[WIP] PartDesign: New Text utility

[davidosterberg]

Allow for easy and parametric additive and subractive text features in PartDesign.

Work is very much in progress. No need for detail review at this stage.

Forum discussion:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=53833

What works

• Font selection with QFontComboBox
• Generation of text shapes

Todo:

• Fix segfault when recomputing
• Implement the text location by sketch logic
• Ship a small selection of fonts with FreeCAD, so that models using those fonts will be platform independent, and distinguish these in the UI.
• implement subractive, additive, and imprint modes by observing the sign of the input
• Filter out non TrueType fonts from QFontComboBox (subclass?)
• Scale text to exact desired height by means of Bounding box command.

[hyarion]

I like that this makes it easier to create parametric text, but I am wondering if a specific tool for it is necessary. Wouldn't it be better to create the parametric text in 2d and use pad/pocket to make it 3d? (that way it could be possible to use create 3d text with sweep and partial revolve too.

Is there a forum thread where this feature is being discussed?

[davidosterberg]

@hyarion there is no forum thread yet (will create one soon). The 2D contour approach exists in Draft -> ShapeString. This is PartDesign and in PD and IMO it is more appropriate to this WB to create a feature directly on the body.

Edit: Actually there was a thread that I forgot about. Added.

Edit2:
The main use cases I see for this is that you want some kind of text on your part. E.g an item and batch number for a casting. My main priority is that the tool is both fast and self explanatory for this use case.

Edit3:
Perhaps it is possible to do both in some way. The tool could offer the user to import the shape of the text as a new sketch.

[hyarion]

@davidosterberg ok, thanks I'll continue the discussion there instead

[davidosterberg]

Closed, in favor of a Sketcher based solution. See forum discussion