Realthunders work

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tjking293
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by tjking293 »

what I am about to suggest is obviously simplistic. Wouldn't it be better to just make realthunders the official version and start working on developing that instead of trying to integrate his changes into the official one? unless doing that would take longer than it would be to merge the two?
drmacro
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by drmacro »

tjking293 wrote: Tue Jul 20, 2021 8:26 pm what I am about to suggest is obviously simplistic. Wouldn't it be better to just make realthunders the official version and start working on developing that instead of trying to integrate his changes into the official one? unless doing that would take longer than it would be to merge the two?
Nice idea, but (as I understand it) there are licensing issues with certain facilities he has chosen to use, so it isn't a slam dunk.

In addition, my experience is, that it is nowhere near as stabile as 0.20.
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obelisk79
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by obelisk79 »

drmacro wrote: Tue Jul 20, 2021 9:07 pm In addition, my experience is, that it is nowhere near as stabile as 0.20.
I'm in no way advocating the RT fork be come the main dev branch for 0.20.

But 0.20 is itself a dev branch, which by definition shouldn't be gauged on its stability this early in its dev cycle. Stability is of course a desireable thing, but development branches incur an inherit risk for stability issues. I am aware of the assembly solver from Asm3 not being licensing compatible, but he maintains separate repos for FreeCAD and Asm3 so I don't think the licensing conflicts would necessarily be an issue as you suggested.

At the end of the day, having an experimental fork with rapid feature development/implementation is good. The testing, review and merge process of PR's into the main dev branch however seems particularly slow (I'm sure due to a combination limited resources and thorough methodology).
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by freedman »

I always hoped Realthunder was going to fix the major code problems and then we could all switch over to his version, but he isn't going in that direction, and that's OK. I see a bunch of stuff going on with his Gui but I can still create a model in his program and I can break it, those are kinds of issues that are important to me, not a clear Gui. I would rather have a basic version of FreeCAD that has a great engine prior to a good paint job and I feel the standard FreeCAD is headed in that direction.

I feel like the current FreeCAD needs one more fix, which is the topological naming fix, at that point the program will have a solid base for all to use.

Thank you developers for working on the topo-naming problem.
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Cekuhnen
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by Cekuhnen »

freedman wrote: Tue Jul 20, 2021 11:57 pm I feel like the current FreeCAD needs one more fix, which is the topological naming fix, at that point the program will have a solid base for all to use.
That will be a significant improvement. The process suggested here to make unbreakable models I feel works but adds a significant overhead to the workflow. And in case a link breaks you should be able to re-associate it.

In the CAD app I use for teaching sometimes tools forget edges or something changes so you need to open the feature again and re apply the selection and all is fixed. Rather easy in most cases.

Obviously by using datum planes for sketch placements etc you can in deed later swap out features and gave less of a an issue but I see this mainly also done with rather simplistic geometry and not with complex design (product design - consumer goods)


Thats why for me already RealThunders addition to the sketch engine like exporting parts of a sketch into a child so you can build different parts from a master sketch and the fact that he added the ability to build from projections and relink is more than a nice fix.

This is what already to me set his build functionality apart from FC 0.19.
He simply introduces common tools found in commercial apps supporting a modern workflow.


I came to here see what the plan is for merging his work in to master and I am sad to see that this is not so easy.
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chrisb
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by chrisb »

FreeCAD master's code has to meet more requirements than just be working. The code has to be maintainable for years to come, independently from certain persons. And currently realthunder's branch is a one man show.
There is probably nobody around who wouldn't have the toponaming issue vastly improved, but I'm afraid we have to be patient.
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Cekuhnen
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by Cekuhnen »

Yeah as not pleasing pleasing this is for the users - less ideal would not be having RealThunder.
The work he does is very exciting.

Looking at Blender I know software development is a slow process.

Having read the full thread again it is nice to see that there is awareness of each sides views.
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IPowIPi
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by IPowIPi »

A perspective from an "outsider" currently starting with CAD in general with a special interest in FreeCAD:
Am currently looking a lot at forums and am talking to already experienced people I know, my takeaway from that is: the defects solved by Realthunder are in the focus of attention of people deciding whether FreeCAD is a viable solution to settle on. And there seem more people having to make this decision currently than ever, so there is a unique opportunity for FreeCAD atm. to make a good impression.

Thus my impression is: Putting a 100% focus on the crucial Realthunder features like the topo-fix, getting this right with the help of the experienced FreeCAD core team in cooperation with Realthunder, releasing that as FreeCAD 0.20 as soon as a solid solution allows and then opening the gates again for everything else in a 0.21 release would be what would help FreeCAD the most in the current situation.

Would that make sense?
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Kunda1
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by Kunda1 »

IPowIPi wrote: Sun Jul 25, 2021 9:53 am Would that make sense?
It makes sense, and that has been the plan.

It's just that there is a lot of legwork to be done to merge realthunder's code. It's an enormous endeavor that most non-technical users have very little comprehension of what goes in to reviewing it. On top of that, the Continuous Integration system service (which automatically builds FreeCAD when tasting new submitted code) we use, is not working anymore, so we're in the middle of finding another solution[1] - talk about bad timing! It'sn also worth mentioning that IMHO, the main devs seem a little burned out from getting v0.19.x released - v0.18 release cycle was way longer than anticipated, Especially right before and after the release, the development/review process was happening so often and rapid - it wasn't sustainable.

These are the growing pains of an open source project.

[1] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=59813
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Re: Realthunders work

Post by LHC »

Yup - another relative newcomer here patiently waiting for realthunders work to appear in the main branch. I'm in the camp of waiting rather than start to do real work in the RT branch for all the reasons that have been stated. But it's a painful wait :lol:

I have been told that the RT branch also uses some code that may not meet the open source license of the main branch and might end up being an add on at best.

In any case, the topo issue is starting to be a well publicized thing and hopefully the fix will be merged soon. Just yesterday I came across this video. The fellows explanation of just what the topo issue is was one of the better ones I have seen for a newcomer.

https://youtu.be/QSsVFu929jo

I do miss the productivity I had with Fusion 360.....but I'm never going back to that miserable Autodesk !
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