Assistance with Mirror and Overall Part Design

[AndrewLindsay]

Hello,
I'm creating a 'battery clip' that I can then 3d print. I have managed to design the inner clip outline, as one half, figuring that it is a simple mirror operation, but I am having a few issues.
I have used FreeCad many years ago (Version 0.15) and have installed the latest version (Version 0.20) on my Mac.
I can design the half inner profile, but I want to do the following.
1. Make the walls of the clip 2mm in width to make it solid.
2. Mirror the sketch to complete the design.
I have included my sketch file in case someone is able to assist.

[Willem]

Welcome back. freecad has changed a lot since version 0.15.
The solution for your problem is simple. To make a closed shape draw a line on the vertical axis.
Pad it and at last mirror it

Schermafdruk van 2022-08-06 08-04-20.png (30.08 KiB) Viewed 864 times

[AndrewLindsay]

Cheers. Thanks for the assistance

[mfro]

from your description, it is (at least for me) hard to guess how the finished part is supposed to look like.

Like this:

Clip.png (47.67 KiB) Viewed 840 times

??

That's done like the following:

1. as already noted, the sketch must be closed
2. pad it
3. mirror the pad
4. this is one of the cases where 'Refine' *must* be true for the following step to succeed
5. do a thickness with the front and the back face selected. If you haven't set refine on the mirror, the thickness will have problems with its seam and fail

[chrisb]

You can do this with tools outside of PartDesign:
- move the sketch out and delete the body
- create an Arch->Wall from the sketch. I gave it Width=1mm, Height=10mm
- make a Part->Mirror, if necessary fuse it:

SnipScreenshot-282a72.png (20.81 KiB) Viewed 821 times

[chrisb]

If you want to stay in PartDesign:
- create a SubShapeBinder
- give it an offset (half of the width of the clip)
- pad the SubShapeBinder
- mirror it in PartDesign.

The circular overlaps can be removed by setting Refine=true in the Mirror.

[AndrewLindsay]

Wow!!

So many ways to skin the cat! Thanks for all your assistance. I will look into these solutions and see which one fits my brain/work flow best.

Regards
Andrew Lindsay

[mfro]

Nice one. Should go into a "how to use the not-so-obvious features of ShapeBinders" wiki article.

[thomas-neemann]

Maybe the following is off topic, but I know of one company that complains about autodesk inventor because you can't create changes in the mirrored half at the sketch level. freecad can do that, but probably not (yet) in partdesign

[chrisb]

Maybe the following is off topic

It is indeed.