It took me a few months to establish my rules on how not to lose colors when exporting a model to KiCad. The key to my method is (got that suggestion from you) the use of KSU ‘Make compound…’. Don’t remember exactly and I am writing from PC where I don’t have it to check.
What you write now is something new for me.
Why you suggest to make a copy before exporting and not just exporting 3D model you have? What happens by making copy?
I am asking for an explanation for laymen.
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As a non engineer, I’ve learned a lot about FreeCAD from Joko. I’ve also stumbled across another series that is currently being produced (episode 3 just dropped only 3 days ago), though he uses the RealThunder fork. Now, by the title it is apparently going to be targeted towards creating model for 3D printing, but in the 3 videos that have been produced so far he is still introducing the Part Design and Sketcher workbenches, and hasn’t gotten into modelling anything substantial yet.
there are two methods to easily export the 3D model with ksu…
the first one is make a union of your model, and the second is make a compound.
Both methods are oriented to give you a single object to be exported as STEP.
Union is sometimes an intensive process but will fuse all parts in a single object even when imported back to the mechanical sw.
I normally suggest to make a copy before exporting the model because the export process could modify your original model; the scripts was developed before the introduction of some FC features.
Using the two buttons ‘make a union’ or ‘make a compound’ in ksu will not touch your original model and will give you a unioned copy of your model to be exported.
I think there should be a short video tutorial, based on the earlier version of ksu, that explains the process, but I cannot find it ATM.
I don’t care about my original model 
I save file before starting the process of exporting (so before Making a Union) and then don’t save it so my original model is preserved.
I don’t understand FreeCAD enough to understand what are these things that are added in my project tree. As I don’t like to work on anything I don’t understand I prefer to not save file after there are some changes I don’t follow. I would not know what I can do with that file if I will need to modify my model (with the file I save before it I know how to do some changes as everything what is there I know when and why I added).
What I mainly don’t understand is:
If I have a Body (I understand it as a single object) and color its faces then why:
- if I export it to KiCad (using KSU) I will lost that colors,
- if I do Union of my Body and then export to KiCad colors are preserved.
I understand - I have a Body, it is single object. I have to do Union of it to get a singe object ???
Now I supposed that may be making a copy (I don’t know how in FreeCAD to make a copy) you can also protect colors. But as you write that it is to protect the original object that may be it will not protect colors.
My current state in FreeCAD is that I have a way for all my needs, but that needs are not very advanced. I use FreeCAD only to:
- make my own models,
- shift and rotate the found step files (till now only from Wurth www) to fix to my footprints.
A Body is a container for many objects.
A Union is a single fused object.
That’s fine.
Ksu is aimed to generate 3d models which are compliant with the KiCAD Library Conventions and this needs a bit of more work sometimes.
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In the main FAQ page:
There is a link to
Maybe it helps a bit that it’s not completely forgotten / burried.
I supposed Part is a set of objects (each object made of different material with its color) but Body looked for me as made of one material (only one color) with a list of operations needed to do that Body.
The fact that when selecting the last operation I select a Body (at least I understand it that way) also suggested me that it is one object.
I was surprised that I can’t color Body faces when I select Body in tree but I can color them when I select last operation made on Body.
Even I tried some reading at official FreeCAD page I didn’t found any explanation about some basic understanding what is what in tree view. But I was not looking intensively for it.
Even it seems now that I understood that Body is a container I cannot rule out that if the topic reappears in six months’ time, I will not re-think the old way.
Maybe I didn’t explain myself well… I meant inside a Body there are (object) Features
https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Body
In FreeCAD the word “Body” is normally used to refer to a PartDesign Body object (
PartDesign::Bodyclass) that is defined by the PartDesign Workbench. This is a container object that can hold 2D sketches and 3D geometrical features to build a solid shape.
So just one solid shape made as one or more features.
The newest freecad version in my Debian linux buster 64-bit repository is freecad 0.18~pre1+dfsg1-5. Is there a newer Debian freecad package somewhere ?
Have you updated to bullseye? I’m showing a .19 as the new ‘stable’.
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/freecad
Edit: OK. Pub night just saw you are on Buster. Not sure what is in ‘backports’ if you are familiar with them.
At one time in the past year or so I downloaded Kicad from a backports repository, so I will see if I took notes on how to download a deb package from backports.
UPDATE:
# apt install -t buster-backports freecad
Reading package lists… Done
*Building dependency tree *
Reading state information… Done
freecad is already the newest version (0.18~pre1+dfsg1-5).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 321 not upgraded.
Doesn’t appear there’s a freecad 0.18 for debian buster. Or I don’t know what I’m doing – always a possiblity
you may try with AppImages
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You explained yourself very well.
I answered because I just wanted to show how someone who knows very little about FreeCAD can ratiocinate.
I downloaded the FREECAD 19 .AppImage file and ran it according to the instructions at https://itsfoss.com/use-appimage-linux/ from a shell.
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, maui.
I will assume that no file written by the .AppImage application could be opened by the earlier FREECAD 18.
not really… it depends if you use new features available only in 0.19
But 0.19 is the actual stable release and I would suggest to stay on it (lot of bug fixes and new features).
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Okay, maui, I appreciate your advice.
Hello all, I am the maintainer for the FreeCAD Debian packages and the PPAs, among other roles in the project. Fortunate timing to come poking around these forums for the first time with this thread near the top, it seems. Feel free to ping me for FreeCAD-related problems and even if I can’t help I will try to point people along in the right direction.
Unfortunately even the just-released Debian Bullseye does not have the latest stable point release for FreeCAD. Like you saw, though, newer versions have not yet been pushed to Backports, either. This is mainly just because I’m a somewhat new Debian Developer and haven’t gotten to it yet, but it’s definitely on my list. Keep an eye out for an announcement!
By the way, later down on my list, I’m also preparing a dedicated apt repository for FreeCAD. It will be separate from the Debian archive itself but provide packages for Debian(-family) releases, most importantly providing the rebuilds necessary to get FreeCAD working on the Raspberry Pi. Not sure if that’s of much interest here though, I haven’t looked at all into the viability of KiCad on the Pi. If it is a thing, KiCad+FreeCAD will soon be happening on that platform.
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KiCad has been successfully run on the Pi, I remember some discussion in this forum some time ago.
Probably a lot easier than FreeCAD as it is not so 3D graphics intensive
edit Here is one thread
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I think I was one of the first to actually do it and post the results on this forum. I used a RPi3_something with it running some specific distro. It worked, it was SLOW, but for the $ involved, I could not complain.
It did not work well enough to generate much interest; just because one can do something does not mean that one should do something.
However, with the RPi4 hardware, and the right distro, it seems to me like it could become a thing.
That is why I do not even attempt such things.
Those small linux computters are usefull in many applications, but they’re not real desktop replacements.
At least before covid, you could buy quite capable second hand computers for around EUR 200. (Such as 4th gen Intel) I’t’s common for offices to buy new computers every few years, and the old computers go to the second hand market. There are plenty of shops which have 20 or so of the same model second hand computers.
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