Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

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Hologram
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by Hologram »

saso wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:40 am use only part of the same sketch for different operations... This is indeed not yet possible in standard FC (workaround is to use a "sketch on sketch" technique, with a master sketch and then separate sketches with referenced external geometry from the master sketch) but it has been implemented in realthunders version in two ways, as direct selection and as sketch exports...
That's exactly what I meant, re-use the same sketch for multiple operations (e.g. padding two non-overlapping, not touching solids).

@drmacro thanks for pointing out a possible method. Ideally, this would be more discoverable and useable out of the box. For new users, that would help a lot.
drmacro
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by drmacro »

Hologram wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:31 pm
saso wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:40 am use only part of the same sketch for different operations... This is indeed not yet possible in standard FC (workaround is to use a "sketch on sketch" technique, with a master sketch and then separate sketches with referenced external geometry from the master sketch) but it has been implemented in realthunders version in two ways, as direct selection and as sketch exports...
That's exactly what I meant, re-use the same sketch for multiple operations (e.g. padding two non-overlapping, not touching solids).

@drmacro thanks for pointing out a possible method. Ideally, this would be more discoverable and useable out of the box. For new users, that would help a lot.
I find most new users don't read the manual or they assume they know how FC works because they used product/s <insert your past history here>
or are totally inundated and don't grok the details (until they have climbed the learning curve somewhat). I don't know how adding to the information overload would help...there is a lot that is discoverable (like in the wiki), but glossed over by gazed eyes.

I don't recommend reuse of pieces of sketches. I think it makes a more confusing model and harder to troubleshoot. I didn't use/recommended it when I was a consultant as best practice. I much prefer multiple clean, simple as possible sketches. That is, selecting some edges of a given sketch to do this Pad and some edges of the same sketch to do another feature. Simple sketches also reduce the complexity of the constraint scheme per sketch...also, very desirable. A wise person in these forums once quoted: "Concerning usage of simple sketches, there was the 7-7-7 rule from an old Pro/E teacher, saying a sketch should either have 7 elements or have 7 dimensions or take 7 minutes to build."
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
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markko martin
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by markko martin »

Hologram wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:31 pm That's exactly what I meant, re-use the same sketch for multiple operations (e.g. padding two non-overlapping, not touching solids).
It's about the same goal that paulee is trying to achieve with the ArchSketch workbench.
In architecture environment it's very important to have a single generating sketch, but also I understand the risk.

viewtopic.php?t=73018
Loris
Hologram
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by Hologram »

markko martin wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 1:15 pm
Hologram wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:31 pm That's exactly what I meant, re-use the same sketch for multiple operations (e.g. padding two non-overlapping, not touching solids).
It's about the same goal that paulee is trying to achieve with the ArchSketch workbench.
In architecture environment it's very important to have a single generating sketch, but also I understand the risk.

viewtopic.php?t=73018
Yes, like that.
You can always use one properly defined sketch and then create a new sketch, reference the first and build on top of that as well. Stacking sketches as you go and use the earlier sketches to constrain the latter sketches where necessary to make sure they are aligned. Trying this out as we speak and seems to work well in FreeCAD too.
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markko martin
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by markko martin »

Hologram wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 1:39 pm You can always use one properly defined sketch and then create a new sketch, reference the first and build on top of that as well
Layers of Nemetschek allplan work in this way.
They aren't real parametric sketches but they look more like a PartDesign Body / Arch BuildingPart.
Red box indicates the active "Arch BuildingPart".
Yellow box indicates the editable "Arch BuildingPart".
The gray box indicates the "Arch BuildingPart" visible in the background but not editable.

I always thought that a similar system inside freecad would be very cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvFBMB_jynY
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Hologram
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Re: Flexibility of sketches for the future of FreeCAD?

Post by Hologram »

No, that's not whaI meant. I specifically mean constraint sketches and referenced external geometry. Allplan's implementation looks like a color coded implementation of frozen, visible and hidden layers on a single button. Apart from the color coding I see no difference between this and Autocad, for instance.
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