wmayer wrote:Again, how do other cad applications solve this?
In Catia, you can right click an element and select "Parents/Children" which opens a window like this:
If you double click on a child, it expands to show the children of that child. Or if you double click a parent it expands to show the parents of that parent. This way the graph is localized to the element/path you're interested in. As wmayer points out, it becomes a huge tangled mess if you expand out too many of the parents/children. But it's really useful that it shares some of same features as the tree view, like highlighting the elements in the 3D view and hide/show control. I end up using it all the time...
About discussion about the tree view, I think there could be an option to view the objects by type, regardless of their relationship. With the possibility of maintaining the special groups such as the floors.
While not exactly what I say, I add one Revit image where you can see all the objects by type.
revit_tree.png (24.68 KiB) Viewed 2479 times
thank you,
Renato
my native language is not English, please excuse me any incorrectness, I apologize for any inconvenience caused, thank you
I finally gave a serious read (don't laugh) at this thread... I gathered several ideas that I can try to implement:
- Path module: almost ready for merge. We need to fix a few bugs, then it will be done. I hoped to be able to do it this week, but couldn't. Anyway, this will be done pretty soon.
- Drawing dimensioning: I also thought at first that it would be cool to have it merged into the Drawing WB, now I'm not too sure anymore, for 2 reasons: 1) Ian has reactivated Luke's branch, and 2) maybe Hamish's development would benefit more in staying outside the FreeCAD source code (faster, more flexible, no need to ask for merge). Now I'd be more tempted to leave it as an external module, maybe add the standard Drawing tools to it (that's easy), so the user can just use it and forget about the original Drawing WB, and concentrate on an easy way to manage those external modules (see below).
- Fill patterns for cut Arch objects: This is implemented already! I *might* have forgotten to announce it... When you make a Drawing view out of an Arch sectionplane, it now has a "showFill" property that you can set to true. At the moment, it can only display one simple pattern, but this will be expanded in the future with the new patterns module I've been working on, and liked to materials.
- Arch materials: Implemented since yesterday! Still some work needed, but it works already, and exports/imports to/from IFC.
- Cross section symbols in Drawing WB (and other symbols too): There is already a Drawing Symbol tool with which you can place custom SVG objects on a Drawing page. This should be extended so it becomes easy to place common symbols. Maybe we need something similar to the Parts Library, but with SVG symbols?
- Textured mode: As soon as we have a way to store textures (almost there in the Arch WB, now that materials are there), we can experiment with that.
- Add Draft VisGroups to Draft toolbar: ( issue #2060 ) that should be easy.
- Mods & Macros manager: microelly did already a pretty interesting test... I'd be glad to have a small elegant utility like that that could install and update these modules easily. I think we are close to it already.
Another graph visualisation possibility would be the git way, which I find very nice and which would fit very well our current format. Having this as easily switchable view of course, not as replacement:
ickby wrote:Another graph visualisation possibility would be the git way...
I have had that thought also. I don't really like them, but with the simplicity and the space efficiency, I think it is probably the most sensible approach.
But would it be able to represent our problematic cases easily? For ex. one feature being the base of 10, 20 others... This might quickly look like a plate of spaghetti...
ickby wrote:Another graph visualisation possibility would be the git way, which I find very nice and which would fit very well our current format. Having this as easily switchable view of course, not as replacement:
This is a bad example because the image only shows a tree but not an arbitrary DAG. How would a DAG look like with a git workflow? And I find the "Cut" also a bit confusing because it's not obvious if you cut the box from the cylinder or the cylinder from the box.
nzurbrugg wrote:In Catia, you can right click an element and select "Parents/Children" which opens a window like this:
Thanks for the picture. The more interesting point for me is when you have a diamond-like history how this CATIA represents with its tree.
Nevertheless, most of posts here is about the tree view. But I agree with "tom" that the topological naming is a much more important feature we should work on. AFAIK jrheinlaender has worked on this some years ago and the code must be somewhere in the assembly branch. Unfortunately, besides some merges with master there happened not much in the last 6 months and I have no clue what are the plans to integrate assembly into master.
wmayer wrote:I find the "Cut" also a bit confusing because it's not obvious if you cut the box from the cylinder or the cylinder from the box.
One possibility might be to use the nodes in the graph as visual cues:
graph2.png (15.01 KiB) Viewed 2390 times
wmayer wrote:I agree with "tom" that the topological naming is a much more important feature we should work on.
Me too - it seems like this is necessary support the core ideas behind FreeCAD.
Regarding several comments on Drawing - it's probably worth starting a separate thread to discuss plans. Maybe when we get a couple more issues/missing functionality with the new Drawing fixed, it'll be ready for some preliminary testing. -Ian-
From a user viewpoint I think topological naming is so critical that I'd be happy if it was the only new addition to 0.16, except for what has already been included in master.
When you make a Drawing view out of an Arch sectionplane, it now has a "showFill" property that you can set to true. At the moment, it can only display one simple pattern, but this will be expanded in the future with the new patterns module I've been working on, and liked to materials.
