I haven’t read it 
. But I know someone here will take a look.
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Opened FreeCAD again yesterday after over a year. Just stared at the screen, O-Boy. I have a very good memory, it’s just short. Thanks for the Link, very timely!
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Well, I’ll take a look at it. I’ve dabbled with freecad briefly, but didn’t have enough time to really learn it. Made a half sphere and cut it on my mpcnc and haven’t touched it since. A book would definitely come in handy.
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Fusion 360 renewed me again, so I keep being lazy about learning FreeCad. Short term, it’s more productive/profitable to spend my time making things - but F360 is starting to annoy me.
Little things like owning a menu forces the window to de-maximise and move slightly off screen so I have to fix that. Taking longer to open and refusing to close unless it finishes uploading whatever, then not being able to upload whatever so i can’t get recent work on my second computer.
I understand that none of these programs are perfect and I’ve been using fusion for free, but i really need to make some sit-down time to see if FC sketch/CAM are good enough to save me the F360 subscription cost, or whether F360 sketch/CAM are basically good enough to justify the cost. Being able to save and control my files locally would a bonus, but it doesn’t really seem to affect me too much (except for the forced upload/download causing it to hang.
This guide might be just the thing to push me through. Thanks a ton.
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I use FreeCAD almost exclusively now for CAD/CAM. It has a full featured set of tools and is very versatile once you get used to the user interface. I wish the user interface was a little more intuitive because I have to read through the documentation every time I try something new. So this pdf guide looks to be very useful. I looked through the whole guide and as I suspected, it doesn’t have any tutorials on how to do cnc machining with FreeCAD. There is a guide on how to do laser cutting but it doesn’t mention the issue with importing Inkscape svg into FreeCAD.
If there is enough interest I was thinking of putting together a detailed step by step guide on how to import an Inkscape drawing into FreeCAD and generate a gcode file suitable for cnc milling.
Here’s an overview of the process I worked out for profile milling operations. It took some time to get all the details right. Even though there are several steps I can usually complete the process in less than 5 minutes.
In Inkscape, all paths need to be closed, FreeCAD with throw an error otherwise. Also, set the position of the object you wish to mill to 0, 0 before exporting.
Export Inkscape drawings to dxf - don’t use svg because FreeCAD doesn’t convert the dimensions correctly.
In the FreeCAD draft tool, select all elements in the drawing from the model tab on the left and upgrade them to faces by applying the modification/upgrade menu item twice.
Convert the faces to a sketch with the modification/convert to sketch menu item.
Switch to the part design tool and select the sketch from the model tree on the left and
create a body for the sketch by applying the partdesign/create a body menu item.Switch to the part tool and select the part/extrude menu item.
Provide details on the material thickness into the data entry form.
Switch to the path tool and create a job from the path/job tool.
A form will appear to select the object you just created for to generate the paths.
In the job data tabs select one of the available milling tools, such as 1/8 in milling bit.
Select the profile operation from the path/profile menu.
Enter values for path final depth and step down in the profile parameters depths tab. 1 to 2 mm step down is usually good.
If you want to add hold-down tabs select path/path dressup/tag menu.
Finally, select path/post process menu to generate the gcode.
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