Thinking with Panels

[ifohancroft]

There are a couple of problems with the current panels, couple of possible solutions and couple of use cases that can't be satisfied by the current panels.

I work almost exclusively in the PartDesign workbench and I create multifeatured parts from sketches. I often need to go back and forth and edit the features or the sketches they are based on/made from, so I always keep them all expanded.
To make it easy on myself, I like to be able to view them all at once (without having to scroll).

There are a couple of ways to do that:

1. Resize the Model panel part of the Combo View.
This however, creates a problem. FreeCAD doesn't remember the vertical resize state of the Combo View. So if I open a document and resize the combo view let's say to take all the space (essentially hiding the view/data panel part) or even just to make it a bit taller, without hiding View/Data - when I close FreeCAD and then I open it again - the Combo View is back in its default state.

2. Turn on the Tree View panel and dock it somewhere.
This however, makes us have the Tree View/Model twice on screen.
Ok, we can get rid of that by resizing the View/Data panel part of the combo view to cover the Model/Task part.
This isn't a valid solution though because of two reasons:
1. Like mentioned above, the vertical resize state of Combo View isn't remembered between FreeCAD Sessions
2. Now we can't see the Tasks panel ( I will get back to this in a bit)
Another solution:
Besides enablind the Tree View panel, we also enable Property View panel.
Great! We can now have each docked on each side of the FreeCAD window for example and we can see all of our features while still being able to manipulate the view and data properties.
However, another problem, making this, not a valid solution as well - Now we can't see the Tasks panel and there is no separate Tasks panel. It's only present in Combo View.

To summarize, the problems with the current panels are:
1. FreeCAD doesn't remember the Combo View's vertical resize state between sessions.
2. We have separate Property View pannel that has View and Data and we have a Tree View panel (the Model tab, from the Combo view) but Tasks is only present in the Combo view. (I was thinking: who cares, you don't open Tasks manually anyway, just hide it. Well, even if you do, when you open a sketch for example, it doesn't just show you Tasks. When you exit the sketch, the Combo panel is reenabled, which maybe is another issue of itself.)
3. If the combo panel is disabled, if you open a sketch or something that uses Tasks, the combo panel gets reenabled.

Here's the solutions I propose and I think it would be ideal if some, if not all of them, coexist:
1. Make Combo View remember its vertical resize state
2. Have a separate Task panel
3. Have a separate "Combo View (with another name)" panel that holds both Model and Tasks (like there is the Property View that holds View and Data)
4. Proposed solution #2 + also having separate View and separate Data panels.

Let me know what you think.

OS: Manjaro Linux XFCE 64bit
FreeCAD compiled from github, using the wiki guide:
OS: Manjaro Linux (XFCE/xfce)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.18751 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: c0d58b8f3e4a820f596b1a6ed55ca92bb16cb844
Python version: 3.7.4
Qt version: 5.13.2
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.4.0
Locale: English/United States (en_US)

[adrianinsaval]

1. Make Combo View remember its vertical resize state

+1

[carlopav]

1. Make Combo View remember its vertical resize state

+1

[freedman]

Look at this post, mine from long ago.
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... ew#p255528

I really like most everything the way it works today, all panels are positioned and saved, opens just like you see on a restart. You can see I run the tree panel, then the task panel on it's own all the time, then properties. The other monitor is full screen graphic. On 24" monitors it couldn't be much better, I feel spoiled.

[OficineRobotica]

Here's the solutions I propose and I think it would be ideal if some, if not all of them, coexist:
1. Make Combo View remember its vertical resize state
2. Have a separate Task panel
3. Have a separate "Combo View (with another name)" panel that holds both Model and Tasks (like there is the Property View that holds View and Data)
4. Proposed solution #2 + also having separate View and separate Data panels.

+1 on that. And the task panel should be it's own pop up window(widget!?!) so it does not interfere with the displayed panels.

Here is a solution that i really grown accustomed to. It uses a combo panel on the right side and triplus's glass addon for the tree view. The downside is that i need to resize the view to cover the tree in the combo view , but then again , how many times one restarts the FC sesion.

layout.png (448.5 KiB) Viewed 2912 times

[Petert]

Here is a solution that i really grown accustomed to. It uses a combo panel on the right side and triplus's glass addon for the tree view. The downside is that i need to resize the view to cover the tree in the combo view , but then again , how many times one restarts the FC sesion.

lol, you are funny

[Zolko]

Here is a solution that i really grown accustomed to. It uses a combo panel on the right side and triplus's glass addon for the tree view. The downside is that i need to resize the view to cover the tree in the combo view

That's what I use also, but with the standard UI:

Asm4EE.png (367.74 KiB) Viewed 2485 times

[bambuko]

This works for me on 2560x1440 display (although I sometimes wish it was even bigger...)

screen.jpg (1.08 MiB) Viewed 2476 times

[ifohancroft]

Here is a solution that i really grown accustomed to. It uses a combo panel on the right side and triplus's glass addon for the tree view. The downside is that i need to resize the view to cover the tree in the combo view

That's what I use also, but with the standard UI:


Asm4EE.png

Wait! How do you do the tabs on the side?

[zisoft]

Wait! How do you do the tabs on the side?

That is the TabBar extension: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=13368