Feature suggestion: Chamfer/Fillet individual vertices

[dnew92130]

In Blender I can select individual vertices and bevel them (bevel being Chamfer and Fillet). The result of beveling the four top corners of a square comes out like this:

Blender beveled vertices

BevelVert.png (58.95 KiB) Viewed 1297 times

I tried to loft from a octagon to a square to a square and not only did I wind up with curved edges between those first two, I couldn't thicken it and other manipulations were problematic.

I asked (on reddit) how to do the Blender operation in FreeCAD and was shown a method involving multiple sketches and a datum plane for each corner. Straightforward but kind of tedious compared to chamfering edges. Then several people suggested that developers might be interested in adding such a feature to FreeCAD, so here I am, suggesting that such a feature might be useful for others as well.

(The reason *I* was doing it is the thing I'm putting in the box is that shape. I don't know if other people often need that effect.)

Thanks for your attention!

[chrisb]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Not as easy as your proposal, but in FreeCAD you could do it with one sketch based corner pocket and then use a pattern for the other edges. At least when you want to change the size of all chamfers, there is an advantage with the parametric approach.

[Yosyp]

I'd love this feature too.

[TheMarkster]

Check the Ruled checkbox when making the loft to not get curved edges.

[TheMarkster]

Further updates are continued in the scripting forum here: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=62597

Update #6 (update bevel.py and restart FreeCAD)
version 0.2021.09.29

Changes:
* add FilletEdges property (if true edges created by the bevel are filleted)
* add FilletRadius property

Note: only the edges created by the bevel operation are filleted, or at least, those are the only ones the macro tells OCC to fillet.

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Update #5 (need only update bevel.FCMacro, no need to restart FreeCAD)
Changes:

* add creation of bevel to document transaction for undo capability


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Update #4 (last one today I promise) new version 0.2021.09.28.rev4 (need to update bevel.py and restart FreeCAD)

Changes:

* fail more gracefully when the bevel can't be made
* don't claim children or hide them on failure

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Update #3 new version 0.2021.09.28.rev3 (need to update bevel.py and restart FreeCAD)

Changes:
* add Refine property
* fix crash on FreeCAD 0.20 where object had unrefined edges. Fix is to refine the object prior to making the bevels. The object itself is untouched, but the shape is refined before Bevel does its thing with it.

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Update #2: (only need to update the bevel.FCMacro file -- no FreeCAD restart necessary)
Changes:
* enable multiple object selection and create a Bevel object for each object selected.
* if no subobjects selected (no vertices) then UseAllVertices is set to True.

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Update: new version 0.2021.09.28.rev2 (only need to update the bevel.py file and restart FreeCAD)

Changes:

* claims children in the tree
* bug fix (failed when only 1 vertex selected)
* unhides children on delete
* UseAllVertices property. If true, bevels all vertices of the object.

I also tried it on a face and it worked, so should be able to use on planes and other 2D objects. Works on sketches, but breaks them. To use on a sketch make a face out of it first, and then bevel the face object.

Forgot to mention usage earlier, if it's not obvious: select one or more vertices and run the macro. All vertices must belong to the same object.

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Give this macro a go. Copy bevel.FCMacro and bevel.py into your macros folder. Bevel.svg is the toolbar icon.

Snip macro screenshot-92080e.png (52.12 KiB) Viewed 960 times

Edit: Tried it on an 8-sided prism:

Snip macro screenshot-15faea.png (56.41 KiB) Viewed 934 times