Introduction to ToolBits

[@dylansternbeck9230]

I love the path workbench, not enough people are aware of the CAM in FreeCAD.

[@timogross8191]

No sucess to get anything useful out of it :-) as of now.

[@cybair9341]

Thank you for your contribution to FreeCad. I don't have a CNC yet but it's in the plans.

[@wodzu2203]

Keeping fingers crossed for you :)

[@alveslopescnc1890]

fantastic Work 👍... I start freecad now, Your videos best tips for Path ... from Portugal 🇵🇹

[@66666tony]

Hi Welcome back , I've just purchased a micromill cnc and am a total beginner thank you for your videos

[@timbirkenbach5092]

Thank you so much for this video. (And all the others you've created). If you would be willing to make an update on this suiting the new tool library would be amazing! I'm just trying to setup some tools but just as example, the by you so useful described spindle Power Funktion does not exist anymore in version 0.20. Another idea great video would be the full process from part design over creating tolls and tool path to exporting it to a CNC machine and see the final result. Keep up your great work! Best regards!

[@MelRodriguez-q7z]

Hello Sir, is it possible to have just wireframe as the chained tool path without the need for solid model? In 3d?. Example would be imported DXF wireframe to be use as direct tool path

[@karldahndel9243]

Thanks for your excellent video. I am thinking about buying your book, however I am working with FC version 0.21.1 now. Should I wait for an updated version of the book? Thanks G.

[@sliptonic]

My videos are getting a bit long in the tooth. I don't have time to update them or the book now that I'm running Ondsel. Hopefully I'll be able to update both some day though.

[@karldahndel9243]

Thx.

[@Thorhian]

Wow I just found out about this! Looks awesome!

[@gryzman]

I hope you'll make more videos about the 1.0 or even 0.21

[@davidleedom]

Is there any documentation linking the tool bit definition input fields with the physical characteristics of the router bit in my hand? What do all these measurements mean? Ok, spindle diamiter i get, but what about all the others?

[@sliptonic]

The toolbit system is designed to allow end users to create new toolshapes. You can open the toolshape file (it's just a FreeCAD project file) and look at how the sketch is built. The configurable attributes of the toolbit are pulled from the propertybag which is used to drive the sketch. That said, some documentation of the stock toolshapes would be good.

[@davidleedom]

@@sliptonic Thank you for the feedback. I'll poke around there and see what i can find. Are there specific attributes that are used in calculating tool paths and others that are ignored?

[@sliptonic]

@@davidleedom Yes to both but it depends on the operation. The most important is "Diameter" which is used for all 2D offsetting. This is the diameter at the control point. V-carving uses the angle of a v-bit as does deburr. Operations that use OpenCamLib use a variety of attributes. Some o the other attributes are used for controlling other functionality. e.g. if chipload is configured, it's used in the feed and speed calculation. If the tool has a SpindlePower attribute set False, it will never turn on the spindle -- Good for probes and dragknives.

[@sliptonic]

@@davidleedom Many of the other attributes are just used for building the 3D representation of the tool or may be used in future functionality.

[@keys4692]

I have a 0.19 23074 11/22 version of Freecad. My pt command opens up Tool Library and Tool Tables not the tool dock like yours.

[@gridsquat]

That threw me for a moment too so I upgraded to 0.19 23323 and the pt command now opens the dock

[@keys4692]

@@gridsquat TY I also did the same.

[@gianfds3177]

Thank you for the explanation. I think some improvement should be done on the intuitiveness of the system. It is smart, however I couldn't find a way to add a 2mm endmill before I found your video. This should be straightforward. Excellent job anyway!

[@toddsutton5672]

downloaded update version, working better but i cant set depths, start height anything like that.

[@toddsutton5672]

just read a previous post that had same issue. however reading wiki, i see rigid tapping is not supported.

[@sliptonic]

That's correct. We haven't implemented rigid tapping yet. There's an experimental thread milling operation but not rigid tapping. Now that we have toolbits, expect to see more operation types in future versions.

[@Gegsite]

Nice, maybe we will end up to be able to mill a 3D surface (like a cone).

[@antoniopatalano7698]

Hello. could you please make a video of a path of an inclined surface? I hope you can help me. i tried with the new path 3d commands but i can't. hello and thank you or your videos

[@carlslater7492]

With the tool description being JSON, it would make sense for bit vendors to publish this info ... just say'n ;)

[@sliptonic]

Vendors could certainly publish it. Likewise, an interested party could easily make a script to scrape a vendors catalog and automatically generate toolbits. Just say'n.

More and more vendors are publishing tools and attachments data following ISO 13399 / GTC standard... Which leads me to ask if the tool data definition is extendable? Also vendors most share tools 3D models in STEP format so maybe an import wizard to ease convertion to FC format would be nice. Anyway, great work and good video as always! 👍 Amazing to hear you say the path (!) is also leading to turning 🎉

[@tomp2079]

sliptonic, when I click the toolbit dock icon or dial P,T I got only ToolBit Library open, not the dock - any idea what's going on? I have FC 0.19-23074 .

[@sliptonic]

Sounds like you still have legacy tools turned on. There's a comment toward the end about turning off legacy tools. Also, this is a brand new feature just showing up in the development daily build this week. So you'll have to upgrade if you haven't already.

[@tomp2079]

​@@sliptonic , nope :) I've done it - legacy tools are unchecked - when I (P,T) I get the same dialog you got at 3:38. I downloaded the last version possible (019-23074) from github. By the way, will that be possible to import/convert the old-style tool libraries into new ones? I just prepared a library with just over a hundred tools and creating a new one would be a pain in.. you know ;P

[@sliptonic]

I'm happy to help but can we please move this to the forum? Post in the Path/CAM section and I'll see it

[@tomp2079]

@@sliptonic , done :) It just has to be accepted by a moderator. How about the second question? :)

[@toddsutton5672]

what version. 19 is this. i have been away for a while i cant get tools functions to work at all. pt brings up the tool library i am not able to create a new tool. I really dont want to have to be creating my own filing system. my brain injury doesnt let cope with stuff like that. im not a computer programmer.

[@sliptonic]

Version 0.19 was formally released today. If you're not running it yet, you should get the latest installer (follow the links from the freecadweb.org website). You won't have to do anything manual on the filesystem. FreeCAD will manage the files for you. It will create individual files though which makes is easy/possible to back up your tool libraries. Make sure you're not using legacy tools. There's a setting in Path preferences page.

[@cesarmuttio506]

thank you

[@KellySchrock]

Update to my last comment: Upgraded to FreeCAD 0.20, and it's great. But the toolbit experience on Ubuntu Linux is still horrendous. I'm having to hand-edit configuration files to try and get something working for toolbits, and FreeCAD seems like it wants to store everything related to toolbits in temp directories (e.g. /snap/freecad/66/user/). When I tell it to generate gcode output in a specific directory, it puts in "/run/user/1000/doc/901512b2/tp_hell.nc". How is that useful? Why wouldn't it just put the files where I can find them at some point later? I don't get it. I'm being told that the legacy tools (which actually work for me) are deprecated and will be removed after 0.20, which is unfortunate. Not sure how I'll actually use FreeCAD for anything besides 3D printing at that point.

[@carlslater7492]

You mentioned how all the bits where for all practical purposes cylinders. I assume this is from a metal machining pedigree.... considering I am transitioning to a carbohydrate based set of materials (wood) has anything been done with profile bits or slot cutters? Kinda like 2.6 D modeling

[@sliptonic]

It's trivial to model tools like that in the toolbit system now. It might even be useful to do it so you can see the shapes in the icons. But _using_ those shapes in a meaningful way to calculate the toolpath is much more difficult and almost nothing has been done (yet). I did include a slitting saw in the list of default tools with the idea that a slitting operation would be fairly easy and worth doing. Also, In theory, the simulator can use the modeled shapes but I think the simulator is going to need more work before that's true beyond theory. The voxel simulation is still too rough to be really useful.

[@olavl8827]

@@sliptonic So who can we bribe or blackmail to get all of this done? The people demand their profile bits! Just kidding of course. I find the progress so far astounding and am grateful for all improvements in FreeCAD.

[@lokapakti1548]

Is FreeCAD production Ready. Is it worth leaning its CAM operations and path workbench to be a professional CNC machinist or is it only for hobbiest people. However am a Nube in all this field.

[@sliptonic]

That's not an easy question to answer. Many people are using FreeCAD and Path Workbench for real commercial work but it has limitations. It very much depends on what kind of work you do. If your business is primarily 2.5D CAM (something like 80% of all CNC is this kind) then Path is very capable. If you need continuous 4th and 5th axis tool paths you will be disappointed. FreeCAD is a very powerful tool but also has a learning curve.

[@alimjassimmahmood]

thanks

[@JokoEngineeringhelp]

Hi Sliptonic, I'd like to promote your channel and book 'FreeCAD for Inventors' on my channel. Do you have any interest in doing something together?

[@66666tony]

Hi I am new to cnc and have been following your great tutorials, I just bought a mill running with mach3 , I can import the g code but the picture of the item is not in the table display ? Will freecad work with mach3 Thank you

[@sliptonic]

I don't understand what you mean about the picture of the item not being in the table display. But, Yes. Path has a Mach3/4 post processor so we can produce gcode for that controller

[@aculasabacca]

@@sliptonic Do you know if path can produce g-code for the controller that comes with Sherline mill (Sherline inch/Sherline mm), It comes preinstalled on a linux machine when you buy the deluxe package. Also when I change units in Freecad to inches, then try to enter a constraint in sketcher, I get an error message (Datum for constraint x with index 10 is invalid). Thanks for any help you can give, cheers.

[@sliptonic]

Sherline used to use linuxcnc. If you buy directly from them these days you get a MASSO control. Linuxcnc is no problem for us. I've not had a chance to play with a MASSO and nobody has written a post-processor yet but it should use standard gcode so the linuxcnc post processor should be pretty close. The error sounds like a problem with your sketch. Impossible to troubleshoot in youtube comments. You should probably post to the forum and attach your file if you can.

[@aculasabacca]

@@sliptonic Will do, thanks.

[@arniesneider7163]

Great work!

[@eMPee584]

We need to do some campaign work and attract industrial investors into FreeCAD sponsorship..

[@vwegert]

5:20 or watch kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGnXgqaOqN-to5o for a slightly less entangling, but more explosive example...

[@mihailazar2487]

OMG V-carve is finally a thing since 2 WEEKS AGO ? Dammit, YT, why u not notifications ?

[@KellySchrock]

I just upgraded FreeCAD to a version that features the Toolbit library, and it's a completely bizarre experience on Ubuntu 20.04. I had to switch to the Legacy Tools setting to get anything done. 🙂

[@sliptonic]

Toolbits is a major change. They introduce many new concepts and allow for much more robust functionality to be developed. I encourage you to get over the hump though. Legacy tools will be deprecated with 0.20 and completely removed in 0.21. I'm open to suggestions about how we can ease the transition.

[@KellySchrock]

​ @sliptonic Totally agree. This video (like all your videos) gives a good insight into why the new approach is useful. And as with all things FreeCAD, I expect to encounter humps, whether they're my own lack of experience or various quirks in the software. I've learned some really useful info watching your videos. In this particular case, the hump I'm trying to get over is more like a vertical wall. Maybe with flaming barbed wire at the top edge. I open the Toolbit library panel and, as expected, it's empty. I go to create a new toolbit and it opens a file dialog prompting me to pick a writable directory to put my tools in. But it won't let me pick an actual DIRECTORY. What I select has to be a file, otherwise the "open" button is disabled. If I cancel, it just pops the dialog up again. So I'm forced to pick a normal file as the "directory" before I can do anything. Then it asks me if I want to create Shape and other directories there. I say "yes". Of course it can't do that because what it forced me to pick is not a directory. Seems like the "File Dialog" call is missing the flag that indicates the dialog should be picking a directory rather than a file. (This is on Ubuntu 20.04, not sure if I mentioned that.) If there's a github issues list somewhere, I'm happy to provide a screen capture of what I'm seeing if that helps in fixing it.

[@sliptonic]

@@KellySchrock Great feedback!!! That sounds exactly like the file dialog bug you described. Should be easy to resolve. I'll check on that today. That kind of bug is really easy for developers to overlook because you encounter it once and then your config is right. We rarely blow away our configs and and start again.

[@KellySchrock]

@@sliptonic Haha, I've been there. (Ask me about the day I spent recently after clearing my build cache. Actually don't, it's not a very cool story :-) ) Happy to help in any case!

[@sliptonic]

@@KellySchrock Hm. It looks like we're looking for a directory, not a file. What's your FreeCAD info? This might make sense to talk about on the forum. github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/blob/master/src/Mod/Path/PathScripts/PathToolBitLibraryGui.py#L84

[@54nd20]

Really great work! Tried supporting you on Patreon, but somehow failed horribly. Have to try again later. Have you ever considered GitHub Sponsors as another way of supporting you? As far as I know there are no fees (so more coffee for you) and probably a lot of people using FreeCAD have an account there anyways.

[@sliptonic]

Yes! I'm on github sponsors now but have not gotten any sponsorship there. The sponsorship platforms are a lot like the social media platforms - They each have advantages and disadvantages and you almost have to be everywhere. Liberapay seems to work well at an organizational level, Github sponsors works ok for developers but it's hard to attract non-developers to it. Patreon is good for general creators but not so good for organizations, etc etc.

[@54nd20]

@@sliptonic Ah yes. I guess for the GitHub Sponsor thing to be found it would need to be in the "Sponsor this project" section in the FreeCAD repo or in the wiki on the Donate page.

[@yevgeniy2005]

Great work!!! ;)

[@wodzu2203]

I'd buy you a crate of beers, but that would slow you down, so I will consider the coffee ;P