At the risk that my first post triggers necro sensitivities...
ickby wrote: ↑Mon Jul 17, 2017 10:48 am
I did not look into the version you use, but in 0.17 you can create Parts that have all features as child. This allows for easy ordering. (Currently accessible via PartDesign Workbench, but this is a general object that can be used with everything).
Yes, I am organizing things hierarchically in this way extensively, but I'm not following the statement about "This allows for easy ordering".
As far I can tell, it allows for easy grouping, but I see no functionality for ordering within a group. I have a complex parts tree with many objects at various levels, and ordering within a level is still very useful to me. Is there a way to do this that you are alluding to that I'm missing?
I'll certainly admit to not fully appreciating all the issues with logical organization. It may be that presently things are coded so that the display is based on some internal logical order, but surely objects could have separate properties that determine their displayed sort order (at the relevant hierarchy level in the tree) within certain contexts without need to reorganize the underlying logical structures at all. I don't see why display order needs to be tied in any way to arguments about internal structure. They are, or can be, separate issues.
I am essentially making assemblies via hierarchical parts trees and for simply navigating the tree efficiently for whatever purpose it's very useful to be able to keep a fixed and reasonable organization. It's especially disruptive during working discussions when you have to pause to search around for where every part went in the tree in order to turn its visibility on and off.
Regarding naming, I'd also agree that there can be some improvements to naming. I find myself making many clones and it would certainly speed up work flow if cloning "widget" made "widgetClone001" instead of just "Clone043". I do it by hand, but it would be a nice touch if it was automated.
As it is my first post here I will add the standard disclaimer that I'm well aware that this is free software, and these are just my suggestions should anyone feel inspired by them. For what it's worth I haven't looked at FreeCAD in a long time but version 0.17, in large part because of parts hierarchy, really seems to be pretty usable. Regardless of a true assembly bench even simply making a default toolbar with things like move, clone, placement, alignment, make compound, draft-point, and draft-line (the last three for attaching alignment points to a part), and simple copy would go a long way toward making assembly almost user friendly. While it's still not quite true parametric assembly, the ability to move hierarchical groups of parts together still makes it pretty powerful now.
I am presently on Version 0.17 Revision 13522 65 bit Windows