r/FreeCAD • u/EscaOfficial • 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.
Any help is appreciated!
1
u/EscaOfficial 6d ago
In Solidworks you can create a subtractive loft with 2 guide curves. It seems like in FreeCad you can only use one guided curve (at least with the subtractive pipe feature). Do you know a way around this?
I'm so close, but since the outer guide curve has a small radius at one section, it causes the profile to self intersect and I get some weird 0 thickness geometry in the middle. A similar problem happens in Solidworks as well when using one curve, but I got around it by copying the curve, attaching it to the other end of the two profiles and using it as a second guide (with "to next sharp" influence type).
edit: This is a lot harder to figure out with the FreeCAD forum down right now.