A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

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wsteffe
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wsteffe »

drmacro wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:50 pm I said "while we wait" you can use other tools in FC. I did NOT say it should not be changed.
I apologize. You are right and you were not really opposing the change (even if your suggestion to use Part, for the moment, is not a valid alternative IMO).
But, excluding you, what I said regarding an irrational (not supported by good reasons) resistance to removing this pointless rule is valid.
It is a very old discussion which has been done many times in several threads and the change has always been stopped wilthout any valid reason.
drmacro
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by drmacro »

wsteffe wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:31 pm
drmacro wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:50 pm I said "while we wait" you can use other tools in FC. I did NOT say it should not be changed.
I apologize. You are right and you were not really opposing the change (even if your suggestion to use Part, for the moment, is not a valid alternative IMO).
But, excluding you, what I said regarding an irrational (not supported by good reasons) resistance to removing this pointless rule is valid.
It is a very old discussion which has been done many times in several threads and the change has always been stopped wilthout any valid reason.
What's wrong with Part workbench?
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Grub
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by Grub »

Stop the bickering, use the RT version and just ticks the box, and peace. :P
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drmacro
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by drmacro »

Grub wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:49 pm Stop the bickering, use the RT version and just ticks the box, and peace. :P
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I'd just use Part workbench there as well. 8-)
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wsteffe
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wsteffe »

drmacro wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:36 pm What's wrong with Part workbench?
It is something related to my particular workflow.

I am usimg FC to design elecctromagnetic structures which are passed to my EM solver (EmCAD) in a step file.
A typical EM structure may contain several dielectrics (modeled as solids) and several boundary conditions (applied to faces).
Dielectric properties and boundary conditions can be applied in the EmCAD GUI to the imported solids and to the imported faces.
To be precise these properties are applied to the name of the container in which the solids (or the faces) are stored because step export doesn't preserve thw names assigned to the geometrical entities (like solids or faces).

It is a good workflow. When I have many solids made of the same dielectric material I may put them in the same Body container. So I may assign to them the dielectric property in a single command. In the same way many faces subjected to the same kind of boundary condition are put in the same Body container.
The RT branch is very flexible and allows me also to have a Body that is a multi-face (instead of multi-body) container.

I would like to have this kind of flexibility also in Master. But probably it would be asking to much (considering the reaction to much simpler requests).
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by drmacro »

wsteffe wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:02 pm
drmacro wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 2:36 pm What's wrong with Part workbench?
It is something related to my particular workflow.

I am usimg FC to design elecctromagnetic structures which are passed to my EM solver (EmCAD) in a step file.
A typical EM structure may contain several dielectrics (modeled as solids) and several boundary conditions (applied to faces).
Dielectric properties and boundary conditions can be applied in the EmCAD GUI to the imported solids and to the imported faces.
To be precise these properties are applied to the name of the container in which the solids (or the faces) are stored because step export doesn't preserve thw names assigned to the geometrical entities (like solids or faces).

It is a good workflow. When I have many solids made of the same dielectric material I may put them in the same Body container. So I may assign to them the dielectric property in a single command. In the same way many faces subjected to the same kind of boundary condition are put in the same Body container.
The RT branch is very flexible and allows me also to have a Body that is a multi-face (instead of multi-body) container.

I would like to have this kind of flexibility also in Master. But probably it would be asking to much (considering the reaction to much simpler requests).
I guess I don't understand why you can't do that with Part workbench. It just makes solids and can have containers. :?:
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wsteffe
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wsteffe »

drmacro wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:05 pm I guess I don't understand why you can't do that with Part workbench. It just makes solids and can have containers.
I think that Part WB is more limited than PD. In RT branch I am quite never using it because it has been almost completely superseeded by PD.
Even the extrusion command (which generates a surface from an open profile) has been ported to PD. So I have to admit that I have little experience with Part. I.M.O. in the future (when all relevant things are in PD) Part should be suppressed. I do not see a reason to maintain the separation between Part and PD.
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wandererfan
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wandererfan »

As I recall, when Part Design Next was being developed, the "rule" was implemented because creating multiple solids in one PD operation would cause subsequent operations to break or give incorrect results.

It may be that PD operations are smarter now and can all handle multiple solids as input. Somebody familiar with the internals of PD would have to answer that question.
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wandererfan
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wandererfan »

Just to clarify, strictly speaking, a Body is not a container. It is the result of a series of (sketch based) operations.

Part and Group are containers. A Compound could also be considered a container.
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Re: A randomly started discussion about the necessity of the PD single solid rule

Post by wandererfan »

wsteffe wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 3:19 pm I do not see a reason to maintain the separation between Part and PD.
They implement different modelling paradigms. As it was explained to me, Part is largely Composite Solid Generation modelling (think TinkerCAD?) and PD is feature history modelling.

Both have their place.
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