My take on the FreeCAD GUI

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chrisb
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by chrisb »

shamanths13 wrote: Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:33 pm Thanks!
Another forum behaviour advice: Don't always quote complete posts. You should only quote the parts you are directly referring to. Other users following the topic will not like to read the same stuff over and over again.
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adrianinsaval
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by adrianinsaval »

FreddyFreddy wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:29 pm Is there any way to more accurately identify if the so called "power users' are collectively against change, or is it just a small subgroup? I ask, as it feels like they wield enormous influence. What is the developers' take?
This is not how it works. The community or the power users or the devs are not monoliths, we are individuals and everyone has their own opinions and priorities. There is no collective against or pro anything. There is no general resistance to change per se. Each (serious) proposal is judged on it's own merits and iterated based on feedback. Change is welcomed as long as it's a good change and doesn't remove functionality (or does so with a very good technical reason to do it, it looks more shinny without it is not valid).
shamanths13
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by shamanths13 »

chrisb wrote: Tue Mar 15, 2022 1:42 pm You should only quote the parts you are directly referring to.
I will adopt this from now on!
Cheers!
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onekk
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by onekk »

FreddyFreddy wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:29 pm Is there any way to more accurately identify if the so called "power users' are collectively against change, or is it just a small subgroup? I ask, as it feels like they wield enormous influence. What is the developers' take?
As said by more skilled people, this is not the point.

It is difficult even to identify "power users", each user that do something different from mere using FC is a "power user".

A rough tentative to identify a power user could be to identify people that:
  • write Macros and release them to other users, even in a Forum Post, or better in FC Wiki
  • make some "proper" bug reports
  • post in the forum "not only" to solve their problem but maybe even to try to help other users
  • develop an AddOn
  • write some python code in the forum to solve other user problem (probably I'm among them)
  • develop some WB or try to correct some bug in FC sources
The fact is that there is no a real "development team" intended in a formal way, probably @wmayer and @yorick as they are in the Copyright notice of FC and maybe probably members of the FCA.

But there is no or not yet a "guided path to development".

Good, Bad, I don't know, what I know is that FC:
  • is usable and could do a lot of thing.
  • is quite powerful and could produce "professional grade" documents
  • is almost totally scriptable, so many things could be automated , and you could write extensions to fulfill your needs
  • is "here to stay" as his development is more than 20 years old.
  • could be improved and is "improving".
  • is not a "opensource" copy of another program
  • has many interesting feature, like CAM and FEM, that usually even Paid software not always have.
  • developers are listening to users and usually interact with them, see post of @yorick and @wmayer to have a clue of this affirmation
Said so FC has "his own" personality, and one of his goals is not to "mimic" other CAD software, probably also because some behaviour are related to the underlying "3d engine" that is different from other CADs.

OCCT is well documented so maybe a look at:

https://dev.opencascade.org/doc/occt-7. ... index.html

https://dev.opencascade.org/about/projects_and_products


Could give you a hint of what you have "under the hood".

Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
- Learning how to model with scripting.
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FreddyFreddy
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by FreddyFreddy »

Wow! There certainly is plenty of passion!
onekk wrote: Wed Mar 16, 2022 7:54 am Could give you a hint of what you have "under the hood".
Not sure what you mean by that ..
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onekk
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by onekk »

FreddyFreddy wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:40 pm Wow! There certainly is plenty of passion!
My passion is for free software, as it can be used despite the size of your "bank account", if there are viable alternatives to paid software, i prefer to use them, and save my money for something more interesting.
FreddyFreddy wrote: Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:40 pm Not sure what you mean by that ..
First link is the "official user documentation" of OCCT, to see what is really "under the hood" in this case the "modelling engine" of FC.

Second link is the "official page of OCCT" where it list project base on OCCT, to see what it is not only used by FC, some of these project are also used in production environment, and OCCT itself has been developed for aeroSpace and mIlitary. if you see the original copyright is from "Matra Division", with some search on the net you will have an idea.

Only to have some ideas of what you ar using side notes, Bézier was working for Renault and one of the methods to calculate BSplines was conceived by De Casteljau while working at Citroen. Both French like OCCT.

So "Vive la France".

Regards

Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
- In deep articles on FreeCAD.
- Learning how to model with scripting.
- Various other stuffs.

Blog: https://okkmkblog.wordpress.com/
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Kartoffelpüre
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Mock-up for selecting some Edge

Post by Kartoffelpüre »

I found this thread and Answer to the first impression on Post #1
I like the UI. It feels familiar.

Beside a rework of the UI I would Like to see a UI that is permanently responsive. And do not complete freeze because of a calculation. It should be possible in any case to switch to another tab, and work there if something lock a file. I would like to see FreeCAD with at least three independent process. One is the UI, one a background task-process that calculate things that do not have to be calculated immediately, and the rest.

What I also miss is kind of tooltip based using of FreeCAD. In that example, a fast way to set up constraints and measure depending on the selected sketch line.
tooltip.png
tooltip.png (38.05 KiB) Viewed 3080 times
Last edited by Kartoffelpüre on Fri Jun 24, 2022 9:52 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Aleks
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by Aleks »

Kartoffelpüre wrote: Fri Mar 25, 2022 1:09 pm Beside a rework of the UI I would Like to see a UI that is permanently responsive. And do not complete freeze because of a calculation. It should be possible in any case to switch to another tab, and work there if something lock a file.
tooltip.png
Thank you for your contructive input. What workbenches do you usually use?
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Kartoffelpüre
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Re: My take on the FreeCAD GUI

Post by Kartoffelpüre »

Normally I use PartDesign.
The First row represents currently selected objects. The second line represents possible constraints between selected objects. The color of the objects shows what relation would be created between which objects.
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Kartoffelpüre
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My Mock-up for Import Settings on File Open

Post by Kartoffelpüre »

Another Mockup:

Please Include the Import settings Dialog into the File Open Dialog.
FreeCAD-import-Settings.png
FreeCAD-import-Settings.png (143.69 KiB) Viewed 2658 times
Last edited by Kartoffelpüre on Fri Jun 24, 2022 9:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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