Release Notes 0.9

New Feature

• Add button for quick solve. A normal solve can report any redundant constraints, but can also be very slow because of that. A quick solve (which is also used when auto solve is enabled) is faster as it does not perform redundancy checking.

• Add option to reduce number of recomputation required.

• Various changes to Assembly objects as listed below. See demo here

  • Change Add origin to a checkable action, such that when enabled, the origin features will be automatically added to any newly created assemblies.

  • Constraint group object is auto hidden if empty.

  • Support Element and ElementLink in link navigation command.

  • Constraint element link now always link through a local element object, which retains a local copy of the linked geometry, and will continue to synchronize with the owner part's placement even if the lower element is missing. This can serve as a reminder for user to restore the missing element. See demo

  • Synchronize label change of ElementLink inside constraint with its linked Element

  • Add context menu in ElementGroup to sort Element alphabetically

  • Add context menu in Constraint for disable and enable.

  • Add context menu in Assembly for freeze and unfreeze.

  • Introduce various measurement pseudo constraints,

    • Points distance
    • Point plane distance
    • Poin line distance
    • Plane/Line angle

FreeCAD LinkStage3

• Enhanced expression engine and spreadsheet

• Enhanced sketch external geometry, which can be

  • Defining, i.e. used for shape building;
  • Frozen, i.e. no auto update when source geometry changes, but can be manually synchronized;
  • Detached from source geometry;
  • Re-attached.

• Enhanced PartDesign SubShapeBinder, featuring

  • Support of binding to multiple external objects,
  • Support of partial document loading. Once enabled, the external document of the bound object does not need to be loaded.

• [TreeView object search], enhanced from upstream to support searching sub-objects, and objects from any document. Simply click anyway in the tree view and press CTRL+F.

• New treeview options, including

  • Sync view, single click view switching, that supports switching to 3D view of external objects, TechDraw editing view, and spreadsheet;
  • Sync selection, auto expand and scroll to tree view item on 3D view; selection;
  • Sync placement, auto adjust object's placement when drag and drop so that the object does not jump inside 3D view;
  • Pre-selection, tree item mouse over highlight in 3D view;
  • Record selection, record tree view selection history so that you can go back and force with navigation buttons
  • Single/Multi/Collapse/Expand document, inherited from upstream to enhance multiple document working experience.
  • Initiate dragging, allowing to initiate tree view item dragging by clicking this button (or better with keyboard shortcut) without holding the mouse button. This greatly enhanced drag and drop experience for large and complex hierarchies. Try it and you'll love it.
  • Go to selection, manually scroll to the tree item corresponding to the current 3D view selection, in case you disabled Sync selection option.

• Introduce a second column in tree view as the user changeable description of any object.

• Introduce a core-built-in Python logger, that supports dynamic log level changing.

• Enhanced Python console output. Log all previously non python console logging command, such as

Gui.runCommand('Std_ToggleVisibility',0)

For logging command with multiple outputs, insert comments to mark the start and end of the command, such as

### Begin command Part_Box
App.ActiveDocument.addObject("Part::Box","Box")
App.ActiveDocument.ActiveObject.Label = "Cube"
App.ActiveDocument.recompute()
Gui.SendMsgToActiveView("ViewFit")
### End command Part_Box

Log all GUI selection commands, such as

Gui.clearSelection('Unnamed')
Gui.Selection.addSelection('Unnamed','Box001','Edge9',3.76698,0,0)

• Various bug fixes