Part vs Part Design

[triplus]

Single Part Designs include sketches, bodies, surfaces, points, curves, lines and boolean operation of all things listed together - this should be ONE workbench. That’s the real everyday life.

And what would happen if some wouldn't agree. For a geometry like a line, shell or a surface belonging in such workbench. FreeCAD would have no support for such geometry? Where would you add a Wall feature and the other 999+ FreeCAD commands able of creating Part alike geometry? You mention surfaces are important to you. Therefore CurvesWB commands should be added to Part Designs workbench? Or not? Who would decide that and who would end up agreeing the decision makes sense.

Well it's you in the end. That gets to decide. Isn't it? Therefore i don't see what the fuzz is about. If you wouldn't be able to decide. Then the complaints would be valid.

P.S. On why FreeCAD isn't just the way you like it by default? Mainly due to the fact the other 99% of users and developers don't agree your version works best for them.

[Vincent B]

I suggest to change the name of the workbench "part" with something else.
Its confusing with the part container for beginner I guess.
WB Part Design could be "Body Design"
and WB Part could be "Free Design" or something like that.

[Joyas]

There are two main workflows in FreeCAD:
- PartDesign and Sketch.
- The other workbenches (Part, Skeetch, Draft, Curves...).

I prefer the second workflow because the first is "too short" for me.

Maybe it could be interesting to change a bit the names.

[chrisb]

Without knowing what this technically really means, I think it is a good idea to rename Part Workbench. It is perfectly understandable that it got this name, because there wasn't anything similar. But now the name could be more precise like "Constructive Solid Geometry" or simply "CSG". For me that's what Part Workbench is all about: Build objects from simple geometric objects with boolean operations.

We recently had a similar discussion in the german forum, where one conclusion was that it is extremely difficult if not impossible to find a name describing all possible functions of Part Workbench. If we want to find a decent name, we have to concentrate on the essentials.

[wandererfan]

Without knowing what this technically really means, I think it is a good idea to rename Part Workbench.

We have a Part workbench that doesn't produce Parts. We have a PartDesign workbench that doesn't design Parts. We have a Part object that might be a Part, but might be an Assembly. And we have potential users that say "I tried FreeCAD, I don't understand it".

So, from a human factors standpoint, it would be a good thing to have a BodyDesign wb, a "Shapes & Geometry" wb, an "ObjectGroup" meta-object, etc.

From the technical side, it presents a big backwards compatibility issue. Saved fcstd files have Part::this and PartDesign::that scattered about that would need to be dealt with. The same goes for all the existing macros in the world. This is surmountable, but a big PITA.

Then there's all the docs that would need updating.

Overall, it is doable, but very disruptive.

[HarryGeier]

I agree with wandererfan..

There is also myriads of information snippets , videos etc. out there.. that refer to Part WB and Part Design WB .. all would be rendered obsolete..if we would change such "basics" . I am in that discussion too, where we talk about renaming some "new" 0.17 things , but changing something that was there in all languages ...is an bigger dimension of hassle ahead...

If someone is not willing to take such into account , for a FREE Cad System.. he can also go and use tinkercad...

[wsteffe]

Hello,
I have just started to try FC and I would like to see if is well suited to my needs.
I had already tried it 4 years ago but now it seems much more mature and I am more confident that it can replace a commercial CAD presently used in my workflow.

As a new user I was also surprised in seeing two different workbenches (Part and Part Design) with similar names which is a little bit confusing.
I understand that they are aimed to different kind of designs.
FC "Part Design" is what is named as "Part" in most modern multi-body CAD systems (i.e. CATIA) and I would use that terminology also in FC to avoid confusion.
On the other side FC "Part" is aimed to the design of more general (non manifold) geometrical shapes.
I think hat there is a less established convention for the name of this kind of module. In CATIA (which I know better) there is a module called
Generative Shape Design which can be used for this kind of activity. In FC I would call it simply Shape Design or something similar.

Anyway to me it would be very important (because it is required in my design flow) that the two workbenches are able to operate on the same part document. In CATIA it is possible to insert a "body" and a "geometrical set" in the same part tree.
The body is used to design a solid object while in the "geometrical set" it is possible to insert a more general geometrical object created, in example, with "Generative Shape Design".

In my work I am using CATIA (and an EM simulator developed by me) in order to design Microwave and Waveguide components.
The bodies are used to store the physical solid objects (different dielectrics ...) while in the geometrical sets I can place faces or edges.
The faces may be used to define boundary conditions, waveguide ports or may represent splitting faces. These are used to define a domain
decomposition which improves the simulation speed.

[chrisb]

Perhaps NormandC can tell you more about naming in the light of other CAD systems, I will stick here to the FreeCAD notions.

If the question is whether you can use Part objetcs in PartDesign workbench the answer is yes. You can use them as base elements and add the PartDesign typical features.

If the question is whether you can use PartDesign objetcs in Part workbench the answer is yes. You can use the whole body which contains all features for further Part workbench operations. You should not use Features in Part WB operations.

[wsteffe]

Thanks chrisb, the question was whether I can use Part objetcs in PartDesign workbench.

I have just verified that it can be done (as you have said).

To do that I have inserted an offset from the Part WB.

But now I have an other question related to the offset feature:

My intention was to offset a single face with distance=0.
In CATIA this operation would create a copy of the selected face.
In FC the offset behaviour is different:
even if a single face is selected the offset is applied to whole shell.
the offset fails when distance is 0.

Unfortunately this kind of offset feature does not allow me to copy the selected face as it was in my intent.

[easyw-fc]

My intention was to offset a single face with distance=0.
In CATIA this operation would create a copy of the selected face.
In FC the offset behaviour is different:
even if a single face is selected the offset is applied to whole shell.
the offset fails when distance is 0.

Unfortunately this kind of offset feature does not allow me to copy the selected face as it was in my intent.

Hi,
you may consider to use Defeaturing WB.
There is an option to copy a face or offset a face, giving the offset value / axis
(PS this WB is not fully tested with Assembly3 branch ATM, if you are planning to use with it)