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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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
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.
I think it is still so. In few minutes I found the offer for 114 pcs of DELL 15" laptop. Not very capable (Core 2 Duo, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, but for only PLN 499 (so today 499/4.57 = EUR 109).
It seems that the Covid craze where everybody wanted to buy a computer for either entertainment or working at home is over now. The three (local) stores I checked all seem to have go down in prices recently and they’re (almost) back to prices from the start of 2020.
I’ve used an old “DualCore” untill recently, and it was quite workable, but a tiny bit sluggish, especially noticable with big sketches in FreeCAD.
About half a year ago I got an i7-960 for free (Also 10 years old) It has a passmark rating of around 3000, which is twice as fast as my older “dualcore”, and it’s just adequate for almost everything I do.
If you can spare the money, then investing a bit more (Around EUR200 to EUR250) can get you a decent 4th gen Intel processor in a box, which will get you quite a lot more speed for a small bit of extra money. Also, those office machines are probably never opened (except maybe once or twice for an upgrade by people who know what they’re doing). They do probably have made quite a few hours, but there is plenty life left in them.
I am thinking of buying a new PC myself. The main reason to do so is that I want an 43" monitor such as the LG43U700 or Gigabyte-AORUS-FV43U. Prices of decent video cards are still completely bonkers at the moment, so my options are an Ryzen 5600G or wait another year.
Also, if you buy a raspi, add a power supply, a box, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and an extra USB hub then the total costs are adding up. With such an Ex- office machine you just plug in the cables and it works.
