Welder looking to be more efficient using FreeCAD

[Montoya88]

Hi folks,
I run a small fabrication shop, I fab in the daytime and draft in the night time I'm literally a one man crew. I've been using FreeCAD since my join date on this forum, I know enough to get by.

One thing I looking to improve is creating structural shapes ex: square, rectangular, round tubing.

This is my process lets say it's 2" square tubing:
1. Create a cube 2" x 2" x length needed
2. Create another cube minus the wall thickness lets say it's 1/8" so this cube will 1.75" plus length of the first one.
3. Center the cube appropriately.
4.Perform a cut for the Part workbench.

Now I have a square tube, 19 more to go....

Bottom line is there a more efficient way to go about this?

Thanks,
Tim.

[Willem]

Hi, a lot of steel profiles are in the arch workbech

Schermafdruk van 2017-03-17 09-09-45.png (19.42 KiB) Viewed 3806 times

After placing you can change to the part design workbench for the rest of the job

[Montoya88]

I will definitely give it a try tonight or during my lunch. Thank you.

[Kunda1]

I will definitely give it a try tonight or during my lunch. Thank you.

Feel free to document some of your experience for potentially other welders who use FreeCAD.

[Montoya88]

Feel free to document some of your experience for potentially other welders who use FreeCAD.

Absolutely, I was hoping the subject of this thread will attract other welders/fabricators to help answer similar questions. And hopefully help benefit the developers of FreeCAD with input from my end.

With that being said I would like to use this thread for multiple questions that can't be found in topic search.

[Montoya88]

Hi, a lot of steel profiles are in the arch workbechSchermafdruk van 2017-03-17 09-09-45.pngAfter placing you can change to the part design workbench for the rest of the job

I would like to know if there is a thread, You Tube video, some resource to learn how to use the arch work bench?

[kkremitzki]

Hi, a lot of steel profiles are in the arch workbechSchermafdruk van 2017-03-17 09-09-45.pngAfter placing you can change to the part design workbench for the rest of the job

I would like to know if there is a thread, You Tube video, some resource to learn how to use the arch work bench?

This video was just recently posted in the forums:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6PIEi33R1g

This is a bit shorter overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTDOeHapv_E

[Willem]

Hi, in the book Yorik made is a good arch tutorial starting at page 112. Here the link for a download

https://www.gitbook.com/book/yorikvanha ... al/details

[looo]

maybe my little workbench is of any help for your task:
https://github.com/looooo/freecad_frame

example (quite old): (pie-menu is not part of the workbench)
https://vimeo.com/127369120

[bejant]

One thing I looking to improve is creating structural shapes ex: square, rectangular, round tubing.

This is my process lets say it's 2" square tubing:
1. Create a cube 2" x 2" x length needed
2. Create another cube minus the wall thickness lets say it's 1/8" so this cube will 1.75" plus length of the first one.
3. Center the cube appropriately.
4.Perform a cut for the Part workbench.

Now I have a square tube, 19 more to go....

Bottom line is there a more efficient way to go about this?

I think using the Part WB is more complicated for doing this. Using Part Design instead, only one Sketch is needed and for rectangular Hollow Structural Shapes ("HSS") you only need the height, width, and wall thickness to create a Sketch of the profile (per AISC max outside corner radius is 3x wall thickness). Create a Sketch of the cross-section profile and use Part Design WB > Pad to create the desired length.

20170318a.png (24.54 KiB) Viewed 3631 times

Change any of these values to your liking, and save the changed FreeCAD file as a new document. I started with a model of HSS 4 x 3 x 1/4 and it only took a few seconds to change it to HSS 2 x 2 x 1/8 as shown above and attached below.

20170318a-HSS_4x3x0.25.fcstd

(17.04 KiB) Downloaded 79 times

20170318b-HSS_2x2x0.125.fcstd

(17.22 KiB) Downloaded 103 times

OS: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
Word size of OS: 32-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 32-bit
Version: 0.16.6707 (Git)
Build type: None
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-16
Hash: 5465bc47c95db45e0be85dc0e2872419efadce0f
Python version: 2.7.12
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 6.8.0.oce-0.17