Hamster cage part 2, FreeCAD technical drawings

I have just created a 3D model of my daughters new huge hamster cage. Now I need some simple drawings so I know what parts to cut and how many of each.

Create a page in TechDraw workbench

Go to the TechDraw workbench and create a new page by clicking the Insert Default Page button

There are lots of different templates if you choose Insert Page using Template button just next to the insert default page button.

Now we have an empty page, but we need to view something. Use the tabs in the bottom to go back to the 3D view, make sure you are in Top view. The rotation of this view is what is used when you import a view into a page.

and select the Bottom part in the treeview.

Use the tabs again to go back to the Page view and click Insert a View button

By default the scale is 1:1 so the view of the part will be huge, select the View under the Page in the treeview and change the scale. I have changed the scale to 0,1. If it does not update you may need to hit Ctrl + r to recompute the View.

It’s always nice with a pretty header information on a drawing, so lets change those as well. Click the colored field to get an edit box for that field.

Add dimmensions

The drawing is not usefull yet, it just shows a top down view of our bottom part. Lets add some dimensions so we now how to measure and cut the parts.

Select the top line of the square part in the view

Click the Insert horizontal dimension button

Drag it to a nice place

Select the line on the left side

Click Insert vertical dimension button

Drag it to a nice place

Add some text

I did not bother to create a view with dimensions for the thickness, I just add a short text at the top for this. Click the Add annotation button to create an annotation field for text.

Click the three dots in the property window for the Text field

Now you can enter some text, new lines will be visible in the annotation field if used in the tiny text editor

Finishing touches

You can drag around the view and annotation frames so they don’t overlap and the drawing looks a bit better.

When you are satisfied with your new drawing you can hide the frames by clicking the Turn view frames on/off button

and the frames will be hidden

My finished drawings

Like before, I will not go into details for every page and part. But you can see all my drawings for my cage, short description for each

Second page is for my sides and just like the bottom I added the text on the top left for the plywood thickness. Then I added the 2x Sides text in the part to indicate I need to cut two of those

Same as before, the plywood sheet thickness at the top left of the page. On this page I could fit both the back side and the top on the same page. Used annotations to add the text in the middle of each part so I can identify them.

For the support frames I wrote the wood beam size I was going to use, this way I only have to add the length dimension for each part. Added annotation text to describe how many of each I need.

The lid frame of the cage used the same wood beam size as the support frames, I just wrote it at the top left like before. Then I imported the two “finished” lid frames and just added the meassure for the length of the parts I need to cut. Using annotation on the side for a small summary for how many of each part I will need to cut. The “finished” lid frame drawings will act as a simple guide on how to assemble them.

Finally a drawing for the acrylic glass front, as before I wrote the acrylic glass thickness at the top left. Then I added the dimensions for length and height of the acrylic glass. I could have added lots of dimensions for the holes and spacing between the holes I made. But I just need to now the size of the hole and a guide on where to put them.