Contribution for FreeCad Community.

[igormedeiros]

Hello Everyone, Excellent day!

My name is Igor Medeiros as you can see I am new here. I living in Belo Horizonte, MG - Brazil, and I am a typical industrial product release Engineer.
Nowadays I have a lot of experience with cad softwares like Siemens NX and CATIA. My expertise is platic parts design for injection molding. So, I have changing my mind and I proposed for myself to use FreeCAD ever and contribute with its evolution. So I am using freecad for my all freelance and personal jobs.

So, I am here to say that I am interested to do something and help the community with my skills and my time.
If you can help me and introduce how the community works and where I can contribute it would be appreciated.

I can contribute with all of this things bellow:

- Programming expertise using C, C++, C#, Java, VB and Python.
- Product Development
- Design Consulting and Feasibility
- Mechanical and Electrical Design Concept
- CAD Modeling
- 2D Detailed Drawings
- Design for Manufacture (DFM)
- Prototyping Design
- Product Rendering
- Reverse Engineering

[Kunda1]

Hi and welcome @igormedeiros to the community.
The most important question, is what would you like to help with? We have a whole bugtracker full of tickets, a full queue of pending Pull Requests that need testing and feedback. wiki documentation, API documentation, localization etc... Or is there perhaps something else you're interested in?

[chrisb]

To add to Kunda1: Thanks for the offer to contribute!

[igormedeiros]

Hi kunda1

The most important question, is what would you like to help with?

Thanks for your reply Mr.

So I want to be helpful. There is someone who could guide me trough this? I could programming, testing, translate, design, reply... So I just need to know how the job's flow works? Who I need communicate (request the tasks), What is the person who I need to feedback my tasks...

Sorry about my newbie situation here. I know that it maybe not a complex answer.


Best Regads,

[igormedeiros]

To add to Kunda1: Thanks for the offer to contribute!

It is a pleasure to help the community and brings my knowledge and my workforce here! Count on me.

[heda]

cool, I think this is approx how it works (mind you that I have never contributed code - so I might be completely wrong ).

there is a list of people having done existing code, they typically comment on new things done in their area.
Development_roadmap - click org-chart

then you can also just start out by making reviews of PR's, or even just confirm that things compile,
which btw should be your first step - make sure that you can compile it...

I do not think anyone will tell you what to do to begin with, you have to choose,
like, do you want to add a specific feature (but then best open a discussion in the forum with the idea),
or just select something from the tracker (or forum) to work with.

I assume that most people simply scratch an itch they have, i.e. why is this functionality not there or for me it would be better if it worked like that,
and then they start to make that a reality (which could be easy or turn out to be really hard and keep you busy for years). it might even be a specialized workbench, either growing to be part of "core" fc, or as an add-on.

so just pick something to begin with, and don't be afraid to reconsider your first choice and switch to something else.
after a while and some actual contributions I think you will quickly have a bunch of itches to scratch and find that time to do them all is scarce,
also be prepared to that to merge things might be super quick, or take forever - suppose it just depends on the case...

now, if I am egoistic, might I suggest
improving the mesh editing capabilities, that could make it easier for the 3d printing community (for myself I would be very happy if it was possible to split an existing selected triangle in 2 for example, more in https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 16#p470616)
or
bring back the add/remove point into the gui of the edit mode for a spline/wire in draft, that was removed in v0.19.
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 43#p495743
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 51#p493751
or
clean up the rough corner in draft/scale (https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p498573)
or
well, what itch do you have...

btw, Help_FreeCAD

[freedman]

I don't know how long you have been using or looking at FreeCAD but my suggestion would be to spend a lot of time reading the forums and building small models. You will learn the current state of development and get the feel for what is missing or what you miss most.
Thanks

[Zolko]

So I want to be helpful. There is someone who could guide me trough this? I could programming, testing, translate, design, reply...

Olà Igor,

there are 3 ways to contribute code:

• in the core FreeCAD, which is mostly in C++. For that, you need to first get git working on your computer and compile the program for yourself. Then make changes to your local repository, test-it, propose-iy on the forum, get feed-back, and when ready make a PR to GitHub.
• in addon-workbenches: this is (mostly) in python, and is appropriate if you know the corresponding workbench. If you don't know where to begin, I can suggest to try out the Assembly4 workbench. There are many things that can be improved.
• with macros: these are standalone python programs for specific purposes. Here, you're you're own master and can do whatever you feel like. There is one specific function that would be extremely useful but , as strange as it sounds, still doesn't exist in FreeCAD: a good measuring tool. There are several measuring tools available, but none that fulfills all requirements

[igormedeiros]

I don't know how long you have been using or looking at FreeCAD but my suggestion would be to spend a lot of time reading the forums and building small models. You will learn the current state of development and get the feel for what is missing or what you miss most.
Thanks

Yes, I have been used FC for three months. So the first thing that I made was study the mindset behind the FC. I am certified with Siemens NX and CATIA and I work on it for a long time. ( about ~8 years), so change my workflow to FC is being very interesting. I am reading a lot of content and testing it every day and a lot of ideas became when I started to use FC. But FC has its identity. Sometimes we want to copy and paste functionalities used in others software. But it doesn't means that is the best way. Because of that I want to help the current proposals and avoid to contribute with ideas for now.

[igormedeiros]

cool, I think this is approx how it works (mind you that I have never contributed code - so I might be completely wrong ).
...

hi heda,

Thank you so much. Your answer is very useful and helpful.

I accessed the links and I am check the first thing. Compile and execute the FC on my PC.
So after this, I will check the posts and PR's to detect and try to implement some feature or functions, or WB, or something that help users.

I will start checking your suggestions. I liked it.

So I want to be helpful. There is someone who could guide me trough this? I could programming, testing, translate, design, reply...

Olà Igor,

there are 3 ways to contribute code:
...

Hello Zolko.

Thank so much for your answer,

So, as I said, I will investigate the forum to understand the community's demand and on current implementations what I can do to help.
But also you brought a good suggestion. Thanks again.