Draft Layers

[yorik]

cross-posting https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 81#p312581 here...

I tweaked a bit the Draft VisGroup today, and bingo, we have a layers system in FreeCAD!

Screenshot from 2019-06-05 18-42-49.png (227.33 KiB) Viewed 4051 times

It is now in master in git commit 5ee99ca4e

It's basically just an extension of the former Draft VisGroup tool, that has been renamed to Layer, since it's not a group anymore.

- You can add objects to/from layers by dragging them to/from the layers in the tree
- It doesn't remove objects from their groups, so an object can be both in a group and a layer. The layers system is fully independent
- Layers have an "OverrideChildren" property that you can set to False if you don't want to apply the layer colors to children
- If you turn a layer on/off, everything inside is turned on/off too
- Layers live in a special "Layers" group
- Brand new experimental feature: layer icons take the color of the layer! I'm not sure if this won't make things heavy, so let's keep an eye on it!

I had never played before with drag and drop support in python objects... Pretty cool, lots of possibilities...

I'lll let it live its life a little bit, if all goes well we can add support to it to the IFC and DXF importers.

[HakanSeven12]

Good work I think layers must have its own window like this

images.png (12.02 KiB) Viewed 3482 times

[bitacovir]

Well done! I can't wait to try it...
The problem with a panel for the layers is there is no room for so many panels. I have no problem because I have a secondary screen on my desktop, but that is not the case for the general of people.

[HakanSeven12]

I'm not talking about a panel. I wanna see something like AutoCAD layers. We need a layer selector combo box in toolbars and a button that open layer menager windows. Maybe some extra buttons for general things. Like open all layers, close all layer or lock layers.

[jmaustpc]

I tweaked a bit the Draft VisGroup today, and bingo, we have a layers system in FreeCAD!

Great!

Brand new experimental feature: layer icons take the color of the layer! I'm not sure if this won't make things heavy, so let's keep an eye on it!

that is interesting!

[yorik]

Good work I think layers must have its own window like this
images.png

That would be easy to do...

[HakanSeven12]

That would be easy to do...

Also have this features will be good.

I'm not talking about a panel. I wanna see something like AutoCAD layers. We need a layer selector combo box in toolbars and a button that open layer menager windows. Maybe some extra buttons for general things. Like open all layers, close all layer or lock layers.

And when a layer selected from combo box the new objects must added automaticly to active layer.

[yorik]

We could modify the Draft autogroup system... I believe nobody ever used that feature, not even me

[nic]

I just played with layers, and I think it's a great addition. It helps me to keep separated the structure of my geometry/project (groups) and the structure of what is displayed (layers).

I have a question though: is there a way to automatically create a layer with, let say, all the sketches?

[yorik]

We could modify the command so that, upon creation, it already swallows all selected objects. But I'm not sure it's such a good behaviour? Is it always what we'll want to happen?