Automatic Light Gauge Steel Frame Creator And Panelizer macro

[yorik]

The strict (GPL) vs. permissive (LGPL, MIT,BSD...) open-source licenses is an old debate. They basically correspond to two different visions of what freedom is ("freedom must be protected" vs. "freedom is freedom no matter what", sort of, I'm resuming a LOT). There are arguments on both sides, but they really are both sides of freedom, at the end they all aim at the same thing.

In any case, FreeCAD has a permissive license, and to avoid any further headache (we had a lot already in the past, opensource licenses can be a hell ), we only allow code in FreeCAD with a permissive license.

Personally I'm comfortable with LGPL, I don't care much if part of our code is reused by commercial software, FreeCAD is strong enough to "defeat" attempts to fork it commercially (there have been several in the past), its strength is the community-based development, and hardly a private company would be able to copy that.

That said, you can still decide to license your work under GPL. Only, it cannot be included in the FreeCAD source code. But it can still exist as an addon or macro. The important thing is, FreeCAD cannot depend on strict-licensed code. But strict-licensed code can depend on FreeCAD.

[yorik]

An idea just crossed my mind, that might be good: The inner frame of a wall could work just the same way as reinforcement bars:

- You would create a multilayer wall, with inner board, a layer for the frame, outer board, etc..
- You create a frame object (basically with @hhassey's tool). The result is an object that is attached to the wall
- The resulting object can replace (or not) one of the layers of the wall. I already tweaked the wall tool that you now can make an "empty" layer by giving it a negative thickness
- It is the frame object that knows its host wall, the wall itself is not aware of its frames. That means, when the wall changes, the frame object changes too
- If you remove the frame object, the wall continues as is

I think that would give a pretty elegant workflow, similar to structures + rebars... You would first model your walls, independently of the frame, then, in a later stage, you place the framing wall by wall

What do you think?

[Kunda1]

Any progress on this ?

[C_h_o_p_i_n]

Hej,

Might this ligth Steel-Frame Creator be used for half-timbered (timmber instead of steel ) houses too?

Kind Regards,
Stefan

[regis]

Hej,

Might this ligth Steel-Frame Creator be used for half-timbered (timmber instead of steel ) houses too?

Kind Regards,
Stefan

I'm also pondering wether i can use this steel frame stuffs sooner or later

[yorik]

In any case, one intermediary step we could use is to use the new Curtain Wall tool for this...
Couple of improvements it needs then:

- Gain a "Height" property to be used when the base is not a face but a line, this would allow it to work on the same baseline as a wall
- Allow to set different length and width for the vertical and horizontal mullions
- Allow to disable vertical or horizontal mullions or panels (maybe simply if their number is zero)?
- Be possible to "embed" a curtain wall inside a wall in a wall in the tree

I'll have a look at this!

[yorik]

- Gain a "Height" property to be used when the base is not a face but a line, this would allow it to work on the same baseline as a wall
- Allow to set different length and width for the vertical and horizontal mullions
- Allow to disable vertical or horizontal mullions or panels (maybe simply if their number is zero)?
- Be possible to "embed" a curtain wall inside a wall in a wall in the tree

Done with git commit 40600a55c2

Screenshot from 2020-05-19 13-55-28.png (151.64 KiB) Viewed 450 times

[regis]

Wow this is defintely some cool stuffs,
Can the steel frame be switched between wood frame or steel frame on wish? that is lets say you wanted to change most if not all the steel frame from steel to wood in one click (may it's too expensive for the client and he wanted to go with wood)? then change all to wood? or maybe everything was in wood and then it didn't meet enough structural requirements, then in one click change all to steel? how would that go in terms of flexibility during design?

[yorik]

At the moment it works by using a custom profile for the curtain wall mullions. You'd just need to change the profile (and the material) to switch to wood. But we might think of something easier there... I'd like to somehow integrate both tools, and be able to draw a wall + its inner curtain wall in one go. Maybe have a kind of preset system... Then it would be just a click to change from one to another.

[bernd]

What is used to create these open hot rolled steel profiles? Would be something BOLTS is very strong in.