Testing the Drawing Module

[jmaustpc]

Hi Luke
I had a go last night and got that crash with axonometric views a few times...I am trying to narrow it down.

The first time I used axonometric views, I thought it was broken because I only got one view auto inserted and no dialogue of any sort, although once you know to double click on it the dialogue then comes up and allows extra views to be inserted. I think it would possibly be more intuitive if the dialogue opened on creation...but I am not sure...I'll try it again

I'll write back later....

Jim

[mrlukeparry]

I had a go last night and got that crash with axonometric views a few times...I am trying to narrow it down.

Sure! Let me know what the crash is. Hopefully it'll be something trivial

The first time I used axonometric views, I thought it was broken because I only got one view auto inserted and no dialogue of any sort, although once you know to double click on it the dialogue then comes up and allows extra views to be inserted.

Yeah I would want that too, I currently cannot make the task dialog open because of low level functionality. Hopefully that should be resolved soon. Also would people prefer if a top and right view be created by default?

I would certainly prefer to have an option for centerlines to be enabled/disabled. When you dimension a hole a centerline is useful, but I never put them on fillets as is does not make much sense IMO and the view gets too "heavy".

Maybe the center mark could be a specific parameter (on/off) of the radius and diameter dimensions?

That sounds fine. What I can do is check if the geometry is a full circle/hole and it will automatically add the centre lines otherwise you will have to toggle it explicitly via the radius / diameter dimension. For now It'll be built into the dimension, but it should be relatively straightforward to make a separate annotation feature.

Making j-dowsett's OrthoViews working again would be nice, but I'm not sure what that would entail.

What I'm proposing are the following features for the ortho views task dialog:

* Scale (Automatic, Document/Page, Custom)
* Third Angle / First angle
* Spacing between views (locked) - not sure if we need this

I cannot easily do 'view from' or 'axis aligned right' because it requires larger changes.

Show hidden is set per view.
3D Views I could potentially add but for now I think is best to keep as separate '3D Views'

Let me know if you think something is missing.

[jmaustpc]

Hi Luke
In case you want to repeat anything this is my testing procedure step by step

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Platform: 64-bit
Version: 0.14.3198 (Git)
Branch: drawing
Hash: 409beaaaef05df1136bd0fb89bdb820c9e1bb30a
Python version: 2.7.6
Qt version: 4.8.6
Coin version: 4.0.0a
SoQt version: 1.6.0a
OCC version: 6.7.0



Test procedure: -
start FreeCAD go to Part wb,
new doc
insert default Part Cube and cylinder


then Drawing wb
click on A3 icon "insert new drawing" which produces Page and template in tree view

now I have to select template, go to its template parameter ...file browser to a specific template ...A4 Landscape works so I select that. Then click on Page size and then either height or width to make the template display (then I found that you could have just hit enter key)



comments
1) could be nice to get a default template rather than just a blank window
2) to get the template to show up you have to either know to click on template parameter and hit enter key or click on Parameter page size then onto any other parameter. These seem to be the only two ways to get it to show up.
3)would be nice if the default location for the above file browser was the correct directory for the templates

[jmaustpc]

next I set views and dimension

click first, left most, yellow insert view icon to insert a view of the cube

drag view to convenient location on Drawing, adjust Scale parameter to 5,

comment
now it is very hard to select the edges and then hard to see if they are selected because they are so thin, perhaps a thicker default line width would help? Maybe its a setting somewhere on my system but its really hard to get the mouse exactly on the line in order to select it. It changes from Black to blue when selected but the line being so thin, it is hard to see the colour change

Adjust line width parameter up due to above, from default 0.7 to 2.7.

select top line of square, select horizontal dimension...work well....can drag the dimension around and arrows etc. change as expected. This is actually really cool.

Now using crtl key select left and bottom edges and select angle dimension ...it fails error message is in triplicate

Exception (Wed May 7 04:11:15 2014): Cannot measure the true angle

Select right edge and deliberately do something stupid...select horizontal dimension even though it is a vertical line ...error is in triplicate again and is wrong message

Exception (Wed May 7 04:13:09 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:13:09 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:13:09 2014): Cannot measure the true angle

now do the proper thing and click vertical dimension ......get error again as above

Exception (Wed May 7 04:17:15 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:17:15 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:17:15 2014): Cannot measure the true angle

Now I try the first dimension icon the on an angle one, "lineal" dimension? same error again.\

actually now attempting to put any dimension on the square from the Part Cube fails with the same error message

so I give up on the cube for a bit and go to the cylinder, select insert a view, left yellow icon ....and it fails to insert a cylinder view and out puts this same error message again in triplicate.

save file and close FreeCAD...back in a bit

[jmaustpc]

exactly the same procedure but with a clean new file

this time vertical dimension on right hand edge of cube's square ...works... the text is vertical ...would be nice to be able to rotate it to horizontal for easier reading...would need to be optional display text orientation so both could be used I would think?

the dimension parameter "Rotation" currently does nothing.

now select top edge and horizontal dimension ...works perfectly

now do something stupid again..select bottom horizontal edge and vertical dimension ...it works as I would expect in that it gives you a dimension with a value of "0".

now use cntrl again to select two edges (left and bottom) click on angle dimension ...now I am back again to the error message in triplicate again
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle



Once again the above error message comes with anything I now try to do.

Jim

[jmaustpc]

if I open the above file again, that I had saved, and click on Page in the treeview I get an error message
Unhandled Base::Exception caught in GUIApplication::notify.
The error message is: Cannot measure the true angle
and no Drawing....but at least the error message is not in triplicate ..

[jmaustpc]

I tried the same again and this time tried to insert a diameter on the cylinder's circle top view...diameter does not appear in the drawing...a dimension does appear in the treeview

I got another crash doing the above ..but I have not been able top repeat it..yet.

[mrlukeparry]

now do something stupid again..select bottom horizontal edge and vertical dimension ...it works as I would expect in that it gives you a dimension with a value of "0".

Noted. Made a check for completely horizontal and vertical lines.

the dimension parameter "Rotation" currently does nothing.

and

this time vertical dimension on right hand edge of cube's square ...works... the text is vertical ...would be nice to be able to rotate it to horizontal for easier reading...would need to be optional display text orientation so both could be used I would think?

I was thinking the rotation parameter could be used to toggle this. The GUI would probably only support 90 degree increments.

now use cntrl again to select two edges (left and bottom) click on angle dimension ...now I am back again to the error message in triplicate again
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle
Exception (Wed May 7 04:34:39 2014): Cannot measure the true angle

Once again the above error message comes with anything I now try to do.

This is a usage issue. I need to explain why this happens in a video guide.

comment
now it is very hard to select the edges and then hard to see if they are selected because they are so thin, perhaps a thicker default line width would help? Maybe its a setting somewhere on my system but its really hard to get the mouse exactly on the line in order to select it. It changes from Black to blue when selected but the line being so thin, it is hard to see the colour change

Here's a question for all, what default colours do people want for highlighted and selected? Atleast till we have a preference dialog.

Adjust line width parameter up due to above, from default 0.7 to 2.7.

This is the 'paper' size - i.e. it is the unit thickness of a line on paper in mm (or thereabouts). What I can do is have a multiplier. Eventually this will be in a preference dialog.

I tried the same again and this time tried to insert a diameter on the cylinder's circle top view...diameter does not appear in the drawing...a dimension does appear in the treeview

I'm working on diameter. I think because this isn't implemented correctly it can cause crashes.

[NormandC]

Hey Luke,

I just pulled your latest work and tested it. I love what you've done with the diameter dimension, how the single leader changes to straight dim with extension lines when you rotate the text to the horizontal or vertical axes. The automatic center lines for enclosed circles is perfect. I wish the Ø symbol was possible rather than the letter "D" for diameter, I guess it's an encoding issue that may have been solved with a more recent library (Coin?). I'm still on Ubuntu 12.04 so I'm not sure about that.

I got a few crashes, the only thing I get in the terminal is

Code: Select all

*** Abort *** an exception was raised, but no catch was found.
	... The exception is:SIGSEGV 'segmentation violation' detected. Address 80

Or sometimes just "Segmentation error".

I should learn to properly get a backtrace...

I got them doing various things:

• double-clicking on the cView container to add more views
• Moving a view on the page
• Changing the scale of the cView container

Sometimes a newly created dimension does not appear on the page until I edit something else or add another dimension. Dimensions are listed at the bottom of the tree until some edit is made, then they are placed under their parent views. But I guess you already know that.

About holes/circles, I've noticed two problems:

• Let's say a plate has a hole on the XY plane (top), when creating a front view with hidden edges on, the hidden line on the side of the cylindrical surface seam is not displayed. See attached file.
• There is currently no way to dimension a hole from its center to another point.

Here's a question for all, what default colours do people want for highlighted and selected? Atleast till we have a preference dialog.

Currently the blue is too dark for my eyes. It's OK for edges, but it's really hard to see for points. A lighter color might be more visible: light green, or even red (although for color-blind people that may be a problem). I wonder if you could simply use the same colors as FreeCAD's preselection/selection colors for the general GUI? (Found in Prefs/Display/Colors)

This is coming along quite nicely! Thanks for your work Luke!

[mrlukeparry]

Or sometimes just "Segmentation error".

I should learn to properly get a backtrace...

I got them doing various things:
double-clicking on the cView container to add more views
Moving a view on the page
Changing the scale of the cView container

Sorry I'd need a bit more specific information to be able to do anything about this.

Dimensions are listed at the bottom of the tree until some edit is made, then they are placed under their parent views. But I guess you already know that.

Yeah, I'm aware this happens. I'm not sure really what I can do it, so I'll ask a question on the forums.

Sometimes a newly created dimension does not appear on the page until I edit something else or add another dimension.

Again if you could be a bit more specific when this occurs, I can look into this. I haven't had any problems.

There is currently no way to dimension a hole from its center to another point.

I thought about this when doing the diameter dimensions but will need to do some more changes to see if it's easily possible.

About holes/circles, I've noticed two problems:
Let's say a plate has a hole on the XY plane (top), when creating a front view with hidden edges on, the hidden line on the side of the cylindrical surface seam is not displayed. See attached file.

Yeah I can confirm this with my own example. I need someone to check if this happens with the previous drawing module. If it does the same, then there isn't much I can do about it because it's the OCC projection algorithm. In general any 'added' tangent edges are a problem and you'll also find that it struggles with fillets on some occasions.

Currently the blue is too dark for my eyes. It's OK for edges, but it's really hard to see for points. A lighter color might be more visible: light green, or even red (although for color-blind people that may be a problem). I wonder if you could simply use the same colors as FreeCAD's preselection/selection colors for the general GUI? (Found in Prefs/Display/Colors)

Would these work on a white background? I'm abit sceptical but I agree the blue is too dark and my LCD monitor doesn't have good colour reproduction.

If someone can do a mock in inkscape with a few options and we can maybe judge the best default?

This is coming along quite nicely! Thanks for your work Luke!

Thanks!