Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

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chrisb
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by chrisb »

HarryGeier wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 10:11 am and maybe we should just leave the technolgie to the users choice and define it more from the standpoint of "What is it used for"
If it is not welding I would be glad to have something else, which shows the user immediately what an additive feature is good for. I still think that welding is a good example: if it is done properly it is impossible to tell where the parts end and where the welding starts.
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NormandC
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by NormandC »

chrisb wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:50 am I would like to discuss the idea of a body.
What does that have to do with the current topic?
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

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NormandC wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:59 pm
chrisb wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 9:50 am I would like to discuss the idea of a body.
What does that have to do with the current topic?
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough and assumed the topic's name as a frame of that post.

I did not want to discuss what a body should be like in FreeCAD - I am the one around here who is pretty satisfied the way it is. I wanted to discuss how this idea of a body and what it represents is explained to a reader of the documentation.
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NormandC
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by NormandC »

chrisb wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 6:18 pm I wanted to discuss how this idea of a body and what it represents is explained to a reader of the documentation.
Ok. But the more I think about it, the mention of welding, or gluing, might actually be adding confusion...

HarryGeier wrote: Fri Mar 09, 2018 10:11 am Let say you have a Block of Steel and you weld a Cylinder to it , after that you cut a hole thru both , giving a workpiece which you pass on for Welding it to different other Workpieces. This would be ONE Body .. we do this for shafts which are friction welded from 2 materials at the supplier.
I understand that the end product would be one body. But to determine how to deal with such cases, I always go back to this: how will you manufacture this? What materials will you start from? How will you prepare drawings for production? You're talking of welding a separate cylinder, which means you will cut it from some rod or shaft stock. You will most probably need to create separate drawings for the block of steel and for the cylinder, which means that they need to start as two separate bodies.

In the commercial CAD program I use at work, I would create two part files, then combine them in an assembly file, in which I would add an assembly feature in the form of a hole. An assembly feature can be set to only affect the assembly, and not the parts it's made of.

Then I would create a drawing for the block, a drawing for the cylinder, and a drawing for the assembly.

In FreeCAD 0.17, it's a little more complicated, because there is no native assembly workbench yet. I think one method would be to create a first Body with the block of steel, then a second body for the cylinder. Then, you add a PartDesign Boolean operation to add the cylinder body in the block body. After that you can create the hole. This means you can create a drawing from the cylinder body, and a drawing for the final block body. But I'm unsure how to create a drawing of the block body in its state prior to the Boolean operation. You can do that by changing the Body's tip, but as soon as you change it back to the end feature, the drawing views will automatically update.

But sorry for the digression. To summarize, in my view, welding, gluing are processes of assembling separate components/parts together, thus I don't think they should be used in context of a single body. Why not use the term "fusion" instead to talk about additive features? Because it really is what they do, a union Boolean operation which we commonly label "fuse".
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by chrisb »

NormandC wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 4:29 pm You're talking of welding a separate cylinder, which means you will cut it from some rod or shaft stock. You will most probably need to create separate drawings for the block of steel and for the cylinder, which means that they need to start as two separate bodies.
Point taken. So we have to think about something better to motivate additive features. Something like modeling with plaster where you can add something, take it away ... Alas, this has not the technical aspects I would like to have.
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by GeneFC »

Is it really necessary to define and explain "single contiguous solid?"

I do not know how it might translate, but in English the meaning of those three words seems quite clear and unambiguous. Adding welds, glue, screws, plaster, chair legs, chicken beaks, etc., seems to be heading down an endless path of more explanations and exceptions. :roll:

Yes, there will almost certainly be questions that arise in the Help Forum, but it would be impossible to anticipate all the ways someone might want to distort the meaning of "single contiguous solid."

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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by chrisb »

GeneFC wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:21 pm Is it really necessary to define and explain "single contiguous solid?"

I do not know how it might translate, but in English the meaning of those three words seems quite clear and unambiguous. Adding welds, glue, screws, plaster, chair legs, chicken beaks, etc., seems to be heading down an endless path of more explanations and exceptions. :roll:
The target is not to explain "single contiguous solid". It is rather about the approach of Part Design compared to Part Workbench. It's about communicating the idea of an object built by features, where it is always the same object, as compared to Part, where every operation creates a new object. And the analogy with a block of material is convincing: If you drill a hole in it, it is still the same object, only the material from the hole is gone. If you attach something, it again is still the same object with some additional material.
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by wandererfan »

GeneFC wrote: Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:21 pm Is it really necessary to define and explain "single contiguous solid?"
You wouldn't think so, but once upon a time the passage just said "single contiguous solid" without any explanation. There were lots of queries in the forum. Hence the chicken beaks. :)
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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by cds4byu »

I felt like the explanation of welding, gluing, etc. was unnecessary. But I have lots of experience with solid modeling.

For me, I feel like a body is created from a collection of features that must all be connected together (hence the one contiguous solid). Features can either add material to the existing body (additive features) or remove material from the existing body (subtractive features).

I don't think that we need to consider how parts are made when we design them. Sometimes the features reflect the way we would make the parts; other times they don't. For example, consider the cooling fins on an air-cooled engine cylinder. We could make them as either additive features (add fins to the base cylinder) or subtractive features (cut grooves in an oversized cylinder stock part). But when we actually make the cylinder, we do it with casting, and the fins are made at the same time as the rest of the features.

I think it's best to avoid talking about manufacturing processes when talking about feature creation.

Thanks,

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Re: Wiki pages that need love before 0.17 release

Post by NormandC »

Release notes 017 is ready for translation. The FEM section is incomplete, but can be completed later.

bernd wrote:poke
Bernd, if possible, when completing the FEM section, please add spaces between bullet entries. That way, when we mark the changes for translation, each bullet point will be assigned a single translation unit. It will make many little translation units, but I think it's easier to translate than a few huge blocks of text.

There would probably be more additional modules to add at the bottom of the page, but I can't afford to spend any more time on this.

I created the new AddonManager page. I have no idea how to link it to the rest of the wiki. For now, it's only linked to the Release notes.
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