[Discussion] Drafting 2d annotations for architecture

[carlopav]

@Carlopav is extremely busy atm

Exactly! And this topic is not about starting right now some experiments (also if it would be cool), but more about exploring different approaches and ideas before writing code.
It's just architectish chatting
I won't expect any usable result emerging before 0.21 And by that time maybe @realthunder or others could also have solved the issue about 10k+ document objects in the scene...

[onekk]

1) using the same approach of the BRP files, and sotre the 2D drawing and maybe annotations data in external files.

Let me try to understand better what you envision (I'm not a developer and I never studied programming, so sorry but i need some basic explanations). I repeat it to check if I got it:
- FCStd format is an archive that can store multiple files as a compressed format;

Yes it si an archive, a normal zip file, but someone, maybe realthunder as told me that is not very manageable as it is treated like a CVS file, (a sort of Github container), but is is easily inspected, it suffice that you copy a FCstd file and modify the extension in zip and deompress.

this a partial directory structure of a FCstd file decompressed, I have retained only some files to inspect them.

fcstd_file.png (25.28 KiB) Viewed 1892 times

- The document itself is an xml like file, that represent sequentially each object;

Yes it the Document.xml file

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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<!--
 FreeCAD Document, see http://www.freecadweb.org for more information...
-->
<Document SchemaVersion="4" ProgramVersion="0.16R6703 (Git)" FileVersion="1">

and with a structure like:

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    <Objects Count="117">
        <Object type="Part::Compound" name="Compound" />
        <Object type="Sketcher::SketchObject" name="Sketch001" />
        <Object type="PartDesign::Pad" name="Pad001" />
        <Object type="Sketcher::SketchObject" name="Sketch002" />
        <Object type="PartDesign::Pad" name="Pad002" />
        <Object type="Sketcher::SketchObject" name="Sketch003" />

or

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    <ObjectData Count="117">
        <Object name="Compound">
            <Properties Count="5">
                <Property name="ExpressionEngine" type="App::PropertyExpressionEngine">
                    <ExpressionEngine count="0">
                    </ExpressionEngine>
                </Property>
                <Property name="Label" type="App::PropertyString">
                    <String value="extruder-motor"/>
                </Property>
                <Property name="Links" type="App::PropertyLinkList">
                    <LinkList count="0">
                    </LinkList>
                </Property>
                <Property name="Placement" type="App::PropertyPlacement">
                    <PropertyPlacement Px="109.650000000000" Py="-100.500000000000" Pz="-442.000000000000" Q0="0.000000000000" Q1="0.000000000000" Q2="0.000000000000" Q3="1.000000000000"/>
                </Property>
                <Property name="Shape" type="Part::PropertyPartShape">
                    <Part file="PartShape.brp"/>
                </Property>
            </Properties>
        </Object>

And the properties, not the Placement that is internally stored as a Quaternion and the Shape that has the reference to the brp file that you could see in the directory image,

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        <Object name="Sketch001">
            <Properties Count="8">
                <Property name="Constraints" type="Sketcher::PropertyConstraintList">
                    <ConstraintList count="29">
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="2" Value="0.000000000000" First="0" FirstPos="0" Second="-2000" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="2" Value="0.000000000000" First="2" FirstPos="0" Second="-2000" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="3" Value="0.000000000000" First="1" FirstPos="0" Second="-2000" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="3" Value="0.000000000000" First="3" FirstPos="0" Second="-2000" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="13" Value="0.000000000000" First="0" FirstPos="1" Second="4" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />
                        <Constrain Name="" Type="13" Value="0.000000000000" First="0" FirstPos="2" Second="4" SecondPos="0" Third="-2000" ThirdPos="0" LabelDistance="10.000000000000" LabelPosition="0.000000000000" IsDriving="1" />

This is a partial part of a sketcher object.

- Each object shape is represented in an attached binary file in the BREP format;

Yes but the file is not binary, is a normal ascii file:

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DBRep_DrawableShape

CASCADE Topology V1, (c) Matra-Datavision
Locations 7
1
              1               0               0          109.65 
              0               1               0          -100.5 
              0               0               1            -442 
1
6.07291994469961e-014 -7.04991620636974e-015               1 -109.653354136413 
              1 -1.149080830487e-014 -6.07291994469962e-014 100.500689864652 
1.14908083048704e-014               1 7.04991620636904e-015 465.263548454841 
2  1 -1 2 -1 0
1
6.07291994469961e-014 -7.04991620636974e-015               1 -109.653354136413 
              1 -1.149080830487e-014 -6.07291994469962e-014 100.500689864652 
1.14908083048704e-014               1 7.04991620636904e-015 465.263548454841 
2  1 -1 4 -1 0

The format is explained in one link in one of my past post, directly from the OCCT documentation

- We can use the same approach with DXF: a document object that do not have a BREP representation, but a DXF one;
- This object can load in memory the DXF content and display it in the 3d view, letting us perform editing it;
- The object communicate directly with the stored DXF or save it when document is saved;

Is that something like that? If not, can you correct this ordered list, so we have a kind of trace of the backend workflow?

I think that for not reinventing the wheel, if the internal sketch format could be used, so no other libraries are involved, simple the part of the "floorplan" sketch could be "moved" in the external file and reference in a similar manner
f maybe the floorplan could be represented as:

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       <Object name="Floor1">
            <Properties Count="2">
                <Property name="Label" type="App::PropertyString">
                    <String value="floor1"/>    
                </Property>
               <Property name="ExtSketch type="App::ExtSketch">
                    <Part file="Floorplan1.dxf"/>
                </Property>
            </Properties>
        </Object>

Properties names are clearly imagined, following the internal scheme, but maybe this could be a soft approach.

Maybe the annotations if they are belonging to the floorplan could be inserted in the "external sketch" , if the external sketch is kept in a format that the internal library (maybe with some little modification) could manage, no big work is needed.

Each "external sketch" has it's own annotations, and if not needed to be displayed, they are not using the horsepower, loading the whole document.xml will be less time consuming as the external sketch are loaded "on demand".


Hope to have been almost clear, if yorick will sponsor this approach, a better discussion has to be made on the format of this external file.

Regards

Carlo D.

[carlopav]

Hope to have been almost clear, if yorick will sponsor this approach, a better discussion has to be made on the format of this external file.

thx for the deep explanation.
Another 2 questions:
- when you mention external file, do you mean really external or just zipped as the brep file?
- It just came into my mind that maybe we can also have a look at how bernd treated the FEM_Mesh

ping

How do you store the FEM mesh bernd? inside the document object in the xml or in a separate part like the brep file?

[onekk]

For external file, I mean the "floorplan" as we are using this example.

It could be simply the format FreeCAD use for the sketch part, but placed in an external file, to not reinvent the wheel.

If this format is easily and fast parseable, no need to search for an exotic or complicated, format, if only, lines, arc, rectangles, and so on are needed, maybe extend it with a proper annotation part.

If the need is a quick way to represent the floorplan as a 2D drawing.

Or maybe Draft is better suited for this task.

But if the goal is to represent a 2d drawing, brp file has his entities for 2d curves and lines, it seems to lack of the text part, so maybe the brp file could be used as an external format, but in this manner there is the need for an xml file that act as glue from the drawing (lines, arcs, ellipse and so on) an the annotations.

see

https://www.opencascade.com/doc/occt-7. ... format_4_3


in the table of contents, there is a section 2d curves so no need to introduce nothing new, it could be managed by the OCCT engine itself.

Regards

Carlo D.

[regis]

It is Draft Label - see wiki

Draft Label

Screenshot from 2020-05-17 14-23-10.png

Thanks a buch, i was reading Dlabel as "DOOR label" but now i see the D stands for Draft.
so for "Door Tag"
Ok i gave it a shot and atleast techdraw can see the tag but it's representation is not right.

OS: Windows 10 (10.0)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.20943 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: ceb23799c76df3ebfa7be4b9fe83bb62de60bc6c
Python version: 3.8.2
Qt version: 5.12.5
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.4.0
Locale: English/Canada (en_CA)

[paullee]

Are you also able to change the font of your dimensions and text @paullee?

Forgot to answer this question. I have almost never try font - as when I move to Fedora (from Win, quite long time ago), I have never figured out where are those fonts and seem problematic if e.g. using a font in Linux but opening it in Windows.... then never pick it up again

I might try fonts here again.

BTW, when FC font is Null, what fonts would it use ?

[regis]

BTW, when FC font is Null, what fonts would it use ?

On mine it says this "MS Shell Dlg 2

Snipaste_2020-05-17_20-21-21.png (26.42 KiB) Viewed 1811 times

But as you can see when i change the fonts, it doesn't update with the changes.

Snipaste_2020-05-17_20-22-51.png (67.75 KiB) Viewed 1811 times

[Roy_043]

Note: "MS Shell Dlg 2" is not actually a single font:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... hell-dlg-2

[yorik]

This thread is going really fast and far hard to follow everything...

Two things:

- Regarding "working in 2D". Don't know about you guys, but I really dislike "working in 2D views" like in Revit. This seems to me a gross way to try to make "old-school" architects feel at ease in a 3D application by "faking" that they are working in their favourite old-school CAD program. It seems to me that modern"pure" 3D apps like FreeCAD or Blender offer a much more convenient and practical 3D space, where it is super easy to mask, disable/enable objects, place yourself in exactly the view you want anywhere in the 3D space, and be able to work efficiently directly in the 3D space. My opinion is that we should free ourselves up from the Revit heritage and mindset, and concentrate in having everything work in all possible manners in the 3D space itself. Specially with @realthunder's selection improvements, it's becoming really comfortable to model directly in a 3D view in FreeCAD. That doesn't mean we can't offer cool "shortcuts" to clean, 2D views of your model (maybe even with white background and screen widgets like "view limits"), though, but we should always take advantage that it is still the 3D space and not try to go around it.

- The autocad block idea is cool. We could have some new "Draft Symbol" object, that can, for example:
- take its shape definition from either FreeCAD shapes, or an SVG file, or a DWG/DXF file (so it could use the zillions of DWG block libraries out there)
- create dynamically properties for each "mutable" text or attr in it (we already have a way to define those in svg)
- it needs a way to store the position of each text too (a vector pos for each of them? and also individual color, size, font, etc? maybe then these properties should all become lists...)
- now string properties are also supported by the expression engine, so it's really easy to make these texts dynamic and for ex. take a window tag

[regis]

I really dislike "working in 2D views" like in Revit

Are you refering to techdraw here?

modern"pure" 3D apps like FreeCAD or Blender offer a much more convenient and practical 3D space, where it is super easy to mask, disable/enable objects, place yourself in exactly the view you want anywhere in the 3D space, and be able to work efficiently directly in the 3D space.

I agree with this but still we ha no real ways of handling proper expressive documentation, for example electrical notes, structural notes, design notes, good material tag behaviour etc etc so there is still a need for laying anotations on a 3D flat surface like workplane.

concentrate in having everything work in all possible manners in the 3D space itself.

I also share this view.

offer cool "shortcuts" to clean, 2D views of your model (maybe even with white background and screen widgets like "view limits"), though, but we should always take advantage that it is still the 3D space and not try to go around it.

I'm also up for this.

- The autocad block idea is cool. We could have some new "Draft Symbol" object, that can, for example:
- take its shape definition from either FreeCAD shapes, or an SVG file, or a DWG/DXF file (so it could use the zillions of DWG block libraries out there)
- create dynamically properties for each "mutable" text or attr in it (we already have a way to define those in svg)
- it needs a way to store the position of each text too (a vector pos for each of them? and also individual color, size, font, etc? maybe then these properties should all become lists...)
- now string properties are also supported by the expression engine, so it's really easy to make these texts dynamic and for ex. take a window tag

Can't wait to see this in action.