Hi all, I’m studying Kicad (for PCB design) and Freecad (for solid object design). I’ve noticed that, with Freecad already present, installing Kicad (any version), this removes essential packages for Freecad’s gmsh module. Gmsh is used to simulate stress and strain tests. When I reopen Freecad, I can’t use the gmsh module anymore and it appears in the Freecad report “Gmsh executable not found”
I wish I could have both Kicad and Freecad installed, I don’t want to install one and uninstall the other alternately because it would help to have both at the same time.
Greetings
Sorry, continuing to experiment (unwisely) on the command terminal in bulk, I discovered that I was struggling to install gmsh the wrong way.
Freecad and kicad are compatible if gmsh is installed with:
sudo pip3 install --upgrade gmsh
sorry for the inconvenience, good evening
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Well, I don’t know about ‘the wrong way’ but, I do know that I’ve been installing Gmesh for several years for FreeCad (to use Fem workbench).
All I do is: Download gmesh, double-click, after install, I point FreeCad’s FEM to the location.
To see if anything has changed and because my version was 4.8, I just completely uninstalled Gmesh 4.8. Then, downloaded Gmesh 4.11.1 then, installed it and pointed FreeCad’s Fem workbench to it.
Bingo! Still works… Of course, you know that the Workbenches show-up in the Pref’s panel once their workbench is activated (in this case, activating Fem workbench)…
ADDED: You might find my post on FEM of PCB interesting…
If you are working with both KiCad and FreeCAD, then you probably also want to checkout the KiCad StepUp workbench in FreeCAD.
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