Code: Select all
OS: Windows 10 Version 2009
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.1.29410 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-20
Hash: f5d13554ecc7a456fb6e970568ae5c74ba727563
Python 3.8.10, Qt 5.15.2, Coin 4.0.1, Vtk 8.2.0, OCC 7.6.3
Locale: English/United States (en_US)
Installed mods:
* Help 1.0.3
* lattice2 1.0.0
I am new to Free CAD, but not to CAD in general which I have used for decades nor to 3D CAD. I have decided to try using Free CAD mostly due to the price issue as I am retired and on a limited income. Fusion 360 seems great and I like it. But they want to play games with the "free" version and I don't like that. And I am not stupid. I have a college degree and have worked for over 45 years as a TV engineer. I have designed and built TV systems as well as electronic equipment and other things. But enough about me.
I worked on my first part in Free CAD in the past week. It is a simple part but it took that long due to what finally came down to an issue of semantics. Specifically the use of the word "HOLE". I wanted to cut an opening in a disk shaped part, but it was not a round opening. So I created a sketch of the shape I needed and then tried to use that sketch to make the opening. In the Part Design workbench I selected the HOLE tool because I wanted a HOLE in my part. But it would not work. It worked just fine to make a threaded hole and that was great. But, in spite of the words "with the selected sketch" in the bubble help, it would not make a hole with an irregular shape from that sketch. And the error messages I got were not very useful in determining why. To me, for the past 75 years, a hole was an open space in something. And a pocket was in my pants, oh, OK a pocket is a cavity like opening, but not usually going all the way through something. Pockets have BOTTOMS. HOLES go through things to the other side.
I posted questions about my difficulty, but no one seemed able to help, they tried, but probably just assumed that I was using the POCKET tool. Finally, after watching a number of videos on Free CAD it dawned on me that "HOLE" does not mean hole in Free CAD. The word "POCKET" actually means hole. I wasted two days in making this discovery.
I would like to suggest a very simple change to the bubble help text for those two tools in the Part Design workbench to possibly save time for other new users. This marked up, screen capture shows it. Just a few extra words.
This very simple change would have saved me two days of work. I have created bubble help text in other programs and believe it should only take a few minutes to incorporate it in the next or some future change.
Thanks!