[fcxref] External Cross-Document Reference & Links Manager

[Kunda1]

I had no idea this functionality existed until now, so I appreciate you two pointing it out to me.

Raises the question: where in the UI would it have been useful for you to clue you in to the existing functionality of this?

[gbroques]

I had no idea this functionality existed until now, so I appreciate you two pointing it out to me.

Raises the question: where in the UI would it have been useful for you to clue you in to the existing functionality of this?

A few ideas:

• Right click the cell containing the expression and see the option in the context menu that appears.
• Available in the Toolbar for the Spreadsheet Workbench
• Available in the Spreadsheet File Menu

These are just a few of my knee-jerk ideas.

I feel like any future functionality should imitate popular spreadsheet programs like Excel, Libre Office Calc, and Google Sheets.

As people like myself will already be familiar with these programs -- making FreeCAD's spreadsheet workbench feel more intuitive.

Excel has a "Trace Precedents" and "Trace Dependents" feature that lets you see the cells a cell depends on, and which cells depend on it.

See "Display the relationships between formulas and cells":
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... 518771d507

[adrianinsaval]

A few ideas:

• Right click the cell containing the expression and see the option in the context menu that appears.
• Available in the Toolbar for the Spreadsheet Workbench
• Available in the Spreadsheet File Menu

These are just a few of my knee-jerk ideas.

I feel like any future functionality should imitate popular spreadsheet programs like Excel, Libre Office Calc, and Google Sheets.

expressions are not limited to spreadsheets though, in fact I mostly reference spreadsheets in expression rather than use expressions in spreadsheets.

Excel has a "Trace Precedents" and "Trace Dependents" feature that lets you see the cells a cell depends on, and which cells depend on it.

See "Display the relationships between formulas and cells":
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... 518771d507

well freecad has a dependency graph for features at least, the spreadsheet specific one could be useful but I don't know how it will show dependencies outside of the spreadsheet and I think those are a very common occurrence.

[gbroques]

expressions are not limited to spreadsheets though

Yes, this is certainly a good point.

It might be good if such functionality was implemented in a more global way that wasn't tied to the Spreadsheet workbench. Like Part, Group, Link, etc.

well freecad has a dependency graph for features at least, the spreadsheet specific one could be useful but I don't know how it will show dependencies outside of the spreadsheet and I think those are a very common occurrence.

That's another good point.

I was aware of this feature, but haven't really explored it too much.

It could prove very helpful for the kind of relational information I'm looking for.