Assembly 4 workbench

Discussion about the development of the Assembly workbench.
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chennes
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by chennes »

If you have time, could you file a GitHub issue about this so it doesn't get lost? -- change_branch.py is still using the Python git module, and it needs to be stripped out.
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by leoheck »

@Zolko is there any particular reason that the Assembly4 just supports a single Assembly per file?
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by Zolko »

leoheck wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 12:55 am @Zolko is there any particular reason that the Assembly4 just supports a single Assembly per file?
Yes. But lets' also ask this same question in reverse: would there be any reasons to allow many assemblies per file ? What would that permit that is not possible today ?
try the Assembly4 workbench for FreCAD — tutorials here and here
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by leoheck »

And what would be that reason, could you describe briefly?
Would it be a hard-to-solve code issue, or it is just the way it is currently implemented?

By supporting multiple Assemblies I could have sub-assemblies and also the main assembly in the same file. I also would have assemblies that coexist in the same file, so we could visualize both at once.

Regarding configurations, they are an interesting feature, but they do not display multiples at the same time and currently cannot be selected when instantiating a sub-assembly.
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by Zolko »

leoheck wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 7:15 pm By supporting multiple Assemblies I could have sub-assemblies and also the main assembly in the same file.
Interesting ... how do other CAD software deal with this issue ?
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by leoheck »

I don't know, sorry. I just use Freecad for everything, I have never used other CAD tools for 3D modeling.

I would be glad if someone knows this to help answer this question too, however, I am not sure if we have to always run after the other CAD alternatives. Sometimes we can lead.
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by Zolko »

leoheck wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 12:55 am @Zolko is there any particular reason that the Assembly4 just supports a single Assembly per file?
Yes. Or rather there are 2:

1) it's the industry standard. While I agree with you that we shouldn't blindly copy what others do, we also should follow long established industry practices in general. Being able to make assemblies in 1 file by incorporating the assembly and the assembly parts in a single file is already quite a novelty that other CAD systems cant use (and even though I was opposed to the idea originally, but I have been proven better by other people), but making nested assemblies in a single file was too much for my taste .... although FreeCAD has "Groups" which are the poor man's sub-assembly already.

2) it's easier – and thus more robust – to code: an assembly container is an App::Part called "Assembly" (was "Model" before). Easy to understand, easy to code, easy to explain. It follows the KISS principle
try the Assembly4 workbench for FreCAD — tutorials here and here
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by leoheck »

Fair enough.

I just thought the poor man's sub-assembly was Parts. Ah, unless you are mentioning Groups inside the Assembly, of course.

Do you think that having a way to select the Assembly to instantiate the part if the document has more than one Assembly, would not be enough to have multiple Assemblies under the same document?

I consider this an interesting feature, to say the least. I would use it a lot.
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Re: Assembly 4 workbench

Post by leoheck »

Ah I think it could be easy to implement this if we consider the Assembly in use the one that is Active or that was Activated exactly like what we have with Bodies. It could also work assuming the active is the one currently selected, or both methods.
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