this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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FreeCAD Gridfinity Drawers - More Configurable Tomfoolery (www.printables.com)
submitted 1 day ago by dual_sport_dork to c/3dprinting
8 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been at it again.

I've been using the hell out of these drawer thingies, what with you fill with Gridfinity bins and store ~~pocketknives~~ various things in.

Well, I screwed myself over and it turns out I need a stack of drawers one cell narrower than stock. The original author posted sources in Onshape but I will be buggered if I'm signing up for Yet Another Account just for that.

So I reconstructed the entire thing -- my way -- in FreeCAD. Because obviously that's the less insane option. (I guess this also allowed me to excise the magnet ears from the drawers, which is a worthless increase in print time and small waste of material for me since I don't use magnets with my Gridfinity bins)

Anyway, here it is.

This is my dinky 2x2 test print. Which is very nearly but not quite completely useless. (For instance, it fits Nite-Ize cable ties very well, as you can see.) If it makes you feel any better, the generator absolutely will make you a 1x1, 1u tall drawer assembly if you ask it to which truly will be fully useless...

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[–] grue 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did you consider using the FreeCAD Gridfinity Workbench (or, for that matter, writing a patch for it to support drawers)?

[–] dual_sport_dork 5 points 1 day ago

I never knew such a thing existed, but I'll look into it.

I don't touch the workbenches much. Up until now I've never found a use for them, and most of the ones I've tried on a lark tended to be buggy enough to be more trouble than they're worth.

[–] mapleseedfall 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Nice, I hope freecad can be THE cad for hobbist in the near future!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's getting a lot better. It reminds me of how Blender took off. I've been messing with it and just updated to 1.0. I think it has a lot of work left for casual user onboarding, but the bugs are less and the crashes less common than ever. It's getting there. Hopefully the foundation they set with 1.0 will propel them into the future.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

When getting into 3D printing I tried to get Fusion 360 to run on Linux but I had some issues as it wouldn't accept my email address for some reason, so it refused to do anything useful at all.

So I went with FreeCAD (unwillingly at first) and, even though I now probably lack the experience to judge Fusion, I don't regret it anymore, especially not with the new version which is much more comfortable to use.

There is a learning curve to it, and perhaps Fusion is more streamlined, but using FreeCAD really is worth it for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

It has definitely come a long way from my first attempt with it. It's really usable now and I suspect it will only get better with a larger user base.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for posting this. I, too, have a FreeCAD model on Printables that I was using an embedded spreadsheet for, but I never noticed the "alias" text box. That will pretty up my model so much. I've been doing cell number references like "B8" and it is both ugly and painful.

[–] dual_sport_dork 2 points 1 day ago

There are two ways to do that, actually. You can right click on a cell and use its properties window to add an alias, too. The alias box in the upper right is fairly new-ish, I think. I don't remember when it was added, but I seem to recall pre version 0.2 you had to do it the long way, which was both A) hidden, and B) a faff.