FreeCAD - Gorgeous! I am a little intimidated!

[graham-xrf]

I've got an older SandyBridge i7 w/ only 8GB sitting on the bench running Mint 18.3
Might just have to dust it off and move it to my desk where the good monitors are.
Dig out an SSD & upgrade it to 19 and try it out...

Yes to all, except for the upgrade - you get to install Mint 20 instead.
I understand the KDE Plasma desktop, or maybe a version of it, has all the eye candy and nice desktop features, with lightweight impact on system. I have not used KDE for years.

One tip if using a fast SSD is to remember that it works by wear leveling, to spread the load of re-writes, just like on any flash memory. You do it a favour if you edit /etc/fstab, and set the options for any mounted space to include noatime, between commas, with no spaces. That stops the SSD having to record the (thousands) of unnecessary write times.

I have a 500G Samsung 860 EVO NAND SSD lurking on my desk, just pleading to be joined onto a new motherboard with something sweet from AMD or Intel, A nice 2TB backstore, a Nvidia GPU for the twin screens, and throw in the old Nvidia Tesla K40 GPU with 12GB fast video memory and 2880 CPU cores. Hmm. I forgot the 64GB DDR4, and the silent fan fluid cooler kit. Should I do this deed?

 

[Lo-Fi]

Seems rude not to, Graham...

 

[middle.road]

Gotta go big in regards to the cooling, how about nitrogen?

Ah heck, 20 is out? I haven't checked anything since last winter.

Thanks for the SSD tip. I salvaged a 256GB mSata out of a dead Dell Latitude i7, ordered a Sabrent adapter/enclosure off Amazon, worked out well.

Yes to all, except for the upgrade - you get to install Mint 20 instead.
I understand the KDE Plasma desktop, or maybe a version of it, has all the eye candy and nice desktop features, with lightweight impact on system. I have not used KDE for years.

One tip if using a fast SSD is to remember that it works by wear leveling, to spread the load of re-writes, just like on any flash memory. You do it a favour if you edit /etc/fstab, and set the options for any mounted space to include noatime, between commas, with no spaces. That stops the SSD having to record the (thousands) of unnecessary write times.

I have a 500G Samsung 860 EVO NAND SSD lurking on my desk, just pleading to be joined onto a new motherboard with something sweet from AMD or Intel, A nice 2TB backstore, a Nvidia GPU for the twin screens, and throw in the old Nvidia Tesla K40 GPU with 12GB fast video memory and 2880 CPU cores. Hmm. I forgot the 64GB DDR4, and the silent fan fluid cooler kit. Should I do this deed?

 

[graham-xrf]

For those just getting going with FreeCAD, this video might be useful.
It is 2 years old, so some of the issues might have changed by now.
They cease to be confusing and/or annoying once you know about them.
HERE -->

 

[Technical Ted]

With the recent changes to Fusion 360 I'll be looking into switching to this. I've gotten fairly good with Fusion (for my use), but now that AutoDesk is closing the door for hobbyist it might be time to switch. I'll be exporting some of my projects in step format before the end of the month so they will be available. One drawing per model.... you've got to be kidding!

Ted

 

[ghack]

Doesnt free cad only do metric, if i remember right.? cause I dont. I tried it a couple years ago and couldnt get anything going in it. i dont think like it does.

 

[ErichKeane]

Doesnt free cad only do metric, if i remember right.? cause I dont. I tried it a couple years ago and couldnt get anything going in it. i dont think like it does.

Nope, you can use imperial! There is a global setting in the preferences that selects between a few different options. This might be a little outdated(as far as the options), but shows how:

 

[graham-xrf]

It's interesting that FreeCAD does instant units conversion, while still accepting any and all sorts of units. If you enter (say) 1 in, and backspace over the "mm" when the global setting is mm, it accepts it, and puts 25.4mm in its place, Similarly, if you have chosen inches for the default, and enter a mm dimension, it understands, and all you see in the end is the correct inches.

I even tried "0.25 yd" while in metric mode, and it did not stumble, coming up with 228.6mm. There may be limits to this game. I dare say it would not like "miles" while in millimetres mode.

Earlier versions allowed in-line arithmetic while entering dimensions. The latest version still does, except now you have to use brackets around the expression. I don't know who would want it, but you can go down to almost molecular dimensions.

 

[Lo-Fi]

Once you've written the code for one unit conversion, adding more is trivial. The hard bit, believe it or not, is writing the parser to understand what unit is being input.

 

[graham-xrf]

I get that.
The "units" program, available in most distros looks primitive (it runs in a terminal), but it's very handy, and damn clever!