[PD] add feature to create tapered Pad / Pocket

[donovaly]

This PR adds support for tapered extrudes.

This was from time to time requested in the forum since other CAD programs and also Pad's Extrusion provides this feature.

Forum thread to discuss it: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=65124

Here is it in action:

The PR treats Pad and Pocket the same way, so Pocket has the same feature:

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 443915890 was triggered at 9148d80. All CI branches and pipelines.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 443984655 was triggered at 8a85e15. All CI branches and pipelines.

[donovaly]

@berndhahnebach, I made another commit to fix the CI build failure, can you therefore please trigger another CI run on this PR?

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 444014761 was triggered at c59a1ba. All CI branches and pipelines.

[jbaehr]

There seem to be some missing headers when not using _PreComp_.

[donovaly]

@berndhahnebach I need another CI run please
What compiler is run be the CI? Does it use precompiled headers?

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 444168620 was triggered at 3413c5e. All CI branches and pipelines.

[donovaly]

@berndhahnebach give me another CI run please

I realized now that the CI does not use precompiled headers. Since I do, I don't see the compilation failures due to missing headers.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 444253172 was triggered at 3e8adc1. All CI branches and pipelines.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 444427600 was triggered at 6bcefcf. All CI branches and pipelines.

[wwmayer]

The main question to me is do we really need this feature directly for pad/pockets? To me this makes FeatureExtrude to be a so called god class that provides functions that should be better kept in a separate class.

When looking at some online available docs about commercial systems (http://catiadoc.free.fr/online/prtug_C2/prtugbt0501.htm) then there is no such option either.

This function is already part of the draft feature (http://catiadoc.free.fr/online/prtug_C2/prtugbt0612.htm) and you can achieve the very same effect.

[donovaly]

The main question to me is do we really need this feature directly for pad/pockets?

Sure, otherwise I would not have spent so much time on this ;-).
Since I am active in FC people ask why FC lacks features so-called "CAD standard software" provides. They refer to Fusion 360:
https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=SLD-EXTRUDE-SOLID
and Fusion appears indeed to be a standard in the maker scene. As I implemented it, it works almost the same as in Fusion.

In my working field Solidworks is used by most companies around and this also provides the feature:
https://help.solidworks.com/2019/english/SolidWorks/sldworks/r_extrude_propertymanager.htm
its workflow is close to the of Fusion.

You spoke about a "god" class, but I only implemented what part Extrude for years. And I could understand the users who asked why Part has a basic feature that PD does not provide.
(As you can see in Solidworks, there it is a real "god" feature because it also includes the Thickness feature.
Writing this after a full day of real-life construction work, I understand that speed matters and when you can setup a feature in one dialog and later change it in the tree in one place, saves time. I guess SW designed the UI as they did to speedup the workflow.)

Therefore implementing this was for a long time on my Todo-list. While working on it during the whole last week, I realized its power. One can save a lot of time in constructing because one saves the work to make lofts.
(Drafts are no option for me for real-life document since all the time the face numbers change and then the drafts go to the wrong faces.)
The last hour I took the freedom to use this PR on a real-life document and play around. So despite I was skeptic about such a feature for a long time (you can e.g ask chrisB who tried for a while to change my mind ;-)), I see its power now. Any having the same functionality in Part and PD also helps.

Here is the thread that eventually triggered my action: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=64795&start=30

p.s. no fear. I am not planning to include the thickness feature to Pad/Pocket.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 459527778 was triggered at 7a2bb51. All CI branches and pipelines.

[donovaly]

OK, this PR is now adapted to current master. The functionality nothing has changes, the PR inherits Part's Extrude code for tapered extrusion. However, as wished in the forum, it does now support inner structures as Part does since today.

Anyone, please give it a try.
@mwganson

[mwganson]

Looks good. We even get cones and planes for the faces.

Only thing I got an error message opening ExtrusionHelper.cpp:

[mwganson]

That was opening in QtCreator.

[donovaly]

Only thing I got an error message opening ExtrusionHelper.cpp:

Thanks. I hope this encoding issue is now fixed. Can you please try again?

[mwganson]

That seems to have fixed it.

[donovaly]

That seems to have fixed it.

Thanks.

I found meanwhile a minor issue, fixed this and rebased to trigger the CI.

[donovaly]

Here is a Windows build with the PR on top of the current master to try out the PR without the need to compile:

https://github.com/donovaly/FreeCADInstProj/releases/tag/0.20r27327%2B1

[jbaehr]

@donovaly Thanks for your work here!

I have a general question though: From a brief look at the diffs I get the impression that the Extrude (and its private generate...Prism) methods of FeatureSketchBased are only used in Pad and Pocket. And those have their own base in between FeatureSketchBased: FeatureExtrude. Wouldn't it be cleaner to move the code there?

[donovaly]

I have a general question though: From a brief look at the diffs I get the impression that the Extrude (and its private generate...Prism) methods of FeatureSketchBased are only used in Pad and Pocket.

It seems so. However, any further code shifting should be done in a separate PR. This PR here is already huge and the important thing is the new functionality of tapered extrudes. Therefore the focus is on that code part.

Later I plan to shift more code around, for example Part and PD have the same features to pad along a certain direction and this code can later be put into the new helper file I introduced with this PR.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 460324278 was triggered at 730b112. All CI branches and pipelines.

[freecadci]

for feature branch PR_5357. Pipeline 460535351 was triggered at 10375db. All CI branches and pipelines.

[donovaly]

OK, I think it is time to make the move to merge.