DraftView positioning and TechDraw

[stanluk]

Hello, at first I would like to say hello and thank You all for this amazing work. Ill never consider such advanced tool as FreeCAD will be available for free.

However, as I am getting to know it better I frequently run into issue that same results can be achieved using multiple ways. And generally it occurs that there is no single preferred ways of doing things.

In my recent project I am modeling the 2d landscape environment. I used a Draft Workbench for drawing all the objects and I grouped them using layers. As the result I get N layers grouping multiple objects. After that I want to put them in TechDraw to make printable drawings. On each drawing there should be presented only two layers from N layers available. I used "Insert a View of the Draft Workbench object" and as a result I get 2 DraftView objects inside TechDraw object. However after adjusting scale, the objects seems to lost original position regarding each other on working plane, as it seems that each DraftView gets its positioning calculated individually on TechDraw.

Is there any way of grouping such layer objects so they could be properly positioned on TechDraw?
I've tried draft upgrade, inserting view and active view from TechDraw, however they don't work for me.

I've added some sample FreeCAD file to better describe issue.

OS: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (ubuntu:GNOME/ubuntu)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.24291 (Git) AppImage
Build type: Release
Branch: (HEAD detached at 0.19.2)
Hash: 7b5e18a0759de778b74d3a5c17eba9cb815035ac
Python version: 3.8.8
Qt version: 5.12.9
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.4.0
Locale: Polish/Poland (pl_PL)

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

You can select multiple objects in the tree before adding them to the TechDraw page. Then you have only a single view containing all objects, and they keep their relative positions.

[stanluk]

Hello, If I understand correctly, You mean to select multiple objects in a tree view and then select "Insert a view" from TechDraw, instead of "Insert a view from Draft Workbench object", am I right?

The first way creates only one View object, however in case of Draft objects I lose a lot of draft objects details (like colors, different line widths, text annotations etc.)
The second way is creating two DrafView objects instead of one in my case, but looking nice, however with wrong positioning

[chrisb]

Hello, If I understand correctly, You mean to select multiple objects in a tree view and then select "Insert a view" from TechDraw, instead of "Insert a view from Draft Workbench object", am I right?

Correct, that's what I meant. I wanted to play with the "Insert draft object" and tried to add a line and a circle. I get an error with both of them "There were no Dragft WB objects in the selection". I have tried to select them in the tree and in 3D view - in vain.

OS: macOS 10.16
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.25943 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: a65464b722a846bd2999aa2fecdff1132b15b297
Python version: 3.9.7
Qt version: 5.12.9
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.2
Locale: C/Default (C)

[stanluk]

That's odd. At least in case of my FreeCad version I can add them w/o problems.
Maybe I will test git version also.

[chrisb]

Here is what I did:
- Restart FreeCAD
- activate Draft WB
- click the Line icon
- click left lower point in 3D view, then right upper
- activate TechDraw WB
- create a new page
- select Line in 3D view
- click "Insert Draft Workbench Object" icon

-> message "There were no Dragft WB objects in the selection" is shown in a popup.

Where is my mistake?

[chrisb]

It seems to be my config. It works with a plain vanilla config. Any idea which parameter may cause this?

[paullee]

I am not familiar with both Layers and DraftView.

Usually DraftView is good for Draft objects - View Object has some good features like recognition of faces though to my understanding.


Select the Layers (which can different Layer) and Click Draft View - is that what you want.

I thought objects can exist in different Layers whilst be contained in a Group, but it seems not - usually I will try select a Group and use Draft View.

draft-and-tech-draw-issue_ r.FCStd

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Screenshot from 2021-10-09 01-42-05.png (256.39 KiB) Viewed 2539 times

[paullee]

p.s.

DraftView Wiki

- The TechDraw DraftView.svg DraftView tool inserts a view of a selected Part-based or Group object into a drawing page. Unlike the standard TechDraw View.svg View tool, views created with this tool are handled by the Workbench Draft.svg Draft Workbench, and specially designed for showing 2D objects. See Notes.

- Limitations

The DraftView is rendered within the Draft Workbench, therefore TechDraw has limited control over its appearance. You may need to make changes within Draft to get the representation you want.

[edit] - https://wiki.freecadweb.org/TechDraw_DraftView

[paullee]

It seems to be my config. It works with a plain vanilla config. Any idea which parameter may cause this?

Seems to be kind of bug, maybe pinging @yorik or @Roy_043 ?