FreeCad Parametric Pipe Hook

One of my First Tutorials on freecad.... In this one I make a parametric waste pipe hook for a portable wash basin so that the pipe can be hooked to a bath or bucket rim without being knocked out...

[@meisievannancy]

Thanks. I got here from the freecad forum with some guy struggling to make a parametric hook. Maybe you should post your video on his question.

[@Appregator]

When you made the arc on the PipeHook sketch you constrained the centre point to 80mm. At that point I thought I'll just constrain the centre point to the horizontal of the start or end of the arc. It constrains fine like that but an extraordinary thing occurs when you do the Sweep of the UBendSize along the PipeHookSize profile. The profile goes up the left leg fine to the start of the arc and then it reverses down inverting the arc and then drops down the right leg again. Puzzling as to why it does this. The shape is |U|. I eventually went back and deleted the horizontal constraint and put in the CentrePoint of 80mm and it worked fine. Thanks I learned from you how to use the alias name for the lengths and to use formulas in the names. Quite extraordinary. This not often done. I use the spreadsheet and then press the squiggly blue thing and enter "spread..." etc with the name of the alias of the parameter I want inserted from the value inserted in the spreadsheet.

[@Appregator]

Going further. If I follow changing the Leg length to say 50mm and the center point to 50 it works ok but then changing it back to 80mm and then the drawing reverts to |U| and the UBend sketch ends up with a red ! mark and you have to reenter the sketch and I find it is Overconstrained. I delete the centre point height and it is Underconstrained. Then I redo the centre point and it is fully constrained and the Sweep works again. Only problem is the parameterization breaks the model. I think this may be a version 0.21.1 bug I guess.

[@GapRecordingsNamibia]

@@Appregator Working in freecad means that there are certain design constraint rules that may not be broken, freecad is not as user friendly as most of the other software out there, but it is free, and with it comes a VERY steep learning curve, check out mango jelly's youtube page for content he is very good at what he teaches.

[@Appregator]

At 2:54 ctrl-C and ctrl-V on my keyboard does nothing. I have FreeCAD version 0.21.1. I tried all sorts of selections but no go. Any suggestions ?

[@GapRecordingsNamibia]

Hi, Sorry for the delay in my reply, As I said in the video I am by no means an expert, so, take what I say with a grain of salt, You can check out mango jelly solutions for freecad tut's he is VERY good at using freecad and I have learned from him. So, you have to make sure to "select" what you want to copy BEFOR you hit ctrl+c this is most probably why it does not work. Hope this helps.

[@Appregator]

@@GapRecordingsNamibia Yes thanks. Sometimes I do the same thing and it works the second time around. Yes Mango is very clever.