FreeCAD Schematics workbench

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Evgeniy
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FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by Evgeniy »

The workbench is written entirely in Python, and it is designed for drawing schemes.
Its capabilities are quite limited yet.

This two PR which can help in the development this workbench:
* Add the ability to add an toolbar icon bypass the file system through a string.
* Add the ability to specify the path of App::PropertyFileIncluded property OpenFileDialog.

Workbench features:

* is possible create page and add symbols
* grid and snap to grid features
* select/copy/paste(paste under mouse)/delete fatures
* page template supports
* supports any types of page appearance
* save to file/load from file support

All this is written almost in pure Qt, so the development took longer than planned.

Image

Link for download:
https://gitlab.com/FreeCAD-Tools/FreeCA ... s-main.zip

Note: Pull-requests and forks are blocked yet.

More detailed description in Readme.md:
https://gitlab.com/FreeCAD-Tools/FreeCA ... /README.md

Image

Schematics.png
Schematics.png (32.51 KiB) Viewed 4102 times
Last edited by Evgeniy on Thu Mar 02, 2023 3:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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paddle
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by paddle »

This is very interesting! Though with KiCAD being as advanced as it is, the competition is tough!
drmacro
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by drmacro »

paddle wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 8:08 am This is very interesting! Though with KiCAD being as advanced as it is, the competition is tough!
Hmm...different applications.

There are schematic tools for PCB design: KiCAD

There are schematic tools for electrical design: this workbench. (at least I think that is where he is going... :?: )
(Electrical design being electrical systems for factories. buildings, ships, etc.)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Spock: "...His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
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tobiasfalk
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by tobiasfalk »

This comes from an idear posted in to the TechDraw section: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=73654
This/The idear dous not have the aim to compeet against KiCAD and actualy is for something that may have simalaratys but is still for diferent purpuses. This tool would be used if you want to create the WireringPlan for a switchbox or controll cabinate.
alexu
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by alexu »

tobiasfalk wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 11:49 am This comes from an idear posted in to the TechDraw section: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=73654
This/The idear dous not have the aim to compeet against KiCAD and actualy is for something that may have simalaratys but is still for diferent purpuses. This tool would be used if you want to create the WireringPlan for a switchbox or controll cabinate.
So you are competing with https://qelectrotech.org.
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saso
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by saso »

:roll:

QElectroTech.png
QElectroTech.png (727.28 KiB) Viewed 3801 times
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easyw-fc
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by easyw-fc »

saso wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:17 pm :roll:
QElectroTech.png
@saso is there a QElectroTech FreeCAD WB?
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saso
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by saso »

easyw-fc wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:03 pm @saso is there a QElectroTech FreeCAD WB?
:) No. This topic of having schematics in FC has come up in the past quite often and the above image was at one point just done in gimp to better represent the idea. So it is very nice to see this development of the Schematics workbench now.

There was already in the past indeed this idea that it could be in some way directly compatible with QElectroTech and as I know there was some interest in this also from the QElectroTech developers. The benefit would of course be not to develop everything from start and the compatibility between them so both projects could sort of continually grow together...

But my personal view and the more important thing about it is that while having a schematic workbench in FC is nice, however if it is just like a "drafting" schematics (where the user does everything manually) it does not really fit in the idea of fully parametric cad. Of course this can be more of a long term plan but IMO the real interesting feature of it would be if the schematics would in some way be able to be connected / associated with the 3d models. Maybe even being automatically generated / updated from 3d model, puling textual / numerical data from the models or even 3d models generated / updated from schematics,... :roll:
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onekk
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by onekk »

saso wrote: Wed Jan 18, 2023 4:38 pm ---
if the goal could be a pdf file there is a decent package for Latex and Tikz that make schematics, some idea could be taken from there like the concepts of nodes.

https://www.ctan.org/pkg/circuitikz

as example if you have a relays you have A and B as coil and P, P0, P1 as the contacts, you could name as example RL1.A to identify the pin and then route the wire to as example SW1.A as an hypothetical contact of a switch.

But as Tikz has the concept of node placed at some coordinates, so you could place some route note and even define the way the wire is routed, but this is done "writing instructions".

It would be interesting if an hypothetic FreeCAD Wiring WB would have even the 3D models of the relay and place them in the space, but this would involve to create some complex entities, that hold the 2D schematics, the 3D model and all the coordinates of the pin in "both schematics 2D and 3D".

But probably this need some routing algorithm for both 2D (Schematics) and 3D to make things, and probably Python will be limited, and some sort of database will be needed as you have to map each pin in 2d and 3d and each wire with his route so for a rather complex scheme something like a Sqlite3 relational database would be decently fast.

But this file has to be inserted in the FCStd container file, and...

Only a brainstorming, but probably not the work for a single developer.

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Carlo D.
GitHub page: https://github.com/onekk/freecad-doc.
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paddle
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Re: FreeCAD Schematics workbench

Post by paddle »

Maybe Kicad could be talked into merging in FreeCAD as a workbench :D
It doesn't sound very probable does it.
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