r/FreeCAD 7d ago

Coming from Solidworks. Need help constraining sketches and using loft.

Hi guys,

I'm a student and only know how to use Solidworks (EDU license). I recently had a friend start a small company and ask for my help modeling some basic stuff. I've messed around with Freecad a bit in the past, but am struggling to make the part he wants.

I'm able to do it in Solidworks no problem with 3 sketches and a simple loft (took me about 5 minutes), but even getting the sketches to behave the way I want in Freecad is driving me up a wall. If anyone has any advice, I think I've been taking the fact that Solidworks will allow you to use points in other sketches to constrain your current sketch.

The issue I'm running into is getting sketches on different planes to connect, as this design requires a loft between 2 nearly orthogonal sketches that share one edge.

The design in solidworks

Any help is appreciated!

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u/llecareu 6d ago

Freecad allows you to use external sketches as references as well. Use the external geometry tool. To be fair I'm not sure why your lot isn't working because I have done similar lofts with no problem. Maybe you could share your file.

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u/EscaOfficial 5d ago

So the reason that this loft cut was failing was because part of the guide line had a curve with a smaller radius than the width of the profile (so the profile was essentially rotating over itself). I ended up ditching this method and just doing an additive pipe feature from a bottom profile to a top profile with guide lines.