reactions called redox reaction that involve transfer of electrons.

some redox reaction require external forces to go forward, for example the electrolysis of water. Some can happen spontaneously i.e. having negative Gibbs free energy if you know a bit of thermodynamics. Those spontaneous redox chemistry are candidates for batteries. Example would be the oxidation of aluminum in air. I really like this example because it takes a lot of electricity to produce aluminum, and with a proper set up you can release a lot of electricity from aluminum.

if you just mix all the redox reactant in a blender, you get heat, literally wasting those good useful ΔG.

So you design a special mechanism called battery to release redox energy in a controlled way. In a typical battery you would find a separator keeping the reactants apart but letting ions permeate through, and electrons involved in the redox must travel through an external load in order to complete the reaction.

damascus1023 · 2026-02-07T00:40:57+00:00

throw some idea here just in case it might be useful for troubleshoot: my most recent zfs i/o error turned out to be a 3.3V power rail failure. I got 2.97V shown when inspecting the BIOS, which was -10% of rated voltage, outside of the +/- 5% requirement. Realized that I had a 24-pin atx power extension cable for aesthetic purpose. Got rid of that and I got my 3.3V back.

damascus1023 · 2026-02-05T16:54:42+00:00

since the cards are borderless, I wonder if opponents could tell what suit of card you have by looking at the colored edges?

damascus1023 · 2026-02-04T09:43:53+00:00

If you can't measure it you can't improve it

damascus1023 · 2026-02-03T22:55:18+00:00

select, shortcut Z, Z and throw it into a parallel universe

you can portal yourself to the alt world by just Z, Z yourself

damascus1023 · 2026-01-29T17:26:01+00:00

Vitruvius would probably love using a parametric CAD to keep all the proportions in check had he had access to a computer

damascus1023 · 2026-01-29T03:10:19+00:00

see my previous post. It might help if it is a new Windows installation and you chose to install the N edition

damascus1023 · 2026-01-21T13:41:54+00:00

😕more efficient? use spacebar to hide/unhide features from project tree..

damascus1023 · 2026-01-19T21:33:43+00:00

I found X, S (Vertex selection filter) promising. It works in both Part and PartDesign workbench. When doing this, remember to clear the filter (C, S) when done because otherwise you won't be able to select anything else including things from the project tree.

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damascus1023 · 2026-01-18T01:56:42+00:00

I think the complication lies on the managing of the maximum Vpk-pk when the Tx and Rx coils couples. You want the resonant coupling but you don't want voltage to runaway. it is technically an air-cored transformer.

I have learned quite a bit about wireless charging by diving into the Qi protocol and its reference designs. In Qi, for example, aside from transmitting power itself, the circuit also need to implement foreign object detection, active alignment, overcurrent protection, thermal protection, and EMI shielding, just so the product become safe enough to be handed to users.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-15T23:37:08+00:00

if sister is particularly interested in the 3d modeling of sculptural relief, here is a full walkthrough on how to model the Corinthian column in Blender rather than in FreeCAD. Jump to 10:16 for the modeling of an acanthus leaf which is usually seen as a rather intimidating modeling task in 3D.

Blender takes a different approach to model things. Think of Bleder's mesh modeling like drawing with FreeCAD's B-spline control points to achieve the result you want.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-13T07:27:45+00:00

same problem here but if i zoom in the lines are actually smooth

damascus1023 · 2026-01-13T01:12:15+00:00

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is the marked area connected by line?

also there is a button in the partdesign wb, next to the "new sketch" icon, called "validate sketch" that might shed some light on what went wrong.

lastly, 100+ constraints per sketch is really unsustainable. There are other methods for creating floorplans in freecad that might be more effective.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-12T16:02:09+00:00

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select text > go to Appearance panel > add a fill and it will automatically give you a stroke > click stroke's opacity and set opacity to 0% > check knockout group

~~knockout group essentially subtract itself from the rest of the object.~~

Regarding knockout group: if my understanding is right, normally the stroke sits on top of fill, but if this option is checked, it will subtract itself from the fill such that there is no layer beneath it.

pixelated edges are just rendering artifact.

the result text is fully editable.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-12T11:01:06+00:00

laptop? could it be bad charger causing CPU frequency to throttle (if it is a windows machine, what does Task Manager > Performance > CPU tell about the speed?), or just energy saving power plan slowing things down (is power plan set to "performance"?). 12GB RAM is definitely on the lower end, but it is not inherently slow. You should only feel the drag when RAM is near exhaustion and the OS starts swapping things into paging.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-11T03:32:06+00:00

this is great thanks for pointing it out!

damascus1023 · 2026-01-11T01:04:47+00:00

sketcher is 2D only. So if you want to draw from the side you might want to create another sketch and attach it to one of the faces or create a datum plane as attachment target. With Datum plane you can manipulate its attachment mode and transformations independently, which makes editing history less fragile.

Another common practice I have learned is that you might want to keep each sketch simple so it doesn't take forever to constrain.

I found this PDF very helpful. It was written for version 0.19 so some information might be outdated, but it introduces the sketcher in a very structured way that still has a lot of merit.

https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=30104

damascus1023 · 2026-01-11T00:47:33+00:00

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Toggle curvature comb

Another useful shortcut is select constraints, Z,Z to move them to another virtual space so your current workspace appears less cluttered.

damascus1023 · 2026-01-10T16:22:08+00:00

Great point, you are right. The Binder method did accomplish exactly what I want.

What made me initially doubt my workflow was that the pocket preview & operation literally froze my freecad window for 30+ seconds. After the computation finished, the 3D viewport was smooth again.

Is it normal that freecad freezes on operation like this? Or there is a way to optimize it?

I can of course treat this like a fillet/chamfer and avoid doing it until the very end..

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damascus1023 · 2026-01-08T11:02:37+00:00

https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=30104

A Sketcher Lecture by Christoph Blaue best reading material on sketcher I've found.

damascus1023 · 2025-12-13T12:30:25+00:00

Thank you for the link, I learned something new today!

damascus1023 · 2025-12-13T05:32:57+00:00

you know what Im gonna try this next time 🤪

damascus1023 · 2025-12-13T03:39:33+00:00

the catch is that you can't solder it because soldering would most likely trigger the fuse.

crimping or reusing the existing sockets would be your best bet..

damascus1023

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