Usability Improvements

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wandererfan
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Usability Improvements

Post by wandererfan »

forked from here: [url=https://www.forum.freecadweb.org/viewto ... 80#p249563[/url]
ikua wrote: I would have some ideas for improvement of usability. I work a lot with annotations so lot of the ideas is based on drawing with a lot of different objects.
WF>> replies marked

1. Move objects in a drawing forward/backward/foreground/background. At the moment it totally depends on, what is added first what next.
WF>> I like this. Different object types do have different Z-Orders, but within a type it is strictly "last created on top". I'll have to look for unintended side effects, but it sounds like a good idea.

2. Add in tree the possibility to make parts in the drawing selectable or not in the drawing.
WF>> only in the drawing? Still selectable in the tree? You can "lock" a View in position and it becomes unselectable on the drawing page.

3. If you add a annotation and put the first time another text, change the label of the annotation accordingly to the begin of the text to find it easier in the tree.
WF>> relatively easy to make the label always contain the first n characters of the annotation text. How big should n be?

4. Possibility to group parts in the drawing, so you can move them together by selecting everything inside the group.
WF>> are you talking about "rubber band" selection, or semi-permanent grouping? Where/why would this be useful?

5. Allow Hatching with multiple selected faces (add the moment you have to single assign hatches face by face, if you have selected multiples only the first one gets the hatch).
WF>> this one might not be too difficult. Seem to recall something similar somewhere in TD.

6. Use original line colors from model (see thread https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 3&start=20). That could be also really useful in connection with point 7, if you want to highlight some parts in an drawing.
WF>> this one is really hard. We don't know how a line in the drawing relates to the original object. That information is lost in the OCE Hidden Line Removal algorithms.

7. Align different drawings to each other (see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TM2wXORQuE , minute 22)
WF>> how fancy does this have to be? Doing everything that Inkscape's "Align and Distribute" does would be hard.

8. Really awesome would be, if you could automatically assign patterns to the cutfaces of Arch section views.
WF>> I think the long term plan is for Draft/Arch to migrate to native TechDraw Views and retire the special Draft/Arch Views.
But there is no timeline for this. At the moment this would have to be done in Arch since TD doesn't draw the ArchSection view, it just puts whatever Arch provides onto the page.

Thanks for the suggestions.
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wandererfan
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by wandererfan »

Pauvres_honteux wrote: Seconding what ikua is typing, I'd like to add a proposal to be able to read out, from an assembly drawing, the partnumbers typed in the drawing.
How would you know that a given Annotation is a PartNumber? If we had a PartNumber object, this would be an easy macro.
I think you would be surprised how many databases there are where the same data is manually typed in these different databases.
Hah! No surprise here. I'm old enough to know how to use a keypunch machine!
Another proposal; This is a long shot, but here it goes: adding to the above whish I'd like to add an automatic "change notification symbol" besides the "magic" text notations and couple it with the change notification field/area in/on top of the drawing header.
Assuming we had a PartNumber object and a standard change notification area, under what circumstances would the "change notification symbol" be automatically added??

Thanks for the suggestions.
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by ikua »

hey wanderfan!

Happy that you are happy about suggestions :-). Here my replies:

2. Add in tree the possibility to make parts in the drawing selectable or not in the drawing.
WF>> only in the drawing? Still selectable in the tree? You can "lock" a View in position and it becomes unselectable on the drawing page.
ikua>> if you lock the position and the view is on top (last made) you can not select nothing behind it. it does not become unselectable. You can select it but not move it.

3. If you add a annotation and put the first time another text, change the label of the annotation accordingly to the begin of the text to find it easier in the tree.
WF>> relatively easy to make the label always contain the first n characters of the annotation text. How big should n be?
ikua>> maybe 13 string and then 3 integer if some have the same first 13 strings

4. Possibility to group parts in the drawing, so you can move them together by selecting everything inside the group.
WF>> are you talking about "rubber band" selection, or semi-permanent grouping? Where/why would this be useful?
ikua>> usability if you have to rearrange the drawing where you have for example different cuts with annotations. You select the group in the tree and can move them all together. This is allready possible if you select them by hand with ctrl and them move them. All move the same distance. I do not now if i have a special case, but i have a lot of annotations in my drawings. The possibility to group them (like groups in the modell) would be really helpful.

6. Use original line colors from model (see thread https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 3&start=20). That could be also really useful in connection with point 7, if you want to highlight some parts in an drawing.
WF>> this one is really hard. We don't know how a line in the drawing relates to the original object. That information is lost in the OCE Hidden Line Removal algorithms.
ikua>> in the showcase it is the special case, that these are all draftViews from sketches, so the color is directly the color of the skecht (only one). But i think this is a really special case and could also be done by manually changing the color.
maybe it would also be good for usability to change not only the line but also a different font color (so that both can have a different kind of color)

7. Align different drawings to each other (see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TM2wXORQuE , minute 22)
WF>> how fancy does this have to be? Doing everything that Inkscape's "Align and Distribute" does would be hard.
ikua>> i think here we have two different cases a) allign 2 views and b) allign one draft views (dimensions) to a view or a other draft view.
a) i think that could be done easy. Select one point in one view, one in the other view (points you use normally for dimensioning) and click an align button. Boom-> if the views are the same scale and direction the overlap totally. For that case it would be also be awesome, if you could change the line color in techdraw. So you could highlight parts in a drawing, e.g. to show which parts have to be renewed.
b) the first approach does not work here. But maybe there would be the possibility to align different views in the drawing accordingly to there position in the model. You would have one "master View" (e.g. a cut section) than you add a draft view with the dimensions to the drawing. In one
dialogue the position of the draft view can be linked to the "master view". If the Projection of the direction and the scale is the same, it should be possible to use the position of the model for the positioning in the drawing.

8. Really awesome would be, if you could automatically assign patterns to the cutfaces of Arch section views.
WF>> I think the long term plan is for Draft/Arch to migrate to native TechDraw Views and retire the special Draft/Arch Views.
But there is no timeline for this. At the moment this would have to be done in Arch since TD doesn't draw the ArchSection view, it just puts whatever Arch provides onto the page.
ikua>> i am not that experienced but i like somehow a lot the arch Views, and hope they will no get retired. You see easily what you cut looks like directly in the model and do not have to change to a drawing, to see if everything works out. Somehow at the moment, the only possibilities in tech draw are manual hatching (better than nothing) or gray cut parts (if you want to draw multiple objects). if i add a draft view based on something with 2d Faces to tech draw, faces are every time grey. Maybe it would be possible to add for that faces in tech draw a selection of svg patterns to substitute the grey surfaces.

Hope my ideas can help a bit.
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by Pauvres_honteux »

wandererfan wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 3:23 pm If we had a PartNumber object.
Brilliant! You have my vote!
wandererfan wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 3:23 pm I'm old enough...
Till tops bestefar! :D
wandererfan wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 3:23 pm ...under what circumstances would the "change notification symbol" be automatically added?
The circumstances would be Add, Change and Remove. Trigger for Add would be, well just adding a partnumber or a note that were not present on the former version of the drawing. Trigger for Change would be a different partnumber or note compared to former drawing version. Trigger for Remove would be removing of a partnumber or a note with respect to what was on the previous drawing version. None of this shall be possible before a new version is created.

This must be configurable and probably set by the IT-department of the company.
E.G. Where I work now they do not want any "change notification symbol" to be set before serial production despite the fact that we changed the parts and their drawings multiple times and sent them to the manufacturers. "Change notification symbol" shall only be used when changes occured after serial production started, according to this company. The former company I worked for wanted all changes marked with symbols regardless of status, but they used different symbols before and after they started serial production.
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by yorik »

ikua wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 6:08 pm8. Really awesome would be, if you could automatically assign patterns to the cutfaces of Arch section views.
WF>> I think the long term plan is for Draft/Arch to migrate to native TechDraw Views and retire the special Draft/Arch Views.
But there is no timeline for this. At the moment this would have to be done in Arch since TD doesn't draw the ArchSection view, it just puts whatever Arch provides onto the page.
ikua>> i am not that experienced but i like somehow a lot the arch Views, and hope they will no get retired.
I would like to retire them, yes, but of course not loose their functionality. The idea is that the actual drawing would be performed by TD tools instead of the python code in Draft/Arch. But of course we should do that only when we have achieved the same level of functionality.

You should still be able to click an Arch section plane and get your section on the TD page, if possible fully hatched. But the TD view can already do sections, only it still needs a "normal" view to take the section from. It might not be much work to add this capability, but I haven't looked into it yet
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by ikua »

Refering to the hatch topic I would have an suggestion, which would partly ease the working performance with techdraw, which maybe is not that lot work to program.

If I understand it right the hatches are assigned to the name of the faces in the view. If i change my model and get more faces I have to rearrange all the hatches in the drawing, cause the get new names.

Maybe there is a solution if techdraw would to i that way:
1. User assign hatch to selected face
2. Techdraw calculates the relative position of the center of the face in the drawing.
3. Techdraw find the face where the center is positioned
4. Techdraw assigns the hatch to the found face.

If you now add in the model something, which adds the face, and you recalculate the drawing, techdraw would find with the steps 2 to 4 the right face to draw the hatch on.

This would work, if the base of the view keeps the same size (face added inside). If you would add something to the view, it would still get messed up.

Don't know how easy that is to implement, but it came to my mind and i wanted to share it.

greets ikua
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by wandererfan »

ikua wrote: Wed Aug 15, 2018 7:25 am This would work, if the base of the view keeps the same size (face added inside). If you would add something to the view, it would still get messed up.

Don't know how easy that is to implement, but it came to my mind and i wanted to share it.
a kind of "poor man's topological naming"? I think this sort of Geometry Pattern Matching (maybe with AI component) is probably the best long term solution - I'm skeptical about the history of changes approach.

Thanks for sharing.
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by Pauvres_honteux »

About hatching; this might raise some ideas. ;)
I remember I once discovered "the big french cad program" utilizes a trick from Gimp/Photoshop to make hatchings. They, invisibly, use layers and path to "cut a hole/window" in the drawing thereby showing the layer behind, in that area, and what's on that layer will of course show.
There are one path+layer per hatching. I think the size of the layer is infinit and fixed (when one moves the whole view with the "hatching window" one see the underlying pattern passing by).
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by wandererfan »

Pauvres_honteux wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:11 am About hatching; this might raise some ideas. ;)
I remember I once discovered "the big french cad program" utilizes a trick from Gimp/Photoshop to make hatchings. They, invisibly, use layers and path to "cut a hole/window" in the drawing thereby showing the layer behind, in that area, and what's on that layer will of course show.
There are one path+layer per hatching. I think the size of the layer is infinit and fixed (when one moves the whole view with the "hatching window" one see the underlying pattern passing by).
It does raise ideas, thanks.

How does it work for two adjoining Faces with different hatches?
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Re: Usability Improvements

Post by Pauvres_honteux »

wandererfan wrote: Thu Sep 20, 2018 11:51 am
How does it work for two adjoining Faces with different hatches?
.
Every hatched area is a new set of "path+layer".

If you have yet another set of cavities inside the surrounding/major hatch, one adds these paths in such a way you that get one surrounding path with several internal sets of paths, but only one layer and in one go.

In that program one must do it in a non disruptive sequence. Though one do get a visual confirmation if the program accepts two following lines as one continous line (quite often the projections leaves some stuff to wish for). If the gap between two lines is larger than 0,001mm it can't follow through. It also has an "automatic" mode where you just click somewhere inside the area you want to hatch and it automagically finds the outer limits of the area. It works for really simple areas.
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