What is the meaning of "Placement" in path operations?

[norru]

Hi,

I struggled with this same question as I needed to make a Path job that would cut multiple parts on a same run. I know it could be done with fixture offset etc, but I also wanted to rotate parts to allow efficient nesting on the stock. I thought it would be easily done by making a copy of a (compound) Path and then placing it with offset and rotation. But like mentioned here, the Placement only affected the view object, not the Path itself.

I wrote a method to position and rotate Path commands if anyone is interested. For now, I incorporated it to PathCopy feature only, as that was what I needed at that point. But if needed, I think it could be used more generally. It allowed me to do for example this:

pathcopy_example.png

You can check the code by looking at a commit on my fork:

https://github.com/pekkaroi/FreeCAD/com ... 49da50bc3b

BR,
Pekka

Hi Pekka, sorry for the necroposting, but I'm trying to use this feature in Freecad 0.19 nightly and I have a problem.
So what I do is:
- create a new path
- use copy to create a path copy
- transform the path copy using placement
- export the job to GCode via postprocessor

Basically the path gets created and transformed correctly but when it's exported both paths (transformed and original) generate the same GCode, so instead of two copies I get the same path twice, overlapping.

Is this how it is supposed to work, because if it's the case there is not much use to it.

Thanks,
Nico

[chrisb]

You have answered to a very old topic: 0.16 was still the official version, Yorik had the time to answer posts for Path workbench, and Jobs and Paths were very different from what we have now.

As of today you don't move the Path around. Instead we have a clone of the path model which can be moved freely so that you can be milled from an arbitrary side.

Edit in blue.

[norru]

You have answered to a very old topic: 0.16 was still the official version, Yorik had the time to answer posts for Path workbench, and Jobs and Paths were very different from what we have now.

Ah, ok, shall I open a new thread to discuss this, then? Or is there anything more up to date? (I haven't found it!)

As of today you don't move the Path around. Instead we have a clone of the path model which can be moved freely so that you can be milled from an arbitrary side.

I would love to understand how to do this! Bear in mind I need both translation and rotation of an arbitrary path, to which I need also to apply dressups.

How does one do it nowadays (FreeCAD 0.19, May 2020)? Any pointers?
Thanks!

[chrisb]

I have corrected my post above. You move the clone and not the path.