It's funny. People describe FreeCAD as maddening or sadistic, and for sure there are elements of the workflow that are frustrating (I'd be happy if I could do the five things I use the Draft workbench for without ever having to open it), but at the same time, it's so liberating and enthralling once you get your head into its way of thinking.
For me it's like QGIS or Inkscape: it's mindblowing that this tool is available to me for free. The trivial things I've been able to do have really changed my life (and I don't mean to overstate that -- these are things I never thought I'd learn and the impacts on my creativity have been striking).
I am using freecad this way already. The macro is for generating variants as part copy objects (fully independent) which are then exported as STEP (or STL).
The macro expect a part container named "export_family" with a single spreadsheet that is used as a template to set any properties and generate the part name.
It will also export any objects within a part container named "export". It also handles recursive part container.
All of that makes possible to export for 3D printing in a single click. Including handling multi material objects more conveniently.
I tried the variant link, but I could only have one variant per link somehow. I couldn't import the same part with multiple variant in the same assembly.
The shapebinder technique near the end of this video is amazing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp6cIMA7LsI
And there's another clever technique using variant links (which you can take a bit further with BaseFeatures):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9C_ahIVKOI
It's funny. People describe FreeCAD as maddening or sadistic, and for sure there are elements of the workflow that are frustrating (I'd be happy if I could do the five things I use the Draft workbench for without ever having to open it), but at the same time, it's so liberating and enthralling once you get your head into its way of thinking.
For me it's like QGIS or Inkscape: it's mindblowing that this tool is available to me for free. The trivial things I've been able to do have really changed my life (and I don't mean to overstate that -- these are things I never thought I'd learn and the impacts on my creativity have been striking).