FreeCAD Road Workbench

[HakanSeven12]

Proposal description

Road Workbench is designed specifically for geomatics engineering applications and road design. It provides tools for road geometric design (alignment geometry, profile geometry, superelevation, and road components such as lines, shoulders, ditches, and slopes), terrain creation, cross-sections, volume calculations, LandXML import/export, and other essential aspects of geomatics engineering workflows.

Project Repository: https://github.com/HakanSeven12/Road

Deliverables

An external workbench that can be installable on addon manager.

PR is ready for addon manager: FreeCAD/FreeCAD-addons#344

Timeline

I have set up a feature table where you can track the progress of features: Done, WIP, and To-Do (the list may extend over time): https://github.com/users/HakanSeven12/projects/2/views/1

• Develop basic road design toolsets (Alignment feature is completed).
• Convert Road Workbench objects to standard FreeCAD objects (Terrain conversion is completed).
• Refactoring the section, volume calculation.(Code is ready just some adjustments needed)
• Provide a viewer-based object editing interface.(Points are done)
• LandXML import/export.
• Create documentation.
• Feature enhancements.

Milestone 1: Finish first 5 steps of the goals list - LandXML optional (Expected completion: 6 months).
Milestone 2: Create and publish user tutorials and documentation (Expected completion: 2 months).
Milestone 3: Feature enhancements. (Expected completion: 2 month after documentation release).

Risks and mitigation

We are using double values and coordinate systems for geographical aplications . Because of that I need to create my own viewproviders for all objects by using Coin 3D Geo Classes:

https://www.coin3d.org/coin/classSoGeoOrigin.html
https://www.coin3d.org/coin/classSoGeoSeparator.html
https://www.coin3d.org/coin/classSoGeoCoordinate.html
https://www.coin3d.org/coin/classSoGeoLocation.html

So it may slow down the development time by time.

Compensation

Development and testing: 10 000 €
Documentation and tutorials: Later
Feature enhancements: Later

About you

Hakan Seven
HakanSeven12
I was worked on Trails and Modern UI for 2 years time by time

[prokoudine]

The first thing the FPA general assembly members will likely ask you to do is to break down the cost and attach money to each of the five items in Milestone 1 separately. Do you have a good sense of how much each of those items is worth?

[yorikvanhavre]

This workbench (and its predecessors) is a very long-time effort (there since 2019 or so) and has been constantly worked on since then (the forum topic has 67 pages: https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=34371 ). IMHO it more than deserves funding.

I would just like to ask, maybe, if you could include in the plan to start adding it to the FreeCAD wiki, and list its available tools?

[HakanSeven12]

Of course. I can add it to the wiki when I finished the first phase. Then I can start to create documentations which include FreeCAD Wiki too. Also I want to create Youtube videos. But first I need to finish development phase.

[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.

[HakanSeven12]

Update

The basic road design toolset is nearly complete—only superelevations are missing and I plan to implament target feature for road.

Alignment ✔️
Profile ✔️
Structure ✔️
Superelevation ❌
Road 🔄

I'm facing an issue with implementing a viewer-based object editing interface due to this bug in FreeCAD: FreeCAD Issue #19379.
Currently waiting for a fix.

Meanwhile, I plan to refactor the old code and make it compatible with new tools.

[chennes]

@HakanSeven12 while the committee hasn't begun their reviews yet, I can tell you that their first question is going to be about whether this project could be broken down into smaller pieces. You're requesting 50% of the quarter's grant budget, which is going to be difficult to justify. Would you consider requesting grant support for a smaller part of the project?

[HakanSeven12]

We can split the amount into two: 5000 for the first three stages and 5000 for the following stages.

[chennes]

As written, this project is likely too large for an FPA grant, both in terms of time as well as money. There is no specific dollar or time restriction, but the FPA strongly encourages developers to work incrementally and consider their projects in small, manageable pieces. If there is a smaller part of the larger whole that you can request support for I recommend modifying your request. There is nothing precluding you from making a second grant request once the first part is completed (though of course there is no guarantee that it will be funded, each grant will be considered individually).