New Sketcher functions

[chrisb]

I love the sketcher before and yes even more. Thanks Abdullah! As someone said: "The sketcher is top notch". I can only agree. I think that is the best sketcher from all CAD, high end commercial included.

That's what NormandC, a professional CAD user, already said when the sketcher wasn't as good as it is today.

[abdullah]

Thanks for the explanations. I usually use the dimensions without the units, so it looks a bit strange to see dimensions and weights side by side.
SnipScreenshot-b1455f.png
The behaviour is convenient with the auto zoom though. As an idea for better distinction, the color of the weights could be changed to the color of the control circles, but I'm not very strongly biased towards this.

I see. My way of looking at it is as follows:

1. If the circle is coloured as internal alignment (and that was one of the reasons to introduce a different color), then it must be a weight.
2. A weight is still a constraint, so it should be red as all the constraints are.

[abdullah]

I love the sketcher before and yes even more. Thanks Abdullah! As someone said: "The sketcher is top notch". I can only agree. I think that is the best sketcher from all CAD, high end commercial included.

That's what NormandC, a professional CAD user, already said when the sketcher wasn't as good as it is today.

Yeah, miss NormandC

Most of the merit of the Sketcher should still go to jriegel and Werner. Most of the solver work to ickby, logari and DeepSOIC. I am mostly just tweeking other's work

I am very happy though that many limitations have been lifted.

The new block constraint behaviour should be a dream to work with, and I would like to have feedback if it is not. I am rather proud of it, but it would be good to be proud of something useful.

I would really like to have defining external geometry. But I would prefer to reuse realthunder's work, for which he needs to introduce dependencies that he foresees to introduce during 0.20 development. Then, the layers idea probably will belong to 0.20 too. Not sure about that, it depends when the feature freeze is set.

For v0.19, I would really like to hear if people are encountering problems migrating older projects into the new format. It is important that whatever it is released as 0.19 works out of the box properly importing existing designs (no buts). I do not foresee problems, but the ways in which FreeCAD is used often surprise developers

[jonasb]

Hello everyone,

I'm reading here for quite a while (since late v0.17), now it's finally time to register.

The new block constraint behaviour should be a dream to work with, and I would like to have feedback if it is not. I am rather proud of it, but it would be good to be proud of something useful.

I found the new block constraint requires an edge, while the old one could also be applied to a point (essentially a short cut for adding a horizontal and vertical distance constraint).
I need to block a point when using a series of short B-Splines as poly-Bézier curves with construction lines for Inkscape-like controls. For me, this is more intuitive to work with and it allows further elements to be attached to points on the curve, not possible otherwise. See the following example:

PolyBezierDemo.png (66.05 KiB) Viewed 1509 times

The two construction lines in the image's center have a parallel constraint applied to achieve Spline-to-Spline tangency (and even same curvature when using an equally constraint, too; not shown here). Without a block constraint on the mid point of the poly-bézier, this point moves when I adjust the control points. This is inkscapely unexpected. To work around I used to put a temporary block constraint on that point, which no longer works now. And blocking a whole edge of my poly-bézier is explicitly not my intend: I want to change the curve, just not this particular point.

Of curse, having build-in support for poly-béziers would be even nicer. I could imagine this as extension for the existing polyline: quardatic and cubic poly-bézier curves. This is basically "just" an UI layer on top of the existing B-Spline functionality. But with construction lines, parallel/equal constraints, and an convenient block constraint, one can achieve the same already today.

Thanks a lot for your work guys,
Regards,
Jonas

OS: macOS Mojave (10.14)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.23463 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: adc6db8f32c17e9f67cb82aa7962d1e42ce061c6
Python version: 3.8.6
Qt version: 5.12.5
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.4.0
Locale: C/Default (C)

[chrisb]

I have added a call for test support in the german forum. For errors occuring there, what do you prefer: a ping there or an additional translation here?

[abdullah]

I have added a call for test support in the german forum. For errors occuring there, what do you prefer: a ping there or an additional translation here?

A ping there is enough unless you want to raise awareness. I read German rather good. I takes me some time to write (was it der, die or das?) and I cannot express myself as good as in English, but I do enjoy writing in German and it is good so that I do not lose it more (it used to be better than it is now).

[M4x]

Yeah, miss NormandC

NormandC told me to tell you that you can join Mastodon and find him there (@normandc@fosstodon.org). I guess this goes for all of us.

He also said this:

I used FreeCAD last night and discovered that new feature that we had talked about for years. I wasn't aware it was just merged. It's freaking awesome. Now the Sketcher is equal to commercial CAD programs in this feature, and of course it was already superior with regard to the Solver messages box, constraint and elements list, switchable solver...

https://fosstodon.org/@normandc/105427383759600160 (this link isn't working for me but I don't know why...)

[chrisb]

A weight is still a constraint, so it should be red as all the constraints are.

Good point. If I display the units there is no issue at all. So if I don't show them it is similar to the degrees, with the difference that the weight has no unit. (Please don't add a unit "kg" although it is comon for weights )

[abdullah]

I found the new block constraint requires an edge, while the old one could also be applied to a point (essentially a short cut for adding a horizontal and vertical distance constraint).

The old master could not be applied to a point from the UI, but applying it to an edge of a circle will work as you expect. The new master and the old master can be applied to simple point from the console. But the result is not the expected one. I am looking into this at the moment.

[jonasb]

Blocking the edge of the respective weight-circle works like a charm. Thank you.