New feature: FaceMakers

[DeepSOIC]

since 0.17.8573:
General-purpose make-face-from-wires classes were introduced.

As a consequence, Part MakeFace (in menu Part->Make face from sketch wires) is now capable of making faces with holes with islands, such as bull's-eye pattern:

Now it also accepts wires regardless of object type, as long as it has shape (it used to accept only Part2DObjects).

The new facemaking also applies to Part Extrude and Part Revolve, when "solid" is set to true.

revolve-bullseye.png (182.79 KiB) Viewed 4789 times

The facemaker class in Part Extrude, Part Revolve and Part Face can be altered if necessary by editing their FaceMakerClass property. In future, I hope to make UI for selecting facemaker class of Part Face. As of now, there is no way to find out the class names other than browsing the source code, so I list them here:
* Part::FaceMakerSimple <-- makes faces from all closed planar wires, ignoring overlaps
* Part::FaceMakerCheese <-- made from code in Part Extrude. makes faces with holes, but no faces within holes.
* Part::FaceMakerExtrusion <-- legacy one used by Part Extrude
* Part::FaceMakerBullseye <-- new default

@wandererfan: I invite you to write a new facemaker based on TechDraw's EdgeWalker!

EDIT: forgot to mention, that facemakers can be used from Python, too.

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face = Part.Face(compound_of_wires, "Part::FaceMakerBullseye")
many_faces = Part.makeFace(compound_of_even_more_wires, "Part::FaceMakerBullseye")

[ickby]

as of now, there is no way to find out the class names other than browsing the source code, so I list them here:

why did you not use a enumeration property?

[DeepSOIC]

Because then it would be impossible to define custom facemakers in other modules.
Enumeration properties are very annoying to extend.

[wmayer]

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Type::getAllDerivedFrom

gives you an array of subtypes of the given type. This way you can easily fill up the enumeration.

The only problem that may happen in the future is that after creating a feature and filling up the enumeration other modules are loaded with new face maker methods. This way it's not easy to add the new methods.

[DeepSOIC]

I actually thought of creating a special property type for this case (say, derived from PropertyEnumeration).

But the actual plan was to make a task dialog for Part Face that will have the UI to choose facemaker. The properties themselves can then be hidden.

[triplus]

I tested the feature and when using sketcher geometry or draft geometry in compound it produced expected results:

Face.png (10.03 KiB) Viewed 4714 times

P.S. As there isn't a drop-down menu with options in it i feel that exposing the Face Maker Class doesn't make much sense.

[yorik]

@DeepSOIC I don't know where/when that problem appeared, and if this is the right topic, but I cannot use Part.Extrude with solid = True on Draft objects that have a face anymore:

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rect = Draft.makeRectangle(length=100,height=100,face=True,support=None)
extr = App.ActiveDocument.addObject("Part::Extrusion","extrusion")
extr.Base=rect
extr.Dir=App.Vector(0,0,100)
extr.Solid=True # <-- here is the problem

Error: Exception (Tue Oct 4 15:13:04 2016): Shape must be a wire, edge or compound. Something else was supplied.
I think we should allow faces, no?

[DeepSOIC]

Error: Exception (Tue Oct 4 15:13:04 2016): Shape must be a wire, edge or compound. Something else was supplied.I think we should allow faces, no?

Yes, I made it strict, and it's causing too much trouble.
issue #2720
Needs to be relaxed again, I think.

[pablogil]

Really cool feature, thanks!