FreeCAD Trails Workbench (Transportation and Geomatics)

[balrobs]

Hi @HakanSeven12,
your new pad feature is amazing
Congratulations!

[HakanSeven12]

Thanks

[HakanSeven12]

Working on new LandXML importer. Main idea is you can select which items will be imported.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/56862333

[TheAndrian]

Hi there,

First post on this forum. Just wanted to say what a great workbench you are working on. For me this workbench has been the first one where I have been able to trim down an imported cloud point XYZ file using the native coordinate system of the surveyed data (in this case a GK M34 DGM grid of 5m x 5m) to create a decent surface I can work on. I have had to hop about on various workbenches from the initial import into the Trails WB; Points WB for trimming, Mesh Remodel to select individual points in the cloud to generate Bsplines (a laborious and painful process), Curves WB to discretize the Bsplines and then generate an approximation surface (a very unpredictable process) which I finally was able to convert to a face and trim down into a solid with a skirt. Been also slicing the final solid to generate really smooth contours. Seems I have corrupted the file I have been working on and have found some oddities along the way which I have noticed like the slicing tool in Part WB seems to skip slices.

Appreciate this workbench is in Alpha stage as well as a number of other WBs which are in continuous development. The Pads feature looks very interesting and maybe of use to me. I think one of the glaring missing features in Freecad or Workbenches is the ability to select easily a subset of points from a large data set for further manipulation to generate Bsplines i.e. Northing selection and Easting selection (appreciate a Python script could be done for this).

To give you an idea what I have been up to and workflow see the following images:


Full DGM Surface and Contours from Trails WB


Points Group from after trimming down in Points WB and then grouped with Mesh Remodel WB


Curves WB generating Approximation Surface


Further manipulation to create skirted solid for smaller surface face in Part WB


Sliced Solid with contours of 64mm in Part WB


Closer view of contours

For those curious of what I am trying to achieve here; a model railway module in N scale (1:160) measuring 3m long and 0.5m wide based on a real location.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers Jim

[HakanSeven12]

Hi there,

First post on this forum. Just wanted to say what a great workbench you are working on. For me this workbench has been the first one where I have been able to trim down an imported cloud point XYZ file using the native coordinate system of the surveyed data (in this case a GK M34 DGM grid of 5m x 5m) to create a decent surface I can work on. I have had to hop about on various workbenches from the initial import into the Trails WB; Points WB for trimming, Mesh Remodel to select individual points in the cloud to generate Bsplines (a laborious and painful process), Curves WB to discretize the Bsplines and then generate an approximation surface (a very unpredictable process) which I finally was able to convert to a face and trim down into a solid with a skirt. Been also slicing the final solid to generate really smooth contours. Seems I have corrupted the file I have been working on and have found some oddities along the way which I have noticed like the slicing tool in Part WB seems to skip slices.

Hi Jim. So you do this just to smooth contours? What is the purpose? Maybe I can automate this.

For those curious of what I am trying to achieve here; a model railway module in N scale (1:160) measuring 3m long and 0.5m wide based on a real location.

We will work on that too. But its not a near future

Also your terrain model looks amazing. Can you send it to me? I shared your pictures on my Twitter.

[TheAndrian]

Hi Hakan,

Thanks. Unfortunately the point cloud was paid for and I am not allowed to distribute it. This set of data was not expensive to purchase, about 6 euros in total which is very reasonable. Check out this link from where I bought this, on their site they have free samples a DGM with 10m x 10m grid plus other interesting files to play with of Villach in Austria. I hope one day they will provide DGMs with 1m x 1m grid data to purchase.

The purpose of having smooth contours and outlines is to get nice clean laser cut edges for the fascias made of plywood, the contours generated are also used for laser cutting thin sheets of plywood which can be stacked at model scale to create the terrain. So in my earlier post the example of the slices when scaled down represents sheets of 0.4mm plywood, I have done coarser slices as well as representing thicker sheets of plywood.

I don't want to distract this thread too much but if you want to see in more detail my project see this forum topic link. You can see the tools I used in my earlier attempts using SketchUp which I seem to be able to do in FreeCAD now. I use your WB since I can nail down coordinates accurately using your point cloud importer tool, which helped in cutting out the final surface; to get the shape's coordinates, in this case a rectangle with fixed length and width I chose an initial strategic coordinate and then used pen and paper to calculate the polar coordinates of the rectangle's corners in the native GK M34 coordinate system.

Cheers Jim

[HakanSeven12]

Nice project I will take a look for contour smoothing.

[TheAndrian]

Nice project I will take a look for contour smoothing.

Hi,

Thanks. Looking forward to your progress on this.

Cheers Jim

[Kunda1]

Seems I have corrupted the file I have been working on and have found some oddities along the way which I have noticed like the slicing tool in Part WB seems to skip slices.

Can you please post thread for each oddity so we can track them and fix?

[JavierBrana]

Nice. I am cheching your pad when I have some time.

If you want to soften the contours then check and use my code. I have implemented it already. In future I want to close them and put labels.