Deprecation plan for Drawing workbench

[sliptonic]

I've been doing a video series about TechDraw and getting some comments related to the old Drawing workbench.

I'm curious what the plan is to formally deprecate Drawing and remove it from the UI entirely.

I don't use it at all anymore and I'm not aware of anything Drawing can do that TechDraw can't also do (and do better). Are there still valid use-cases for Drawing?

If no one is using it, what's the process and timeline to remove? I believe there are add-on workbenches like Drawing-Dimensioning that use Drawing and they would also be deprecated if Drawing was removed.

Thoughts?

[sgrogan]

If no one is using it, what's the process and timeline to remove? I believe there are add-on workbenches like Drawing-Dimensioning that use Drawing and they would also be deprecated if Drawing was removed.

Thoughts?

Good question.
Maybe we could disable the gui, like with tools > customize, for 0.18/0.19. Then remove the gui in 0.19/0.20. Then decide to remove it altogether for 0.20/0.21, or it could live on as a module without a workbench? Adding deprecation warnings would be nice, but I don't know the effort involved.

[mlampert]

+1

[kkremitzki]

+1 to not showing it in the GUI for 0.18 but keeping it present for users who might want to activate it.

[chrisb]

I would vote for complete removal. Things don't get better by keeping old stuff. Users who need it to view old models can download an old FreeCAD version. It would be sufficient to show an appropriate message.

[wandererfan]

Are there still valid use-cases for Drawing?

The "Project shape" menu item in Drawing doesn't exist in TD. Shouldn't be a big job to move the code and add a menu entry.

[NormandC]

The Drawing wb + Drawing Dimensioning combo allows creation of welding symbols. TechDraw doesn't yet. DD has other dim tools that TD doesn't have.

Complete removal from 0.18 would be hasty. Hiding it would be a good compromise.

[yorik]

We could start by polling if there are still people using it...

[sliptonic]

We could start by polling if there are still people using it...

True, and it's easy to do but what outcome of the poll would change anything?

If the poll says NO ONE is using it, we still probably wouldn't do anything but hide it in 0.18 anyway.

If the poll says some people are using it, then, assuming the intention is still to remove it eventually, removing it from the menu in 0.18 doesn't seriously impact them and gives a clear signal about the direction. New users, OTOH, are less likely to train themselves on it and instead try TechDraw.

If the poll says lots of people are using it...then I'd wonder what we did wrong with the poll.

[NormandC]

Another thing to consider, before pulling out the Drawing wb from FreeCAD sources: legacy files.

What will happen if I want to open and use an old FCStd document containing a Drawing page?

Shouldn't FreeCAD propose a migration utility to convert Drawing pages into TechDraw pages, even if it's just a macro? I think that would be a minimum before removing the Drawing wb. As a fall back, would it be possible to extract Drawing pages as SVG?

Users who need it to view old models can download an old FreeCAD version.

That may be still possible now, but it may not be possible in the future, who knows.