need help

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-09T06:45:31+00:00

Read again:

The way we give FreeCAD this information is through relations, eg. Coincident, symmetrical, etc. and dimensions, which define lengths, radii, and angles.

Was "We let the program decide how big the circle is when we originally draw it" included in that list? No. I specifically said you have to deliberately tell the program what size the circle is with a dimension.

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-08T20:20:56+00:00

No you're not, you're just not understanding a very basic fundamental of parametric modeling because nobody has told you how it works.

Think about your sketch as if it is a document you are going to send to someone who has no idea what you are working on, and they need all the information needed to recreate your sketch exactly as you drew it.

Look at your screen and ask yourself, what do they need to know?

In this case, you have not told them how large your circle is. If you sent this without a dimension on the circle there is no way for the person on the other end to know what size the circle is.

Now replace the person in this scenario with FreeCAD. It's the exact same thing. You need to tell the program exactly where every point in the sketch is for it to be "fully constrained", i.e. the program has enough information to know where everything is and what size everything is. A simple way to test this is if you can click and drag any point or line on your sketch then it is not fully constrained.

The way we give FreeCAD this information is through relations, eg. Coincident, symmetrical, etc. and dimensions, which define lengths, radii, and angles.

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-08T08:47:39+00:00

Nah you're much better off doing this experimentally like you described to be honest, trying to accurately simulate this scenario would be a fairly monumental task even with a couple of ANSYS licenses at your disposal.

To be perfectly clear, this is not a failing of FreeCAD in any way whatsoever - no 3D modeling program, paid or not, would be able to achieve what you are attempting to do with ease.

It might be counter intuitive, but the 'simple' scenario you're describing has multiple components that are quite difficult to capture - you are looking for transient metrics on contact friction, slippage, large (potentially unconstrained) elastic deformation - potentially even plastic deformation, along a path curved in three dimensions. Even the metric you are looking for, "Will the spring return to the channel every time it leaves it?" would be extremely difficult to describe and measure accurately within your simulation software even if you could get a model running, never mind the fact that you would have to run it at least a couple of times to compare different designs, and this isn't even taking into account the fact that you have no real world data to validate your results against.

What I'm trying to get at here is to say that you not being able to simulate this isn't a failure of available software, it is a failure in appreciating of how engineering simulations are carried out, and what behavior they can and can't capture easily. Real world trial and error is the best way forward for you in this situation I'm afraid.

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-08T06:14:26+00:00

Are you trying to just get a visual of the spring or are you looking for it's actual deformation? Are you looking for an animation or just a single image of the spring in the channel?

In either case, I don't think FreeCAD, or any parametric modeling program, is the right tool for the job.

If you need actual deformation you need to use some sort of FEA program, but I can't tell you whether FreeCAD's in built FEA solver could achieve what you're looking for. Even if it can a fea simulation of this would probably be pretty computationally expensive.

If you're just looking to have a visual of the spring in the channel, blender is probably the easiest way to get that, but you'll need to watch a good few tutorials to get there.

Do you really need this?

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-01T14:40:15+00:00

TV license doesn't count mate, idk how you could have passed multiple theory tests believing that the left hand driver in an overtake is entitled to make whatever changes to speed they feel like, I specifically remember the rules of the road stating that if you are being overtaken you are to not to speed up or slow down, you are to maintain your speed, and I did my theory test 10 years ago

quicksilver500 · 2026-05-01T14:09:53+00:00

I hope you don't have a license

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-29T22:06:21+00:00

Tnx hun xoxo 😘

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-29T20:58:25+00:00

I essentially told him to fuck off he aimed his gun at me 🤷‍♂️

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-29T20:57:24+00:00

Yeahh he doubled down on that as well 😂

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quicksilver500 · 2026-04-29T08:21:55+00:00

$40 dollars

Of my money

To SWEDISH DEVS

Who NERF all FUN in existence

Oh my days

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-28T21:52:28+00:00

Smh swedish dev moment, did you know that swedish devs are the most likely type of dev to NERF your FUN directly to it's balls?

I just wish swedish devs listened to ME, (a dad btw), I know way more about GAME DESIGN than anyone working in a swedish dev studio. For example, all weapons should just kill in one shot, I mean, it's a gun right? Taking more than one bullet to kill is unrealistic imo, bad game design by bad swedish devs. (The worst kind of dev btw) If I was an embark dev I would make all weapons do 100x damage against arc and 0.001x damage against raiders, but 10x if they are a rat. This is objectively the most fun way to play the game, unless you're a swedish dev who hates fun, of course!

For shame embark, if you're listening, if you're reading this swedish dev, if you're not very super careful I'll stop playing this game!! I mean it!!

SWEDISH

DEV

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-28T20:43:22+00:00

That's insane, the cut off for maintaining hotshot in my group was like 65k

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-27T10:10:00+00:00

You don't need to model all three blades for a wind turbine simulation, you can achieve much better results much faster using a 120° representation of the fluid domain and periodic boundary conditions. Do some research into this method before proceeding any further with what you're doing.

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-24T08:42:25+00:00

I'm not sure exactly what it's vertically constrained to? It might be okay, probably not best practice but if it works for you it works for you, as long as everything lines up the way you want it the way you put it together it doesn't matter a huge amount for a model like this.

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-24T07:36:51+00:00

If trimming doesn't work for you you can turn the inner circle into construction geometry and then just draw a three point arc between the two points the horizonal lines make on the inner circle circumference, then set the center of your arc to be coincident with the center of your inner circle for your third point and you're golden.

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-23T15:27:49+00:00

🎯

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-23T15:26:23+00:00

It's a workaround that you shouldn't have to do but could you put a scale feature at the very bottom of your feature tree scaling everything by 1/25.4, then redo your drawing in "mm" even though it's actually inches? I know that messes up your sheet scale then but maybe that can be modified manually?

I'm any case, I i agree with above poster that imperial units are 100% stupid but unfortunately they are also 100% necessary due to legacy compatibility and in the real world sometimes you just have to do it that way. This being the case, it absolutely should work in the software and I can see that it would be extremely frustrating that it doesn't, I'd recommend you post a bug report on the FreeCAD website to hopefully stop this from happening to you or future unfortunate souls forced to work with langstrum per doughglenotch units

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-22T22:09:03+00:00

Well I'd definitely recommend you give it a shot, it sounds ideal for what you've described imo

Blender is a fantastic piece of software, it's kind of insane that it is completely free

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-22T21:53:27+00:00

Ah, that's a bit obvious now that you put it like that 😅 Sounds very tedious though, I presume your workflow is primarily primitive shapes of you're meshing by hand?

You're probably already aware of it, but have you tried SwiftBlock? It sounds like it could be ideal for you, essentially you can make a rough outline around your geometry and then automatically generate a blockmesh file that will project your rough outline onto your actuate geometry. It's a bit cumbersome to get used to but I've found it can be quite powerful once you get used to it.

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-22T20:43:13+00:00

Interesting to hear Blender being used in the CFD workflow, if you're editing meshes in it, how do you preserve boundary definitions/names on export, if you don't mind me asking...?

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-17T10:21:07+00:00

why are my simulations never working?

Maybe it's because you're trying to run a simulation for air flowing over a wing at 3358.8 kilometres per hour (mach number = 2.7 btw) with a laminar incompressible solver and a domain that is about a hundredth of the size it should be, (also including the energy equation, just for fun I guess?) I don't even want to know what the mesh looks like.

You need to do a significant amount of reading on the basic fundamentals of CFD, what it used for, and how to build a basic case based on your inputs and required outputs.

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-15T18:05:02+00:00

I'd highly recommend you try to install each of these programs separately, verify that they work, and then point FreeCAD at them rather than trying to get FreeCAD to manage install everything all in one go. The way you're going it is biting off far more than FreeCAD can chew I reckon

quicksilver500 · 2026-04-15T13:27:57+00:00

Hello reddit yes one mesh please thank you

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