FreeCAD hangs when adding more ShapeStrings

[TacticalN8]

First off, I'm very new to FreeCAD, and CAD in general, so bear with me. I've also tried seaching this forum, but haven't been able to find anything related to this, other than one thread that basically just said, that's the way CAD works. So just looking to verify. I'm working on a design that we can 3D print to display a number of small products that we sell. I sketched out a shape and planned to place 42 different items on this display board.

What I'm trying to do is add an engraving with the product name next to each of the 42 points. I am almost half way complete with adding the engravings, but noticed that the application is taking increasingly longer to save and even add features as I progress. Perhaps there's a better way to add these labels, but here is what I've been doing:

1. From the Draft workbench, I'm using the "Shape from Text" option to apply the label name next to each point. (This step is still pretty quick.)

2. I'm then add the ShapeString to the body I'm working with by simple drag and drop.

3. I then switch to the part design workbench and create a pocket with the shapestring. This is where the application hangs. Initially it was just for a few seconds, but now that I have about 15 shapestrings, it's taking a long time. Like 6-7 minutes. It takes a good 3-4 minutes after selecting the pocket option, just to get to the point where I can specify how deep to make the pocket.

I then specify that I want the pocket to be .050" deep, and click close. This takes another several minutes. FreeCAD will say "not responding" but it does eventually complete and come back.

I'm just wondering if there is another way that I should be creating these engraved labels, or if this is normal behavior when CAD calculates all of the curves of the text. The process I'm doing is working, it's just taking a very long time to complete. My PC is decently spec'd out with a solid state drive, an i7 processor, and 16 GB of RAM. I can't see any performance bottlenecks anywhere.

I'm currently creating these engravings with Impact font that is .150" tall. I am also running the FreeCAD version 0.20.2. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I have experienced something similar with bad fonts. You can use a program like Fontforge to check and possibly repair a broken font. A first indicator of such issues is FreeCAD's CheckGeometry tool with BOPCheck enabled.

[TacticalN8]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I have experienced something similar with bad fonts. You can use a program like Fontforge to check and possibly repair a broken font. A first indicator of such issues is FreeCAD's CheckGeometry tool with BOPCheck enabled.

Thanks for the suggestions Chris! I'm running the geometry check right now. Looks like it may take awhile, but we'll see what it returns. I've also downloaded the FontForge app to see what I can find.

[Roy_043]

The main problem is probably that you add ever more complex features. Combining all or several ShapeStrings and then creating a pocket may work better. Draft_Draft2Sketch can be used to combine ShapeStrings.

[TacticalN8]

The main problem is probably that you add ever more complex features. Combining all or several ShapeStrings and then creating a pocket may work better. Draft_Draft2Sketch can be used to combine ShapeStrings.

Thanks Roy! I was wondering if there was a way to combine strings so that I could create a single pocket feature, but didn't know how. As I mentioned, I'm a CAD Noob, so thanks for the link. That's super easy, and I'll give it a try!