General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

A forum to discuss the implementation of a good Materials system in FreeCAD
Forum rules
Be nice to others! Respect the FreeCAD code of conduct!
User avatar
bernd
Veteran
Posts: 12849
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:07 pm
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by bernd »

User avatar
bernd
Veteran
Posts: 12849
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:07 pm
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by bernd »

preview is for texture, AFAIK. But there is no material with a texture assigned ATM.
User avatar
bernd
Veteran
Posts: 12849
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:07 pm
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by bernd »

unit system does not support currency unit ATM, AFAIK.
User avatar
yorik
Founder
Posts: 13640
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:16 pm
Location: Brussels
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by yorik »

My idea for he "preview" area was to have two previews: one that is more or less a "fake" svg icon filled with the color of the material (I'm experimenting with this now in BIM WB):

Image

and the other would be some "hatched" view which would show how the material appears with a hatch pattern or texture (which indeed is not implemented yet)
wmayer
Founder
Posts: 20243
Joined: Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:32 am
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by wmayer »

bernd wrote: Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:23 am unit system does not support currency unit ATM, AFAIK.
Trying to support currencies with the units system doesn't make much sense anyway because these are two different worlds.
The SI units system has seven base units (

Code: Select all

length [m], mass [kg], time [s], electric current [A], thermodynamic temperature [K], amount of substance [mol] and luminous intensity [cd]
) and with none of them you can describe currencies.

Also SI units are accepted by most countries while almost every country has its own currency.

So, wherever currencies are used in the source code it needs a special treatment.
User avatar
uwestoehr
Veteran
Posts: 4961
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:21 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by uwestoehr »

yorik wrote: Wed Feb 13, 2019 1:02 pm and the other would be some "hatched" view which would show how the material appears with a hatch pattern or texture (which indeed is not implemented yet)
Hmm, but would that really be helpful? I mean I deal daily with different plastics. So how can I see a difference between PP and e.g. PLA just by a hatch?
In SolidWorks they implemented a preview by colors but this was also not very helpful because there are not that many different colors.
What worked however was to show the chemical formula of the material.

My proposal after thinking about it a while is:
- as it is, the nonexistent preview only consumes space in the dialog, so either it is removed for now
- or (what I would prefer) one should see there an image of the user's choice. The idea is that users can add an image they like to their material cards and this image will be displayed. So they can e.g. use an image with a gold bar for gold or an image of of the chemical structure for PLA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poly ... eletal.svg

Just an idea.
However, FC 0.18 is feature frozen, so I think for 0.18 the preview should be removed from the dialog but reintroduced for 0.19.
User avatar
bernd
Veteran
Posts: 12849
Joined: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:07 pm
Location: Zürich, Switzerland
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by bernd »

@uwe: FYI

Yorik and me we are from construction industry. He is an Architect I am structural engineer. This sometimes leads to totally different opinions about some tools in FreeCAD compared to mechanical engineers. We gone find some smart solution anyway :) .
User avatar
yorik
Founder
Posts: 13640
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:16 pm
Location: Brussels
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by yorik »

uwestoehr wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:06 am - as it is, the nonexistent preview only consumes space in the dialog, so either it is removed for now
- or (what I would prefer) one should see there an image of the user's choice. The idea is that users can add an image they like to their material cards and this image will be displayed. So they can e.g. use an image with a gold bar for gold or an image of of the chemical structure for PLA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Poly ... eletal.svg
These are good ideas. Hiding the preview field while preview is not implemented is a very good idea. Done in git commit c648b0e87
For the other idea, there could be one more material property where you can supply a preview image, that would be used instead of the automatic preview. Coincidentally I'm experimenting with packing images into a text file... That could be of good use here

For the currencies, there are currently 162 official ones ( https://www.xe.com/iso4217.php ) it wouldn't be too hard to keep a list somewhere and add a drop-down list to the material editor (although it might be a problem to keep it up to date). But the aim of the units system is conversion. You can imagine the hell we would get ourselves into if we touch the subject of currency conversion...

"FreeCAD, the new tool of choice of the bitcoin community" :D
User avatar
uwestoehr
Veteran
Posts: 4961
Joined: Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:21 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by uwestoehr »

yorik wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:50 pm For the currencies, there are currently 162 official ones ... But the aim of the units system is conversion.
The question is if a price in material cards is sensible. To my experience not since prices change every day and every company has its own method for calculating an negotiating prices. Therefore I don't see a use case where users might like to have a fixed price in the material card, even not for private users. While thinking about it, maybe this material property should not be provided by FC. This also avoids conflicts users might have when relying on the price in the material card.
bernd wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:45 am Yorik and me we are from construction industry. He is an Architect I am structural engineer.
I am a physicist and MEMS engineer. Thus I should use as base unit 10 µm instead of 1 mm :)
Since I need to construct, produce (3D-printing, injection molding, CNC) and simulate, I use many WBs and explore currently the large world of FC step by step.
Jee-Bee
Veteran
Posts: 2566
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:32 am
Location: Netherlands

Re: General -> Product URL property sometimes not saved

Post by Jee-Bee »

uwestoehr wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 2:22 pm I am a physicist and MEMS engineer. Thus I should use as base unit 10 µm instead of 1 mm :)
Since I need to construct, produce (3D-printing, injection molding, CNC) and simulate, I use many WBs and explore currently the large world of FC step by step.
I proposed once (that's what my memory says at least couldn't find it back) to remove the units(from objects) at all. The only place where the units are handled are the unit preferences.
every file have these properties inside for sharing purposes.
all input numbers are based on specified preferences.
off when another user wants to work with inches (while i work in mm) he has to convert it(change units divide dimensions by 25.4).
another risk. for some reason a created file is in inches but i did everything in mm because i want that. I have to convert that too (change units but divide dimensions by 1)

except for people who wants to work with 4 different units at the same time i think it is better for everyone.
once in a while we get users who work with the boundaries of visibility because how the backend works.
Another point it is more fail proof. all conversions are done on a single place and not in every workbench / feature.

In my memory nobody cares about it ;)
Post Reply