TechDraw: New Page

[PaddleStroke]

Proposal description

TechDraw first tool "TechDraw_PageDefault" has no task panel. On top of that the templates are a bit of a mess.

This means that :

we have to have 2 tools : "Insert default" and "insert template".
no way to set options such as page size for example during creation.
no way to select page language (one has to select a template in correct language if any).

I propose to make a proper task panel for 'New page'
This panel will have :

• Standard combobox
• Page size combobox
• Landscape/portrait radio buttons.
• Language combobox (defaulting to FC language)

Fix FreeCAD/FreeCAD#12368

Deliverables

PR fixing the issue

Timeline

Start in January. PR in February. End when merge.

Risks and mitigation

While it sounds pretty simple, this project requires deep changes to templates to enable their translation.

Compensation

Phase 1 :
Development : 3-5 days
PR handling, adjustments, rebasing, fixing conflicts : 3 days

Phase 2 :
Fixing introduced bugs or issues : 2-3 days

Total compensation : 4000€ (after the PR merges).

About you

Pierre, paddle on the forum, PaddleStroke on github

In the past I have done a lot of work on FreeCAD: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3APaddleStroke+is%3Aclosed

[yorikvanhavre]

I have some reservation concerning the price asked in regard to the work to be done, but principally the deep changes in templates... Could you elaborate on that? The main advantage of these templates is their simplicity, anyone can easily create them in inkscape, what deep changes are you proposing?

[PaddleStroke]

The command and task panel are not a big work indeed and should be quite straight forward.
However what is more difficult is what the task panel controls actually do. Because currently there is no notions of translation in the templates. You can just open a template, and there may or may not be a template in the language and the standard you need.

So in current state there would be no way to connect a 'standard' 'size' and 'language' comboboxes to a correct result.

So my suggestion is that templates are organized by folders, one folder per standard.
In each of these folder there would be one folder per available size.
In each of these 2 translatable template file (landscape and portrait).

Then the translatable template files should contain only tags instead of translated strings. For exemple instead of 'Approve by' we put a tag such as {"Approved by"} that the task will replace with the correct translation upon creation.

This is why there quite some work to be done on templates, as they need to be organized and made translatable.

Let me know if this details enough.

[yorikvanhavre]

Thanks. I understand better.

But does it make sense to allow to translate templates? It seems to me templates are something very linked to a specific country... Even units might be different for ex. between US and UK, not to mention paper sizes etc. I would think there would be "typical" templates that people use in every country, and if we take for ex. a US template and use it (translated) in France, we will likely go to prison for cultural crime :)

I would argue that if FreeCAD will provide default templates in several languages (why not indeed), it would do good to have a technically skilled person from these language/countries to verify and adapt templates manually...

[PaddleStroke]

Hmm having a closer look at the templates I see you are correct. It seems there are some that look quite specific, like the chinese ones and the russian.
I thought it was mostly some big standard like ANSI and ISO.
Though I wonder if most users are not going to use the big standards no? In which case it could make sense to have at least those translatable.

Perhaps @FreeCAD/design-working-group can comment if this project actually makes sense or not?

[MisterMakerNL]

I would say we do it like most CAD programs do.
Let the user pick a default standard, and present these in a nice UI whenever the user clicks a new sheet.
I don't think anyone wants to dig around in the a file browser.
So yes, this would be a great help for my workflow :)

[maxwxyz]

@FreeCAD/cad-advisory-group FYI

[pierreporte]

I haven't seen translatable templates in the wild yet. In corporations you always use predefined templates that may be bilingual in non-English-speaking countries. There is nothing wrong with the proposed feature but it feels like oriented to hobbyist.

If templates were to become clever, it would make sense to easily change sheet size, like in Solid Edge. I don't mean that templates can be stretched: there are sets of individual templates, one for each size, so users only need to change the size, not find the right line in a potentially huge list.

Solving FreeCAD/FreeCAD#18358 would also greatly simplify use of templates.

[furgo16]

but it feels like oriented to hobbyist.

Being a hobbyist FreeCAD user, that's what I was thinking as well. For that audience, which generally would not have created their own templates, having ready-made translated templates in their language would be a great help. To avoid the situation Yorik was mentioning (e.g. a Japanese standard translated in French), perhaps some sort of property could be attached that defines which languages a template can be translated in. That would also avoid creating unnecessary work for translators.

• ISO: any language
• ANSI: only en_US, en_CA
• JIS: only JP
• ...

Professional users will generally have their own templates based on the standard the country their drawings are for. I would think they would have been already been generated outside FreeCAD. They might use a template that is a mix of an international and a national standard (e.g. ISO and DIN for Germany). My guess is that if those professional templates were to be generated within FreeCAD, they would require a higher degree of customization that would go outside of the scope of the proposal (e.g. changing font type, font size, adding corporate logo, placement, etc.). FreeCAD could also provide an easier way to manage storing and choosing ready-made templates.

[MisterMakerNL]

Basically an iso standard with a company logo and a copyright warning, is what I do to make a professional template.

[pierreporte]

My guess is that if those professional templates were to be generated within FreeCAD, they would require a higher degree of customization that would go outside of the scope of the proposal (e.g. changing font type, font size, adding corporate logo, placement, etc.).

Templates are much more than the page frame and title block. They define dimension style, projections, etc. SVG templates are too limited for this.

[kadet1090]

For the price asked I'd love to see a good UI for this with one crucial thing which is preview for each template. I can help with UI layout once we have details about requirements available. Thumbnail generator would need to be implemented somehow.

Current solution is hard to use because it is virtually impossible to see what we are choosing, at least when the system does not provide thumbnails for SVGs inside the file picker.

Templates are much more than the page frame and title block. They define dimension style, projections, etc. SVG templates are too limited for this.

SVGs can contain arbitrary metadata - so it should be fine as long as we provide such metadata.

[marcuspollio]

Hi there !

Having a more user-friendly Page creation workflow in TechDraw is great, specially if it can accommodate a large range of use-cases (mechanical, construction, other design fields and both hobbyist and professional settings). Having a preview/thumbnail as suggest by @kadet1090 would indeed be a real bonus !

A single "Insert Page" command, with a Task Panel starting with a top dropdown/buttons "Default/Custom" - "Template" where each of these two would display appropriate settings (size, format orientation, blank or if possible standard and/or language, etc. already pre-filled with the latest used settings) and then presents a sorted list with previews depending on the above settings, that would already be an improvement.

Then, a larger reflection on how templates work would be welcomed. From their creation (outside e.g. Inkscape or possibly from within FreeCAD, maybe using existing tools in TD, Draft or Sketcher WBs), their management, retrieval and editing. Also, how it could work between FreeCAD's default tempates, those of the user profile and perhaps those linked to the project/file. However, I would say it's for a second step/grant.

[chennes]

Thanks for the submission: the 2025 grant process is going to be slightly different than the 2024. We are switching to a quarterly approval system. That will have two main consequences: first, the submission deadline for Q1 is now March 1, and all submissions will be considered by the committee then (though the larger FreeCAD community will of course continue to discuss the proposal here in this issue), and second, we are going to have a fixed budget for the quarter, so this grant will be competing for a slice of a set funding amount. That budget has not yet been determined, I will let you know here when it has.

[chennes]

The FPA has now voted to approve a budget of €20.000 per quarter, for a total of €80.000 in funds to be allocated by the grant program over the course of the year. This value may be revised in Q3 if donations significantly differ from the FPA's financial projections.