I’m wondering what does the “Render mode” really affect? What’s its purpose from the user perspective? Why does it exist?
The wiki page doesn’t describe much:
Properties
Source: The section plane object to be displayed All On> : If hidden objects must be shown or not. If False, only objects that are visible in the 3D view are rendered Render Mode> : The render mode to use, Solid or Wireframe Show Hidden> : If the hidden geometry (the part of the goemetry that lies behind the section plane) is shown or not. It will be rendered in dashed line, which can be configured in the Arch preferences. Show Fill> : If cut areas must be filled with a grey color or not
Line Width: The width of the main lines. Cut lines and projected/2D line widths ratios can be configured in the Arch preferences
Font Size: The size of all texts that appear in this view
We should ping Yorik.
From what I can recall it affects the way the SVG is computed: coin modes rely on coin to output the SVG. They are less precise but way faster. The other options rely on OCC. They should output a more precise SVG, but they should be slow on big models because of many Boolean operations OCC uses to compute the SVG.
Ok. So the “render mode” property should only affect the appearance/performance of the generated view, not the list of objects to be rendered, right? This means hidden objects rendering should not be affected by this property. So the bug is valid, right? This means “wireframe” should not render hidden objects too.
The current behavior is:
Wireframe mode: hidden objects are always rendered
Solid mode: hidden objects are rendered according to the “All on” property
Coin(mono) mode: hidden objects are never rendered
So while it’s inherited from TechDraw::DrawViewSymbol, it’s rendered by the ArchSectionPlane in the Arch Mod. Hm…
Another bug is that when I change the “All on” property, it isn’t re-rendered, even if I force it to recompute. It’s only re-rendered when changing the render mode from Wireframe to Solid and vice versa.
Yet another issue with the render mode is that the orientation is inconsistent.
Is this ArchView even useful? I can’t even display dimensions on a page. Maybe it’s a placeholder for additional features that are not implemented yet?
ArchView is very helpful. Essentially when used in architecture, it makes more sense to use Arch SectionPlane, and then TechDraw ArchView. In this case, you add Draft Dimensions to your 3D model and include them as part of the SectionPlane. That is, you don’t really add the measurements with TechDraw, you just use TechDraw to display the section plane (SVG) generated by Draft/Arch.
It’s just confusing. Add a few render mode bugs and you get lost.
There are 4 measurement tools: sketch constraint, measure distance, tech draw dimension, and draft dimension.
And even for a single ArchView, there are 4 (!) render modes.
I’d expect a single “ruler” object which could pick real 3D points and be placed on a page. And a single render implementation. If Coin is more performant, fine. But the user shouldn’t know that Coin exists.
User scenario:
Create a page
Add a cut view (place floor plan on a page)
Add a cut projection (for a floor plan, set a floor level)
Add a dimension (measure a line parallel to projection plane or existing in a cut plane, no distinction between 2D and 3D)
Set label fonts for a whole page, set placement of all labels (center/left/right)
Add automatic hatches for all faces and a corresponding legend based on materials, simplified 2D representation for objects such as windows and doors.
Set high-level floor plan type: planned, as-built, demolition, construction, electrical, plumbing, etc
But first, let’s fix bugs in existing render modes.
It’s a work in progress. TechDraw is relatively new; it was introduced in FreeCAD barely two years ago with v0.17. At that time, Draft and Arch already existed, so the ArchSection Plane plus TechDraw DraftView or TechDraw ArchView was the quickest way to get something displayed in a drawing sheet (back then provided by the obsolete Drawing Workbench).
The alternative is to just add all the dimensions and annotations directly to the 3D view (everything created with Draft), and just print that.
Also, Zolko just introduced a new measurement tool in Assembly4. Maybe something like this could be added to the core as well.
I did lost the track of this really interesting topic. Thanks to tackle this field, it’s really fundamental for the workflow.
Just for your information, I was also experimenting a bit with the sectionplane, not in your same field, but on the way the user interact with it, and in it’s possibility to group objects like annotations:
You can find it if you want to try it in the BIM wb.
It should of closed automagically because of our bugtrackers source integration webhook. But for some reason it missed it. I needed to trigger it manually. Ticket is closed now. Thank you for all the efforts!
