FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

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NormandC
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by NormandC »

bernhardb wrote:OS: "openSUSE 13.2 (Harlequin) (x86_64)"
Thanks.
bernhardb wrote:There is for OpenSuse a build of the 0.17-tree available (2017-01-29), but it seems, that this build is not quite compatible with my quite old linux distro, so I switched to the appimage.
So that explains why you're not using the packman FreeCAD-0.16.99 package.

According to Wikipedia, your version reached end of life on January 17, 2017. You should think about upgrading to a supported version...

Well I'm pleased that the AppImage seems to work on OpenSUSE! It's based on the Ubuntu daily PPA.
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by DeepSOIC »

NormandC wrote:It would be really nice to "import" a linked copy of an existing body into a new body to either use as base solid or a "3D shapebinder".
Draft Clone is your friend. Clone a body, then base a new body on the clone (select clone and hit "new body".

Shapebinders have built-in support for 3d, but they can't be used to cut or fuse up to your shape. I'm in process of adding AdditiveShape/SubtractiveShape features for integration into PartDesign, in Part-o-magic. You may be interested to try them.

EDIT: I need to clean up this thread, it's getting out of control...
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NormandC
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by NormandC »

DeepSOIC wrote:Draft Clone is your friend. Clone a body, then base a new body on the clone (select clone and hit "new body".
Thanks, but I was kind of trying to avoid leaving the PD workbench... I guess it's unavoidable for now.
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by JPL »

Hey Highly-Respected Dev Team,

What is the status of v0.17 and its renewed Part Design ?
For people learning today without heavy constraints, would you recommend to learn directly on the beta or to keep on the old stuff, even if replaced in a few days / weeks / months?

Is there still a place for comments or suggestion ?

It appears to me that 3D-printing is bringing to CAD a bunch of highly motivated people, but with little or none mechanical knowledge and in many case, little or none "engineering spirit". The forum shows some recurring topics which, IMHO, might be disappearing with some GUI minor changes (I did myself commit some of those YAUP -- Yet Another Useless Posts).

The solution to feed people with Tutorials is good, but how many people are giving up at this step ?

Can newbies help to make the very first step in FreeCAD easier for non-professional ?

Please, read above as a great appreciation of the dedication of this community and an offer to provide my little stone to this fascinating monument !



Jean-Philippe
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NormandC
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by NormandC »

Hello Jean-Philippe,

Unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of work done in the past year since the PartDesignNext code was merged into the master branch.

I should rather say that work has indeed been done under the hood, changes to its foundation were made, but not much on the GUI side. There are still many critical bugs that can make FreeCAD crash. For most of the past year, a single developer was working on it in his limited spare time.

In its current state, IMHO it's nowhere near ready for release. Two or three devs have recently started tackling some outstanding issues. FreeCAD will be participating to GSoC this year (like last year) and two students have made proposals to work on PartDesign this summer. We do not know how many slots FreeCAD will get (if any), and what projects will be chosen. I dearly hope we get at least a slot for PartDesign work.

I doubt it would be realistic to think of a release before the end of the year, unless there's a concerted push - something I don't see happening anytime soon, the development is too fragmented between at least a half dozen workbenches now (in the early years it was more focused).

As for learning the new stuff or staying with the "old", it's mostly your decision (you can also do both), but you should know that the learning materials have not been updated, and even us old timers do not have a complete understanding of the new features.
JPL wrote:Can newbies help to make the very first step in FreeCAD easier for non-professional ?
The devs are aware of the most important UI issues but complex/hard choices need to be made to ensure the future of PartDesign as well as planning the Assembly workbench. Some of the decisions depend on highly technical stuff about the internal workings of FreeCAD that I personally (and others I'm sure) struggle to grasp.

If you want to contribute feedback, I urge you to first search for and read relevant topics in the Developer forums. Speaking only for myself I've become quite tired of newcomers who don't do their homework first and all repeat the same things over and over...
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by jonasthomas »

Ok.. So I feel like Rip Van Winkle who just woke up with an itch to redo a design and I'm running into Part and Body features in .17 that have got me befuddled. I was reading through the release notes https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release_notes_0.17 and the new features got me excited since it addresses the annoyances I've had. (I've also been getting into freecad Path so staying at .16 is not an option for me. Dam the torpedoes... full speed ahead)

I started hacking away at my old model, and at this point, I don't know if what I'm doing is wrong, or running into bugs. I think i need to slow down a bit before I try speeding up. I'm having a hard time rapping my head around the Part and Body features since I'm my head is still in the old paradigm.

I've been searching youtube and the part design tutorials are over 3 years old. I realize that for the developers that these features are obvious(since they've been in the fishbowl), but I'm feeling like a newb at the moment. On a unrelated work, I'm getting involved with NX in the day job. Going between Freecad with the new enhancements and learning NX is really making my Neurons ache(not that this is anyones problem but my own)

I think I just need to start with some new .17 projects and play with Part and Body before I try converting my old stuff. (At the risk of incurring Normands wrath and crankiness for not having spent days googling this) Could someone point me towards some current getting started links, resources that will give me some better understanding of Part and Body? (The videos that I've run across for .17 are without audio, which doesn't really help me).
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by NormandC »

jonasthomas wrote:Could someone point me towards some current getting started links, resources that will give me some better understanding of Part and Body
Everything available is right here. The first post has useful links at he bottom. Did you read them?

The PartDesignNext work flow is *not* finalized yet. Plus it still suffers from a lot of bugs. Therefore it would be a waste of time for experienced users to write documentation that may need to be heavily rewritten.
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by jonasthomas »

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Last edited by jonasthomas on Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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NormandC
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by NormandC »

Please quote properly, or not at all.

The only purpose of what you did is to needlessly make the page longer to scroll.
jonasthomas wrote:When is anything finalized?
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 50#p167849
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Re: FC v0.17dev: Part Design Next Usecases and Best practices

Post by jonasthomas »

NormandC wrote:Hello Jean-Philippe,
Unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of work done in the past year since the PartDesignNext code was merged into the master branch.
I should rather say that work has indeed been done under the hood, changes to its foundation were made, but not much on the GUI side. There are still many critical bugs that can make FreeCAD crash. For most of the past year, a single developer was working on it in his limited spare time.
Who is the that? (I've been out of the loop for a while). I haven't been problems crashing, but it does seem like there are alot of critters.
NormandC wrote: In its current state, IMHO it's nowhere near ready for release. Two or three devs have recently started tackling some outstanding issues. FreeCAD will be participating to GSoC this year (like last year) and two students have made proposals to work on PartDesign this summer. We do not know how many slots FreeCAD will get (if any), and what projects will be chosen. I dearly hope we get at least a slot for PartDesign work.
Since that PartDesign is the lynch pin to everything, I hope so as well. Freecad Path is what has gotten me into .17 and from what I understanding it relys on part design. As far as Gsoc is there any mechanism that you're aware of where we can petition, encourage, etc that FreeCAD gets some slots?
NormandC wrote: I doubt it would be realistic to think of a release before the end of the year, unless there's a concerted push - something I don't see happening anytime soon, the development is too fragmented between at least a half dozen workbenches now (in the early years it was more focused).

I was impressed by how well the developers played together in FreeCAD. I was involved in a project a few years back where developers where tripping over each other breaking each others stuff. (It was not a pleasant.)
You had mentioned that there where critical decisions/infrastructure that needs to be made. Do you have the magic link handy that discusses this?(Yes I could find it if I spend the next few days combing through the forums where you probably know exactly where to look.)
NormandC wrote: As for learning the new stuff or staying with the "old", it's mostly your decision (you can also do both), but you should know that the learning materials have not been updated, and even us old timers do not have a complete understanding of the new features.
After do some research I really like some of the features I'm seeing and would like to start doing real work using these features. Oth, it would suck if I wind up loosing significant work because there is a design to go in a different direction? As I've said I've been out of the loop for a while. Are things close to convergence?

As far as the workbenches under active development, I'm assume Arch, Path and PartDesign.. Are those the big hitters at the moent?

NormandC wrote: If you want to contribute feedback, I urge you to first search for and read relevant topics in the Developer forums. Speaking only for myself I've become quite tired of newcomers who don't do their homework first and all repeat the same things over and over...
I can understand how tiring it can be to answer the same questions over and over.. I basically wanted to spend a couple of hours redoing a design, but now I've spent 1/2 day on the researching the forums and I'm no further along.
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