New Workbench?

[frecd]

Howdy;

Being somewhat of a newbie, I'm not sure if this would qualify as a new
function of some sort, or as a new workbench, or what, but it seems to
be needed. I've been playing with bringing in picture files, i.e., .jpg,
.svg, et al. I've noted that there is precious little that can be done with
them, at least that seems to be the case, so I have the following
suggestion:

How about a, "trace", function/workbench/whatever? I'm picturing
a layer the pic loads into, and a transparent layer on top of it that
accepts all the various lines, and curves, etc., that can be drawn in
FreeCAD. There should be a button that clicks the pic layer in and
out, so one can see more clearly, what still needs tracing.

An autotrace function would be even nicer, but I don't think the
mindreading workbench is quite up to it yet.....

Bill

OS: KUbuntu 12.04.5 LTS
Word size: 32-bit
Version: 0.14.3702 (Git)
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-14
Hash: b3368125c63289ec8ce9faec2b2ae4c78d436406
Python version: 2.7.3
Qt version: 4.8.1
Coin version: 3.1.3
SoQt version: 1.5.0
OCC version: 6.7.0

[NormandC]

Hello Bill,

How about a, "trace", function/workbench/whatever? I'm picturing
a layer the pic loads into, and a transparent layer on top of it that
accepts all the various lines, and curves, etc., that can be drawn in
FreeCAD. There should be a button that clicks the pic layer in and
out, so one can see more clearly, what still needs tracing.

You can already accomplish this with the existing tools.

Simply create an Image Plane (second icon in the toolbar) in the Image workbench, and you can trace over it, just make sure the plane you are drafting/sketching on is slightly more elevated so it is always visible.

When you want to hide the image plane, just toggle its visibility.

An autotrace function would be even nicer,

A similar functionality already exists in Inkscape, an open source vector graphics editor. There are so few people involved in developing FreeCAD, IMHO it is best that they dedicate their time to work on CAD-specific tools. But there is nothing to stop someone to implement it if he/she so decides. Basically that's how FreeCAD is developed: developers work on features that they're interested in. After all they are doing this on their free time.

Off topic: there is really no need to manually add carriage returns to your replies. The forum board automatically add returns after a defined width. Your text shows a lot of empty space to the right.

[DeepSOIC]

The way Normand has just explained it much better than what I want to say, but here it is anyway:

In such cases, what I did was to set the whole FreeCAD window transparent (using a little util program on Windows I had written). Not great, but it was good enough. I was using the trick extensively while investigating Part Loft's splines.

The good thing about the technique is that is works with most programs, not just FreeCAD.

[frecd]

Thanks guys, that simplified things a little, even though I'm still a little confused as to how to get a trace function out of that. Oh, and DeepSOIC, would your program happen to be a python macro, or something else?

Bill

[NormandC]

even though I'm still a little confused as to how to get a trace function out of that.

By tracing over I just meant that you still need to use regular Draft or Sketcher tools to create your geometry, but you have a background image to use as reference.

Did you mean something else by trace function?

There's also a macro that may be of interest that works with bitmap images: Macro FCTexture

[frecd]

even though I'm still a little confused as to how to get a trace function out of that.

By tracing over I just meant that you still need to use regular Draft or Sketcher tools to create your geometry, but you have a background image to use as reference.

Ah, that explains it. Ya gotta remember we newbies are dead ignorant about all manner of things.

There's also a macro that may be of interest that works with bitmap images: Macro FCTexture

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Bill