Updating the Feature list page?

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NormandC
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Updating the Feature list page?

Post by NormandC »

Hi guys!

It's been a long time since I've had any involvement with the wiki... :oops:

Over the Help forum we've been regularly getting questions on how to make assemblies, and whether FreeCAD can do assemblies at all since there is no Assembly workbench... (this annoys me to no end :roll: )

There was also a topic recently that asked a feature comparison with SolidWorks. It all made me think that it might be a good idea to freshen up the Feature list page.

A few things in there are outdated. First there's this contradiction in the introduction:
This is an extensive, hence not complete, list of features
To me extensive means it's not as nearly "complete" as exhaustive, but it's pretty high up there. I would remove the "hence"...

The Key features section still seems pretty good.

The In development section is outdated though. The Assembly workbench hasn't been worked on for a very long time. We should remove it. Same for Cam, which was replaced with Path. We could add FEM, maybe TechDraw.

As for the General features section: what if we replaced it with a detailed table, like you find for commercial software? Unless we make a separate page for it. For example:
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/3 ... matrix.htm
https://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/editions/ (scroll down for the table)

I've had a hard time finding more examples. It seems like nobody do those anymore? :?
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yorik
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by yorik »

I'd also like to have a better features page, with bigger images, etc... Been meaning to work on that, but well...

Commercial software usually like to have this big "grid" of features (useful to see what's different in the "free" and "pro" versions :) ) My idea would be something like blender: https://www.blender.org/features/ with an image and a little paragraph explaining each feature... I think rockn tried a homepage design that looked like that too
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NormandC
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by NormandC »

yorik wrote:My idea would be something like blender: https://www.blender.org/features/
Yeah, I saw it as well before posting... It does look nice!

Maybe we could do it that way for the Feature list page, and also link to a separate page with a grid of features (that's what I meant by "table"). The idea is to list all the features usually found in parametric CAD software and have columns showing whether they are included natively in FreeCAD, provided by an add-on (with link to it), or not available. That way newcomers with experience in other CAD software could find out if the specific feature they are looking for is supported (or not) by FreeCAD.
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yorik
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by yorik »

NormandC wrote:The idea is to list all the features usually found in parametric CAD software and have columns showing whether they are included natively in FreeCAD, provided by an add-on (with link to it), or not available.
That's indeed a good idea. It would also be helpful, hopefully, for those sites that compare FreeCAD to other apps to make something a bit better :roll:
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NormandC
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by NormandC »

LOL. They sure badly need all the help they can get :lol:

Okay, I'll put the grid of features on my list of things to do on rainy days.
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NormandC
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by NormandC »

NormandC wrote:Over the Help forum we've been regularly getting questions on how to make assemblies, and whether FreeCAD can do assemblies at all since there is no Assembly workbench... (this annoys me to no end :roll: )
New one today. So tired of reading those.. :roll:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16692
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r-frank
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Re: Updating the Feature list page?

Post by r-frank »

NormandC wrote:New one today. So tired of reading those..
Me too.
So I invested some spare time and set up this post.
This will answer hopefully most basic questions reagrding assemblies.
Deutsche FreeCAD Tutorials auf Youtube
My GrabCAD FreeCAD-Projects
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Native german speaker - so apologies for my english, no offense intended :)
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