Any metallic or plastic solid and a paint job already make it at least two materials. Multi-materials are only possible in the Arch workbench, but that is not enough.You can have a piece of metal or block of concrete with a coating on one side and nothing at all on the other one. It is impossible to set a different material to every face of a part.Here are just some of the more obvious ones: The existing materials system is currently used in FEM and Arch workbenches that are available by default, as well as in 3rd-party workbenches like Rocket and Render.Īll this is a great start. For each material, it’s possible to set properties in several categories:Ĭustom properties can be added to the user-defined category to accommodate for workflow specifics. It relies on a small catalog of materials (slightly over 100) available throughout FreeCAD. A major part of the existing materials system is the Material Editor: Let’s take a closer look at what’s currently available in FreeCAD. So What’s Wrong With What We Already Have? They would appreciate not having to re-learn everything just because it’s a different set of tools in the same CAD system they use. An architect by trade can be a tinkerer in their spare time, making Arduino-based devices, small home automation projects, and the like. It’s also a great idea to have a more or less uniform UX/UI for working with materials in different scenarios. So a good materials system has to be able to deal with compound materials / multi-materials. A model rocket will have a primer paint on top of the body, and then a coat of spray paint on top of parts of the primer paint. A concrete wall will have a first coat and then a finish. Otherwise simulations won’t provide usable results. So a materials system has to provide tools to build relationships between different material properties. For example, we know that Young's modulus of metals decreases when temperature increases. We know that materials behave differently depending on environment conditions. So a good materials system needs a database of materials with mechanical, thermal, electrical, architectural, and other properties. We also need materials to make commercial-grade rendering easy. We need vendor-specific data to make an estimation of material cost. We need advanced mechanical properties, as well as thermal and electrical properties to run various simulations (think finite element analysis). As engineers, we need basic mechanical properties like density to calculate mass. Materials are a lot more than the color of solids in the viewport. Why A Good Materials System Is Important Dave volunteered to lead the effort creating an updated materials system for FreeCAD and has been actively working towards that goal for the past several weeks. He is the main person behind the Rocket workbench that helps design model and amateur rockets and components for them.
MOST USEFUL FREECAD MACROS SOFTWARE
He worked over 40 years as a software developer in government, supply chain, and automotive industries. Dave Carter has been a FreeCAD user since v0.16 (primarily for rocketry and 3D printing). We are introducing a new co-author in this post. But first, why are we even discussing it? Let’s discuss what’s already available, what’s missing, and what’s a possible way forward with this. While it works in some use cases, we think it can be vastly improved to become a lot more useful. FreeCAD has a basic implementation of a materials system.
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