Extend Sweep to simplify usage

[microelly2]

some time ago I made this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKwxlw7BEmQ

Looks good! and for this I would immediately accept a third party macro. But for functions which I use in most of the cases it would be great if they were implemented directly in FreeCAD without the need to call a macro. If I was sweeping all the time I would of course have an icon to call it. But for occasional usage I have to call the macro - click - scroll in the list of macros - double click. Then the macro would probably not have the nice preview and other fancy things.

it's really not easy to manage special methods.
when a method is coded it still needs work to bring it to the gui, to make it multi language supported, to write a manual entry, to make a use case/test case ...
meantime I have my methods to get a menu entry for a method within one line of code and I have about 100 methods in the nurbs wb,
most of the are special for MY workflows.
still I'm looking for a way to make the way to the end user gui simpler - like a faq - this is not a CAD problem, but a user interaction task:
describe a problem and the system will give you some dialogs which are useful.
how can this work?
a good example is google search - you ask, google gives answers , you select some of them and google learns from your selections.
meantime FreeCAD has la lot of macros and the macro menu is not powerful to handle these macros comfortable.
a better/intelligent macro selector is needed.

[freedman]

FreeCAD has la lot of macros and the macro menu is not powerful to handle these macros comfortable.

Yes, we might get more horsepower to FreeCAD with some sort of certified Macro toolbar. Someone (sorry for the finger pointing) could manage a tool bar, keep track of icons, assign macros, replace code that users find messed up. Some kind of package that can be installed and we users debug it as a group, once a fix is decided on, the code is turned in for a certified addition. I know this can be done manually but macros seem to come and go from my toolbar and the whole assignng an icon thing. Umph!

[herrdeh]

I very much like chrisb's initial statement. That were my worst hours in FC: Having to tinker with sketches for hours to create something as simple and common as a "wire" or a "cable tie". I'd buy several beers for those who implement that feature.

[chrisb]

I'd buy several beers for those who implement that feature.

Don't buy them before the implementation.

[Joel_graff]

To throw in my two cents on the original sweep discussion, I'd love to see sweeps that can be arbitrarily positioned along a designated path (rather than consuming the entire path) and the ability to control a sweep with multiple simultaneous paths.

I'm actually half way into coding a python solution for the first issue... the second, I suspect would be very difficult to pull off...

[DeepSOIC]

the second, I suspect would be very difficult to pull off...

Well, in Curves add-on workbench, Chris_G did pull it off to some extent.

[herrdeh]

Don't buy them beer before the implementation.

Well. Supporting my Heimat's breweries (franconian - best of the world, as everybody says about his Heimat, so dont argue) is a good thing anyway - and having the beer during implementation may inspire the process a lot. And - debugging is much more fun for the other fellows afterwards...

[microelly2]

It is not exactly what was requested but you may test and discuss it.

phpBB [video]

[chrisb]

The video was shown in a different context, but it shows, that it is sensible to have this extension of a sweep to directly create them with a circular section. https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 21#p263521

[Joel_graff]

the second, I suspect would be very difficult to pull off...

Well, in Curves add-on workbench, Chris_G did pull it off to some extent.

He did, and, in fact, introduced it to me - it's pretty neat. But the sketch must start at the beginning of the segment. So for my purposes, I still need to rebuild the portion of the path I want to sweep as separate geometry.

It's not a terribly difficult thing to do, really - if I can get FPO's to behave

Still I figure the feature request would be reasonably useful to others.