The Big TechDraw Comments Thread

Discussions about the development of the TechDraw workbench
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by wandererfan »

blackball wrote: - The Radius sign should be capital letter "R" instead "r" (according to ISO and DIN)
- The vertical dimensioning Text schould be readable from the right-side (also according to ISO and DIN)
- Placement of the dimension text on the left (vertical dimension) or on top over(horizontal dimension) of the dimension line and not in between the arrows.
- Pack Osifont together with freecad and make it default font in drawing. (Some of the big commercial CAD Programs have their own Iso fonts library installed.)
Great points, thanks.
There is an osifont.tff in the source code package, but it is not automatically installed due to a licensing issue(?). It is now available under different licenses, so maybe now we can install it.

I'm travelling so it might take a while to get these into master, but they look straightforward.

wf
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by wandererfan »

ulrich1a wrote:
blackball wrote:The Radius sign should be capital letter "R" instead "r" (according to ISO and DIN)
It would also be good if the unifont diameter-sign could be used.
⌀ U+2300 diameter sign
The support of unicode in text is missing.
See also at the German wikipedia for the different symbols with a stroke: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durchmesserzeichen

Ulrich
Thanks for the correct unicode number. All those slashed O's look alike to me (blurry!).
I found the bug (finally!) for extended characters in template text boxes! Should be in the next version.

wf
triplus
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by triplus »

wandererfan wrote:There is an osifont.tff in the source code package, but it is not automatically installed due to a licensing issue(?). It is now available under different licenses, so maybe now we can install it.
At the time Luke added it it was only available under GPLv3 with font exception licence. Therefore i guess the first step should be to update it to current LGPLv3 with font exception license if it is still embedded in FreeCAD and distributed with FreeCAD. To comply with FreeCAD no GPL licence policy.

After i guess decision should be made if LGPLv3 with font exception license works for us (i guess it will have to in the future due to Qt5/PySide2 licence) and if it should be installed by default or not. If yes i guess TechDraw could set it as default. Currently this does not happen.
ehb
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by ehb »

TechDraw is coming along very nicely!

I wanted to create a drawing for the section of a revolution of a sketch (a part to be turned later).
However, the hidden arcs and lines of the left side are missing, so I can't draw a dimension for the inner diameter of the part.

Also, it would be nice if the font size of the last dimension could be used by the following one.

Looking forward to progress on TechDraw, it's quite easy to use and will be of great use for machinists! Thanks! :)
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by wandererfan »

ehb wrote:TechDraw is coming along very nicely!
Thank you!
ehb wrote:I wanted to create a drawing for the section of a revolution of a sketch (a part to be turned later).
However, the hidden arcs and lines of the left side are missing, so I can't draw a dimension for the inner diameter of the part.
Can you post an example fcstd? We have some issues with getting all the lines from OCC's hidden line removal routines and this sounds like a good test.
ehb wrote:Also, it would be nice if the font size of the last dimension could be used by the following one.
How about a default dimension size in "Preferences"? Not sure how to remember last size off the top of my head.
ehb wrote:Looking forward to progress on TechDraw, it's quite easy to use and will be of great use for machinists! Thanks! :)
You're welcome!

wf
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by ehb »

Hi wandererfan,
wandererfan wrote:Can you post an example fcstd? We have some issues with getting all the lines from OCC's hidden line removal routines and this sounds like a good test.
I gladly made a case similar to mine, made with git8186.

If it's a deeper bug in OCC, maybe (at least for revolutions, if only they create problems?) it would be easiest to just mirror the result of the right side? Sorry, I wouldn't have a clue, just thinking out loud. :)
wandererfan wrote:How about a default dimension size in "Preferences"?
Fair enough, that should do. :) Maybe another developer knows how to get info from the last created dimension.

While I'm at it, I'd like to express another wish regarding the drawing of revolutions: A dashed line that indicates the center axis would be nice. :)
Attachments
techdraw_missing_lines_arcs.fcstd
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ehb
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by ehb »

Oh right, about that last post:
I changed the shape view from Z=1 to Y=1, but Section Origin is somehow off.
If changed to Z=20, the view appears, but the value changes back.
efyx
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by efyx »

Good that TechDraw is WIP (work in progress), this is very (VERY) important module. The progress is huge - thank you wandererfan and involved people.
I am attaching drafting module from bricscad (it is a little bit poor than solidworks but you can also find something useful for your project) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGeQMsZXx0E

The thing I don't like the most in TechDraw (and sketcher BTW) is that you need to select first edge or points and then select a dimension tool. Much faster (and ituitive) is to select a tool first and then only show edges, points etc.. Other case is that dimension tool should be smart and if you drag up/down it draws horizontal dimension if you drag left/right draws vertical dimension, if you drag some ange it draws dimension with an angle etc.. - that function was in drawing dimensioning.

Other thing is that on a drawing sheet you can scroll only back and forth, you cannot move card on left right by panning. This is not good, sometimes you need put a view on side of paper to perform some detail view. In case when I cannot pan card to side but only zoom it I cannot do that.

Also izometric view is depending on main view, and aligning by 45deg. Aligning should be possible to create by centers of views, but also de-aligning should be possible to move views freely on drawing.

Ok now some bugs I've found:
1) When you do a section view, and then again you want to change arrow heads direction, drawing is not updating.
2) After opening again drawing, the arrows from section view are gone.
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pablogil
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by pablogil »

efyx wrote: ...
Other thing is that on a drawing sheet you can scroll only back and forth, you cannot move card on left right by panning. This is not good, sometimes you need put a view on side of paper to perform some detail view. In case when I cannot pan card to side but only zoom it I cannot do that.
...
If you drag the page with left mouse button you are able to pan the view but it doesn't allow you to "pan outside the page" which I find useful sometimes when you want to center an object next to a drawing page corner to the screen center... This is desirable by regular users/designers

BTW, my comments are:
  • add the option to change colors for dimensions, lines, hidden lines, etc.
  • (into TechDraw preferences or even better as a dimension parameter)
  • when adding a new view, the "custom scale" field could be a numeric field in order to have the typical arrows to increase/decrease steps... much useful than typing a number
  • is it possible that when you press the green square when editing template texts the actual text is selected so that you can easily start typing and delete the default one? is just an usability improvement
  • as previously mentioned it would be useful to add more usability to dimension creation, I would suggest:
    1) if any line, points, etc are selected, when pressing the dimension icon it creates just one dimension
    2) if anything is selected and the dimension icon is pressed the "tool" enters in "continuous mode" so that every time you select a line or points it is created a dimension
Finally, I found an important bug: in OSX if you select an arc an press the "radius dimension icon" FreeCAD crashes and closes

OS: Mac OS X
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.17.8373 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: (detached from 50d0eae)
Hash: 50d0eae513dc58913ca0c08e03b393c0384a4805
Python version: 2.7.12
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 3.1.3
OCC version: 7.0.0
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw Comments from Feature Announcement

Post by wandererfan »

efyx wrote:...
Good that TechDraw is WIP (work in progress), this is very (VERY) important module. The progress is huge - thank you wandererfan and involved people.
>>> You're welcome!

I am attaching drafting module from bricscad (it is a little bit poor than solidworks but you can also find something useful for your project) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGeQMsZXx0E
>>> can always use some good ideas. I'll take a look.

The thing I don't like the most in TechDraw (and sketcher BTW) is that you need to select first edge or points and then select a dimension tool. Much faster (and ituitive) is to select a tool first and then only show edges, points etc..
>>> AFAIK, the FreeCAD UX standard model is action/object, not object/action, so selecting tool first would make TD different from the rest of FreeCAD.
>>> So, if you select the Distance Dimension tool, you'd want to see all the potential objects for that tool highlighted in some way? That would be all the edges and vertices in the drawing. For the Angle dimension, all the straight edges that meet would be highlighted. I don't think I like this one, because I can't see it working for anything other than simple models.

Other case is that dimension tool should be smart and if you drag up/down it draws horizontal dimension if you drag left/right draws vertical dimension, if you drag some ange it draws dimension with an angle etc.. - that function was in drawing dimensioning.
>>> this would be slick, but it's a low priority at this point.

Other thing is that on a drawing sheet you can scroll only back and forth, you cannot move card on left right by panning. This is not good, sometimes you need put a view on side of paper to perform some detail view. In case when I cannot pan card to side but only zoom it I cannot do that.
>>> I'll add this to the list of things to look at.

Also izometric view is depending on main view, and aligning by 45deg. Aligning should be possible to create by centers of views, but also...
>>> don't think I understand this one. Do you want to choose a different view for "Front"? That seems reasonable. Is it the layout of the projection group that you want changed?

... de-aligning should be possible to move views freely on drawing.
>>> We could add a fuction to explode the projection group into individual, unrelated views, I guess, but why wouldn't you just create individual views with the appropriate view directions in the first place?

Ok now some bugs I've found:
1) When you do a section view, and then again you want to change arrow heads direction, drawing is not updating.
>>> yes, bug, but should change direction after a recompute.
2) After opening again drawing, the arrows from section view are gone.
>>> those arrows are driving me crazy!! I think I have to revisit the whole section line logic.

Thanks for the testing and feedback.
wf
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