I got sent a bunch of lenses that are too small for the old frames I have. I thought it might be fun to try 3d printing my own frame arms out of ABS.
Modeling a lens is a bit challenging, or I’m just a bit rusty with freecad. I need a way to wrap/unwrap/flatten the curve to create the contours. For my purpose here I can get away with a rough lens shape that is simply mirrored and lacks some of the complex curves. It just bugs me when I can’t model it properly…
The lens is not uniform thickness. The center is 1.8mm thick while the edges where the arms mount are 1.4mm. I want to try and make a nose piece because this is the one part that fails on these cheap glasses.
Anyways, sharing just because I can.
This is one of the things you might be better off modeling in blender.
Yeah, I just have to waste a day making a doughnut every time because the memorized workflow is not compatible with my use case. Blender is made for people that use it every day. I’ll use it to fix a mesh once in awhile when that will save me substantial time, but that is about all I can do with it efficiently.
I kind of agree. I’ve used blender on and off for at least 15 years now, so I know how to do many things now by heart. But, yeah if you have less experience or use it infrequently, it’s tough. The more “recent” releases are more self explanatory though.
There might actually be good freeform tools in FreeCAD that I haven’t tried yet.