Option to selectively freeze geometry to limit scope of re-compute and overhead

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eajmarceau
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Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2022 9:16 pm

Option to selectively freeze geometry to limit scope of re-compute and overhead

Post by eajmarceau »

Just saw this, which made me think:
freman wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 11:02 am ... I don't seem to be able to find where to turn off automatic updates ...(snip)
I'm not yet at a point where I encounter the issue and would be frustrated by having to wait for those updates, but does such a thing as a user-specified option to "freeze" selected geometry available? Given that topology is rebuilt from scratch at re-compute, I could easily imagine that any selection to freeze an item/object would dictate that all "predecessors" or "parents" would be automatically frozen also, by implication, but any other geometry/objects would be recomputed as dictated by circumstances.

Any thoughts on that?
chrisb
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Re: Option to selectively freeze geometry to limit scope of re-compute and overhead

Post by chrisb »

eajmarceau wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 8:53 pm Any thoughts on that?
FreeCAD doesn't recompute everything on each change, but only dependent objects. If changes are made that affect later steps, what would be the use of not recomputing? Is it only as an intermediate aid during development when doing multiple changes to an early step or is there more behind it?
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eajmarceau
Posts: 73
Joined: Tue Feb 22, 2022 9:16 pm

Re: Option to selectively freeze geometry to limit scope of re-compute and overhead

Post by eajmarceau »

Thank you, chrisb, for replying.

I was thinking that having a "freeze" attribute would protect geometry ...
a) from being accidentally selected/modified, on the one hand, or
b) from being manipulated by scripts that might auto-select for action, not knowing that those items are not "available" for the script's manipulations.

Just a random thought about a possible mechanism to help with protecting geometry ... in a model that may be very complex ... from an accidental modification, because the zoom scale did not give clear visibility of having incorrectly positioned the viewport on the wrong feature for an intended modification. Such a "freeze" attribute would report that the feature is frozen and force the user to step back to re-asses the focus of their activity. Not quite "training wheels on a bicycle", but a way from having a user crash/corrupt a lot of work investment.
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adrianinsaval
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Re: Option to selectively freeze geometry to limit scope of re-compute and overhead

Post by adrianinsaval »

the usecase is still not clear to me, would be better if you could provide a concrete example with a file were "freezing" would be useful. FYI you can skip recomputes temporarily if you need to make several edits and don't want to wait for stuff to get recomputed.
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