FreeCAD: Part Vs Part Design: Why use one over the other, understanding and combining workflows

[@samdavis7606]

Thanks so much! This video should be compulsory for everyone new to Freecad. Would have saved me hours of frustration. Keep up the great work!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you so much. I'm hoping that I am making people's lives easier with Freecad. I think it's working and with comments like these I know what's working. Thank you 👍

[@Flockman3065]

these tutorials you make convinced me to actually give freecad a proper go, after hearing so many people crap on it for its perceived bugs and shortcomings I was always a bit hesitant to invest the time, so I stuck with blender with PBT and CADsketcher, now that i have gained some experience with Freecad theres no way I can ever go back to shoehorning technical 3d modelling into blender, Many thanks :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you so much for sharing your story and saying about blender. Like yourself I have considered and used CAD sketcher in the past but it seems to be a product that needs the workflows to mature more to come close to what freecad can offer. It may be because I am so used to freecad but it feels it's trying to force blender into something that it is not designed for. I love blender but for parametric design is best left to dedicated packages. Really glad your finding these tutorials useful.

[@Flockman3065]

@@MangoJellySolutions Thats been exactly my experience, cadsketcher is great and blender is invaluable, but its still missing a lot of what freecad already has, i've already made several non-trivial projects with it, but without good tutorials like this i would have given up, i'll donate to your ko-fi please keep up the good work :D edit: Geometry nodes plus cadsketcher can make both more powerful as well, though still not nearly as suited for precision work as freecad

[@cheesedoff-with4410]

I've tended to start off with the Part Design WB and then switch over to the Part WB for its Boolean tools. I liked your reasoning for why one might use the different benches. I'll try using the Part WB more. I noticed you mirrored the fillet. I've tended to save filleting right until the end as I know the OpenCascade kernel can have problems on occassions. (By the way, you made that curved line split seem effortless.) Yes, another eye-opening video on FreeCAD. Thanks.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

I do tend to end up using the part workbench more and more these days. I do challenge myself to keep inside the Part Design. The other day I was doing a quick F1 nose cone in the part design and had to resist using the part but I managed to stop myself lol. Yes filleting and chamfers I keep right to the end but if I know I am going to finish with a mirror I tend to fillet and then the mirror and that's the end of the job. But I always wonder if this is right. As it's the last action I am guessing it's OK. Glad you enjoying the videos.

[@Appregator]

I think this is the first time I understand the difference. This is a great explanation of the whole tree structure thing. I was a bit perplexed as to how you migrated the Part Design thingy into the Part WB, but overall it was excellent. Those short cuts are presumably obtainable somewhere. I'll have to replay a few times over that section.

[@lewiscobb7817]

Very useful video to enlighten those like me that have tried not to venture into the part workbench for fear of a dark abyss from which there is no escape- LOL

[@jjfoerch]

Exactly the video I have been looking for - thank you.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Great to hear 👍

[@peterbarratt8699]

As usual, a great instruction and comparison, well explained. Just a pity the toy prop will not work. Consider the pitch of the blade halves - one side pushes while the other side pulls. I realize it is only an exercise, but could be misleading for the more newbies in the audience. 😁

[@cadcam-uz1mv]

Really nice videos. Would you consider doing a comparison video of the recent release of LinkStage3 vs FC master, especially where some of the barriers like multiple objects, etc are removed from Part Design?

[@clementclarisseclemen3d708]

Thanks dude for talking about this mighty "part" (workbench) of FreeCAD. Here, in France, i'm almost unfortunately the only one who talk about and use it (i do videos on that in french, however, english automatic subtitles are available)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you. It's is a great workbench and a vital part of freecad, I think I use it much more than part design as it is so flexible

[@meeekstubbular]

Ici en Australie, je parle bcp plus anglais que Francais et recament ai commence a apprendre FreeCad. Biensure je le fais en Anglais et apprecie bcp cette video. Alors bonne chance. Mais si tu sais comment 'couper' un cube sur ses diagonal ca m'aiderais bcp. Sur les video je vois les 'slicing' mais pas diagonalement comme je le voudrais. J'ai essayer de manipuler les fleches sur Plan>Transform mais ca ne marche pas???

[@fraaancooo]

This video was a blow mind for me! Simply enlightening! Thank you very much for this! People like you make me love more and more Freecad.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

That's great to hear, there are going to be a few more videos like this in the future. I have been doing some extensive work with the part workbench lately and I need to share this knowledge. It will really show how they are set apart.

[@fraaancooo]

@@MangoJellySolutions awesome! anxiously waiting 😊

[@biomerl]

Holy shit man, watching you jump between all these benches made me go from skeptical of freecad thinking "they could remove half this crap" to thinking "holy crap that's an awesome tool"

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you 😊 there is so much more freecad has to offer with other workbenches as well. Sometimes there can be to many workbenches lol

[@DanielMelendrezPhD]

Awesome explanation. I have not used the curves workbench. I will give it a try VERY soon. Kudos!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you for the kind comment. I have a number of curve wb tutorials on my channel as well 😁

[@joe7272]

Fantastic video and very easy to follow

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you, glad you think so

[@oieieio741]

Great description and very helpful. Thank you MJ

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Happy you liked the video 👍😁

[@explorelearnshare8222]

Thank you for this! Super enlightening; my future models also thank you in advance!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Glad you enjoyed and thank you for the comments

[@babasaly1]

amazing video, so simple to follow, and a great explaination.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you, and thanks for the feedback.

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

Nice explaination of the difference. I have been using the Part Design workbench to make a few 3D printed designs, and have wondered what the difference is and why I might want to use the part workbench. Perhaps I should have a go at it again - I stopped because I got lots of strange messages about things not being solids, or parts from a different body or something like that. I know that as I understand how things fit together this hopefully will not be a problem! FreeCAD is an amazing tool, but its not easy for someone like myself who doesn't have a CAD background to always see what is going on.... I've been using OpenSCAD a lot recently because it makes more sense to my "programmer" mind, but it looks to me like the Part workbench is closer to the way OpenSCAD works than the Part Design workbench.

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thanks glad you like. Yes beginners to freecad can end up having a rough ride and maybe the part design is where as a beginner the journey should start. Because the part workbench is so generic it allows you to create faces, shells and solids all in the same part. Where as the part design just allows solids. The former requires a deeper knowledge of what these are and how to use them and I think that's where things start to fall apart and beginners go elsewhere. Trust me even with CAD knowledge I was first pretty confused with the product and had to take a step back. Its has a pretty steep learning curve. I have little experience with SCAD. and having a similar mind as a Dev I don't know why I haven't gone down that route yet. I must have a look some day.

[@clementclarisseclemen3d708]

You got two features that you can use in this, which are "convert to solid" in "part" rolling menu and "solid from a shell" in "advanced creation form utility" (or something like that, in any case, it's french name is "utilitaire avancé de création de formes", you may found it on their wiki) It did'nt deform or do whatever to your drawings, just generate a solid version of it...

[@Bordpie]

I have only used the part workbench, coming from fusion 360 about 6 months ago, and at first it definitely felt tedious doing operations with separate sketches, and then doing boolean operations with them etc. I started on the Part workbench because I tend to make complex designs with many separate bodies, and you can only work on a single body at a time in part design e.g. can't split bodies (although I believe this is being worked on). However as I got used to it, I realised the part workbench is much more powerful, since the part tree, is essentially the same as the part design sequence (or other CAD sequential operations), just displayed in a different manner. The extra strength of the part workbench, is that you can then have multiple branching paths to build your object. With the sequential type structure, a small change at the start requires recomputing the whole sequence, whereas only the following features in the tree need to be recomputed in the part workbench. It looks very similar to OpenSCAD, in that each operation is basically a function acting on the previous nested functions. In fact that's probably exactly what it is. You can even import OpenSCAD files and it will essentially be converted to a part workbench design which can then be used in FreeCAD which is really cool. It would be even more cool if it went the other way, making customisers straight out of CAD software would be awesome. The benefit to the part workbench approach is that you can reuse the same sub-components just by using them in different operations. Like you could do a cut operation on the prop blade in this video for example, and it would create a new separate object, using the same original 'branch'' of the prop blade. In F360 you would need to copy the base object at the right place in the operation sequence, move to a different part of the sequence, then use it for whatever you need, which is laborious and wastes a lot of time recomputing things you don't need it to. The part workbench essentially has lots of things in parallel, rarther than sequential. Another benefit is that the part workbench is lower level in FreeCAD and therefore more robust. I used nTopology recently and this works in a similar way, each operation is a 'block'' which acts on previous nested 'blocks'. I thought this was really novel and neat until I used FreeCAD and realised it's basically just a very low level way of structuring things.

[@HansBaier]

Excellent explanation, as always!

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thank you 👍

[@TheSillybits]

Interesting, I wonder however, how do you work precisely in part design? Like lining the blades exactly at the center and symmetrical for instance?

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Mostly you would use the placement in the data tab. When you work with part design it is much more easier as you have one single object referencing other geometry whilst attaching it to faces. You can still attach sketches to faces with the part but when you start mixing workbenches then you have to be mindful of placement. Such as when I created the blades. I should of been more aware where I started the sketch b splines as the point of origin in the sketch is the pivot / placement point.

[@Miniellipse]

I have the same problem w Part WB. The inability to place things accurately relative to each other makes it annoying.

[@clementclarisseclemen3d708]

@@Miniellipse hi dude, it's feasible by right click, select "transform" and you can set the accuracy that you need both in translation and rotation, then moving by clicking on the arrows and rotate by clicking on curved lines.

[@Miniellipse]

@@clementclarisseclemen3d708 Thanks. I know that.. My comment was not clear. I would like to move objects to centers, edges or corners of other shapes. Sort of like snapping in other programs. Is that possible in FreeCAD?

[@clementclarisseclemen3d708]

@@Miniellipse i think you can by using coaxiality constraints in "sketch" workbench

[@meeekstubbular]

Wow what a video! Just a little too advanced for me...(Have to admit I try to run before leaning to walk!) I came here trying to slice a cubic object 'diagonally' By this I mean from a top corner to the opposite bottom corner or above according to what I want. All the tutorials I watched seem to show horizontal split. I played a little with the arrows in Plan>Transform but somehow failed to achieve what I wanted. Anyway thanks a lot for this :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

There is a lot to digest in the 😊 So there are a number of ways. if you get you object and then create a plane in the part wb and rotate this into position. Next ctrl select the object, then the plane then go to top menu, part, split, slice apart. In the treeview you will see both slices the one you don't want can be hidden.

[@ShamanthS13]

Thank you so much! Very well explained and i am sure a lot of new users will find this incredibly useful! Cheers! Was going through your old videos and I wasnt able to find the beeblock part 3. Is it a work in progress or benched?

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Thanks for that, and the feedback, glad you enjoyed. Wow, now that's an old video. Trying to remember back, I have an idea that might of been a freecad python video. If it's the one I think it is it never got released as I had issues with sound. Need to dig and have a look.

[@noanyobiseniss7462]

This was spot on! thank you so much. :)

[@MangoJellySolutions]

Glad it was helpful!

[@warperone]

great stuff and answers so many questions --- would be good if you did an update for V0.20 ;-)

[@ardacobanoglu703]

If we have two solids seperately and we want to use a sketch of ones in the other one as a reference for example to combine to solids with screw. My goal is to automatize it (if i change the sketch at one side it will automatically change the hole of screw at the other part). Do you have any recommendations for it?

[@fltchr4449]

Great video.

[@ardacobanoglu703]

Amazing video!!

[@goowatch]

Gracias por la explicación, ciertamente estos bancos de trabajo generan cierta confusión en su uso, aunque las herramientas de cada uno tienen diferentes funcionalidades.

[@meeekstubbular]

Que feliz entiendo cerca de todo lo que dices .... Estoy apprendedo 'libreCad' y tambien espanol Ha ha :)

[@thomasneemann5618]

thank you

[@noahphense]

Badass! Thx

[@CrudelyMade]

Is there not an ability to put a 2-minute summary in the beginning of this video that would hit the highlights of why one versus the other without taking a half hour to answer the question? I understand why the half hour might be required for details, but a TLDR version at the beginning would be nice.

[@BrainDeadEngineering]

WOW !

[@dombthekid]

I really appreciate your content but I’m dead broke, so I’m leaving a like and a comment to help engagement. It’s not much but it’s all I can give right now

[@MangoJellySolutions]

No problems appreciate the like 😊👍👍👍👍

[@Paulklampeeps]

I don't get it why body is only limited in part design?

[@MangoJellySolutions]

The body is a part design specific version of the part object (looks like the body but a yellow version) . Yes, I agree, can be very confusing.

[@Elephantine999]

You lost me...