I’ve tried the dev branch of FreeCAD for a while now, but backed off due to how unpolished it felt. But when I saw FreeCAD V1 RC2 pre-release on GitHub Id thought to try it out.

My first impressions didn’t blow me away, sure there were nice UI touches here and there. But nothing really stood out to me. But that changed when I started cading.

It’s not a major overhaul to my eyes. But the nice touches are everywhere. Like adding a TinkerCAD navigation controls option for beginners, and smart snapping and auto constraints enabled by default. So, so nice especially for noobs who don’t know that >.< is a centre constraint in the tool bar.

But I had a quick project, tonight. Redesign an older model from scratch to add in new parts. My original designs were some of the first real work I did in FreeCAD so it was nice to see the improvements. Out side of legacy bugs like attaching a 3 point arc to a line still being present, the process was smooth, not as pain free as Fusion, but better.

Then at the end when I was adding text to my part. I got to see the best update of them all. If you aren’t aware, adding text to a model is annoying. Especially if you want it a distance from a side or in the middle. You needed to use the measuring tool to get deltas and re measure after every change. I was using the new measuring tool like that too, and thank you devs for adding manual controls and deltas. But at the end, I left the measurements on the text, updated the values, and noticed the numbers updated on me… OMG best feature of all time 10/10 best CAD software in the world. This makes my life soooooo much easier now.

If you haven’t already try the RC versions of FreeCAD do so. Sure there is still some open source jank in it, but it’s so much more polished than before that I feel this upcoming release deserves the V1 moniker.

While for the most part this kind of damage is fine (this game is playable), it's questionable for how much longer. If you have the hardware or the capability, always remember to back up your physical games.

So my trusty USB-C Dongle which I use to connect my switch to a TV on the road is dying. The cable has frayed and I don't want to touch it any more.

So I decided to turn it into a USB-C Hub... basically give it a shell to hide away the cable.

Designed the part in FreeCAD in 30 min, and BOOM

Needed to do a bit of a redesign after the first print, what you see here is the V2. The Lid slides on and the USB-C to C female connector is slotted in. Needed to heat it up to get it to fit.

But I am very pleased with the design. Works well (now the slots are bigger. And I can safely throw it into a bag without risk of self destruction.

Sure I do need more cables but this also means I can upgrade/replace cables when they ware down.

5/7 would recommend!

So I'm going to an evening event which requires clear concert bags if you wanted to bring one. The max size is 12"x12"x6".

If I was going clear I at least wanted RGB, so I looked it up and it was $75CAD... Ouch, bags are like $20CAD.

So I thought about it and I wondered if I could make one.

So I got this bag and a 16.5ft string of fairy lights. I busted out the misses sewing needles and stitched in the wires to the fabric seme and this was the result.

I am extremely pleased with it. Next time I think I'd move the battery pack to the edge where the zipper starts or ends. Otherwise would recommend.

Bag was $19CAD and the LED's were $13CAD

After Event Edit:

So we came, we saw, we kicked it's ass... OK I did no such thing but adding LEDs certainly was a benefit. I made 2 of these bags, and honestly having big glowing somethings on your friends makes them insanely easy to find in a crowd. Especially for a night event which I went too.

The LEDs were even helpful when I was looking for a specific color of candy in the bag, or illuminating people for pictures.

My stitching was good and the wiring didn't get loose, but the same cannot be said for them bags themselves. As one of the straps on the bottom which holds a loop deteriorated and almost came off. I expected this, but it does sting non the less.

Going forward I am making these bags for everyone I'm going with. They are just so helpful.

I was asked to fix a new Garmin not charging. I asked what cable they were using and was told it was their old cable. This is what the old cable looked like.

Fun fact, what killed their last Garmin was corrosion on the pads in the same position.

TL:DR, made some Icons for 3D Models, turned them into a banner for social media, liked it so I made it into this wallpaper.

So over the years I've made various icons for controllers and systems for my 3D Printable Display Stands. These Icon and cut into the model to know which part belongs together.

Anyways I needed a new Banner on YouTube so I took them, threw them into Inkscape and turn it into this.

I am very pleased with the results, and kind of wished I had more icons to make it more detailed.

All your for $49.99/year.

LOL JK.

Nah, made this for a banner image, and just loved how well it turned out that I just kept that wall paper. The icons are designs I made in FreeCAD that I've turned into SVG and made into this wallpaper.

Thank you FreeCAD for not pay walling the ability to create technical drawings.

So what I did to make this was to create a technical drawing of all the designs I wanted and I made this photo in Inkscape.

Was designed to be a banner for my social media, but loved it so much that I'm just using it as my desktop wallpaper.

So why did I even want to do this? Because the front panel of my PC has a 3 1/2" drive hole and I wanted to populate it.

Fine, real reason is because I have a few legacy machine lying around and having a floppy drive accessible is nice to have.

How does it work? Well I have a Floppy to USB adapter inside my rig, and since my motherboard has an unused set of USB 2 headers, I just plugged it into that.

Otherwise, it was just plug and play... almost.

Why the drive works as Plug and Play, linux mint pokes the USB to see if it's still there, so I have a small script at boot that disables it for that internal header.

I am just socked that it works, and while it sucks that I need to be root to read the disks, I am just happy that the whole setup works at all.

H1_SD is the name of a MicroSD card I'm connecting, it does connect a second later, but it's annoying to keep dismissing this error every time. I am also getting it with regular SD cards and USB Drives regardless on which USB Port I've connected it to, and which format it's been partitioned too. NTFS, exfat, fat all respond similarly.

EDIT Welp, I was able to brute force a "fix". There appeared to be an issue with the Nemo configuration between 21 and 22. Not sure what the issue was specifically, but deleting the users ~/.config/nemo and a reboot fixed it for me.

I run Davinci Resolve on my machines and I've had a heck of a time trying to install/run it on Linux Mint 22.

So I put off upgrading my main rig until a good enough resolution came around. Which turned out to be this. I followed it and it worked for me.

Apparently this is an issue caused by Ubuntu 24.04 so this guide will help if you have issues on Ubuntu too.