Path, legacy tooltable?

[blazini36]

I haven't used freecad in a little while but I've been using it quite a bit with the path workbench. Today I notice that the old tooltable is gone and there is some other thing that I can't for the life of me understand it's purpose. The old tool setup was fine, minus a couple of bugs.

I keep the (legacy) tooltable on a NAS and (used to) make changes to a tooltable shared with a mill running LinuxCNC so they stayed sync'd. The new toolbit thing doesn't seem to import the old tooltable file so I'll have to rewrite the whole thing. Is there any way to go back to the legacy tooltable and dialog?

[GeneFC]

There is an option in the Preferences panel.

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Gene

[blazini36]

I've tried that, I can't tell to what extent it doesn't work but there are at least bugs with it. The old tool dialog is gone but best I can tell you go to Path > toolbit library edtor > Add new tooltable, a filechooser opens to select a json file, but the json file isn't visible (but fctl files are) so I wasn't able to select my old tooltable. Unless it's supposed to be done some other way?

[Paula]

I don't think you've got Legacy Tools enabled. I'm using legacy tools and it works like in previous versions. The new version is overly complex and the UI poorly implemented IMO.

[GeneFC]

I'm using legacy tools and it works like in previous versions. The new version is overly complex and the UI poorly implemented IMO.

I agree for my very simple use. No tool changer and not very many commonly used tools. However, I believe this new tool handling scheme is intended to be Part 1 of a much grander plan.

I switched to the new style and don't need to look back.

Gene

[Paula]

I'm using legacy tools and it works like in previous versions. The new version is overly complex and the UI poorly implemented IMO.

I agree for my very simple use. No tool changer and not very many commonly used tools. However, I believe this new tool handling scheme is intended to be Part 1 of a much grander plan.

I switched to the new style and don't need to look back.

Gene

Sadly at some point we'll all be forced to choose between battling with their overly-complex, poorly designed and poorly written "wonder" or ditching FreeCAD and looking for an alternative. I do wonder what planet these people are on.

[sliptonic]

Sadly at some point we'll all be forced to choose between battling with their overly-complex, poorly designed and poorly written "wonder" or ditching FreeCAD and looking for an alternative. I do wonder what planet these people are on.

I find this offensive. I have no problem with informed criticism. That makes things better. But here it appears that that you have no understanding of the reasons for the design choice. You offer no constructive feedback, just sweeping generalizations. You never once asked _why_ something is the way that it is. And you take out your frustration by implying that the developers are somehow deficient. Seriously, where do you get off?

The toolbit system is far from perfect. It was only introduced in 0.19, for crying out loud. But I happen to think it's brilliant for among other reasons, these three in particular:

1) The old system could only handle cylindrical tools. Basically end mills. With the new system we can design _any_ tool geometry using existing FreeCAD tools, particularly PDN. Part shape files can be shared like any other FreeCAD project file. That means we can support lathe tools with complicated geometry, shaped contour cutters, dovetails, or ANYTHING else.

2) Shapes, toolbits, and library are all stored externally. That means they can be backed up and synced on a network drive. Individual toolbits can also be algorithmically generated because they're just json files. That might not be a big deal to you but it means a tool manufacturers entire catalog could, in theory, be turned into a toolbit collection with a small script. And if someone wanted a to write an external tool management system; no problem.

3) We can now add arbitrary attributes to toolbits. This means we can, in the future, add all kinds of features. Feed/Speed calculation, Automatic operation selection and configuration, safety checks, etc. And just for gravy, the propertybag that was introduced to support these attributes is a superior solutions for parametrically driven sketches than spreadsheets in almost every way but nobody has even noticed it.

There's a lot more there. Those are just the big ones but I guess all that is 'overly complex, poorly designed, and poorly written.' I guess we'll be blown away when you introduce a superior alternative.

[blazini36]

Sadly at some point we'll all be forced to choose between battling with their overly-complex, poorly designed and poorly written "wonder" or ditching FreeCAD and looking for an alternative. I do wonder what planet these people are on.

I find this offensive. I have no problem with informed criticism. That makes things better. But here it appears that that you have no understanding of the reasons for the design choice. You offer no constructive feedback, just sweeping generalizations. You never once asked _why_ something is the way that it is. And you take out your frustration by implying that the developers are somehow deficient. Seriously, where do you get off?

Yeah, I would never say such a thing about Freecad. I'm not a programmer but I design obscure things which tend to need some form of custom programming. I can say first hand how frustrating it is to try to work with someone on ironing out bugs and get things working. Freecad appears to be an immense project that I'm frankly amazed is still going, I've been using it for a long time. That was a pretty lousy statement considering that it's free and the people who work on it are doing others a great service. Overall it's a great CAD program.

That said it is rather frustrating to see that my rolling distro updated the package when I fire it up after some period of inactivity and things don't work as I remember them. Like yesterday I was trying to get something done and I had to spend over an hour figuring out the tool system and re-adding tools to a library. It's always pleasant to find that some shortcoming or bug was fixed, I just now found that the facing op has a "face region" boundary that solves the issue of extending past faces within an open pocket (thank god lol). I'm sure a discussion about the changes goes on or something with the devs but I just use the thing, so major changes always seem to pop up at the wrong time. I got the new tool thing setup and after a bit of a mess with tool names I'm sure it'll be OK.

The new tool system doesn't seem to fit into the job setup dialog right yet tho. "Add" under tools just opens a filechooser which I have no idea what file it wants. I just skip the job setup tools and add them per OP with the tool dock and that seems fine

I don't think you've got Legacy Tools enabled. I'm using legacy tools and it works like in previous versions. The new version is overly complex and the UI poorly implemented IMO.

Maybe, I clicked the box to enable legacy tools but as I mentioned, the filechooser has some bug where it would not see the json file of my old tootable. I would think you can probably create a legacy tooltable from scratch, but at that point might as well just make the new style tooltable.