MaxProFrame 1.14.0

Improvements

• Folded miters: a new Folded Miters toolbar and menu join tubes at their corners by folding them, as a CNC tube laser and a bender do: the laser cuts a V notch through the walls on the inside of the corner and the wall on the outside is bent. Folded Bar works like Create Miter Ends: press it, then click two or more Square Hollow or Rectangular Hollow tubes (or pieces made from them) that meet end to end (Ctrl+click or deselect one to drop it); it folds them, at any angle, into one bar drawn with its real bend radius; the outer size of the frame stays as drawn. The panel lists the corners of the bar from its start, each row naming its two tubes and its values (1 · Profile → Profile001 · R 10 mm · key · clearance 0.5 mm), and says which tube to click next until two of them meet. Selecting a corner draws it over the 3D view, the bend and a stretch of each tube in the selection color, always visible (the open corner at both ends of the bar; its two tubes are selected instead while the preview does not fold it yet), and shows its values; Ctrl+click or Shift+click selects several, a field that differs between them shows Mixed values, and a value typed goes to every selected corner once the field is done (Enter, which keeps the panel open, Tab or leaving it; the arrows and the mouse wheel apply at once). Each corner has its own Outer radius (the radius seen outside the bend; it bends with the outer radius less the wall thickness inside, 28.5 mm for 30 mm on a 1.5 mm tube), Clearance of the notch, Interlocking key (a half circle centered on the miter line, at its middle from the relief gap to the inside corner, or slid along it to the nearest place where it fits, standing out of one flank into a half-circle socket in the other; on by default, it can be turned off) with its Key diameter (Default: a quarter of the tube size across the bent wall) and K-factor. The K-factor is Automatic by default, from DIN 6935 by the inside radius r and the wall thickness t: K = 0.325 + 0.25 log10(r / t), 0.5 from r / t = 5; a value above 0 up to 1 replaces it on that corner. The developed length adds, for each folded corner, angle × (r + K t). A new corner starts with the values last set, remembered between sessions. With one corner selected the number fields take expressions (Fx). The wall thickness and the material are the profile's, shown read-only in the panel. Remove takes off the end tube of the first or last corner of an open bar, or opens a closed frame at the selected corner, which becomes the open one where the bar starts and ends. Each corner is a Folded Corner object under its bar in the tree, whose properties (outer radius, clearance, key, key diameter, K-factor) can be changed in the property editor or driven by expressions, recomputing the bar; deleting the bar deletes its corners. Every notch also gets a round relief next to the bent wall, always cut, whose radius is the inside radius of its corner, so the folded corner closes around the bend with no gap and no overlap; the clearance also moves back the round cuts of the relief, so the folded corner keeps it there too. Whatever keeps the bar from folding is shown and keeps OK disabled: an outer radius out of its limits (at least twice the wall thickness, at most the largest radius whose inside of the bend still passes outside the inner corner, less two wall thicknesses, plus the wall, so it depends on the corner angle: 161.8 mm on a 50x50x2 tube at 90 degrees, 129.9 mm on a 40x40x1.5 tube; the message names the corner and shows the allowed range), a key that does not fit anywhere on the miter line, a tube too short for the rounds of the corners at its ends (named in the message), a miter or trim at a folded corner, tubes that are not one chain of the same tube. Double-click the bar to edit it. Unfold Bar makes its straight solid with every cut (notches, keys, reliefs, the holes and cutouts of the tubes, the end miters), from X = 0 along X, to export with File > Export (STEP, IGES, BREP). The BOM and the Cut List count a Folded Bar as one piece of its developed length; the Report view warns when it is longer than the stock length; Populate IDs and Reset IDs take a selected Folded Bar. The texts are in Spanish and Russian. See the tutorial.
• Tools on a Folded Bar: Create Miter Ends, Extend / Cut, Notch, Cutout / Hole and Drill Hole accept a click on a Folded Bar and work on the tube under the clicked point (its face, for the tools that cut a face), as a click on that tube would; a bar selected before the command gives the tube nearest the point where it was clicked. Before, they took only loose profiles. A click on a bend adds nothing where a face or a point is needed, and the panel says "Click a straight part of the folded bar."; the tools that take a whole tube take the nearest one. Profile Pattern repeats the whole bar (Count and pitch; Between faces says to use Count and pitch), and the BOM counts each copy as one more folded bar. Extend / Cut and Notch refuse to cut a tube at a folded corner ("Profile001 cannot be cut at its folded corner with Profile002."). The miter, trim, cutout or hole shows folded into the bar at once, in the preview too, without a recompute; Cancel leaves the bar as it was. The new texts, and the Drill Hole and Profile Pattern tooltips and prompts that now name the Folded Bar, are in Spanish and Russian. See the tutorial.
• Stepped joint for folded corners: each Folded Corner has a Joint, Miter (as before, and the default: the inner wall is cut at half the bend angle, which needs a laser with a bevel head) or Stepped: the inner wall gets an interlock made only of straight cuts, square to the tube, so any tube laser cuts it, while the side walls keep their V. One tube covers the step and the other ends past it and rests on it once folded; the step is computed for the angle of each corner: full contact at 90 degrees, a small weld groove on the inside under 90 degrees (step depth × cot(angle) wide), nothing showing over 90 degrees. Step depth goes across the bent wall from the inner face; Automatic (0) is the larger of the wall thickness and the outer corner radius of the tube. Flip step swaps the tube that covers the step, and the corner's Clearance also opens the faces of the step, by all of it like the flanks of the V. A step depth out of its range (from the wall thickness to under half the tube size, clear of the relief) or a step that does not fit at the angle of its corner is refused naming the corner's two tubes. With Stepped the open corner of a closed frame gets the joint at both ends of the bar, generated by MaxProFrame instead of the End Miter of those ends: the inner wall and the outer wall are both stepped, one end covering each, so the ends interlock; at an open corner that is not square nothing sticks out past the outer faces and a notch is left at the outer edge for the weld. The Folded Bar panel shows Joint, Step depth (with Fx) and Flip step for the selected corners with the same Mixed values and remembered-value rules as the other fields, rows of stepped corners end with · stepped, and selecting the open corner edits its Joint, Step depth, Flip step and Clearance. Existing documents open with every corner as Miter and the same shapes. The new texts are in Spanish and Russian. See the tutorial.
• Unfolded Bar name: a new Unfolded Bar is labelled after its Folded Bar, for example Frame_Unfolded, and follows when the Folded Bar is renamed, unless it was renamed by hand.
• Stepped open corner: at an open corner that is not square, with a step depth larger than the wall thickness, the outer wall of the tube that covers the step of the inner wall goes on into the weld notch with a second step, the wall thickness deep, so the groove is smaller: 5.8 mm instead of 6.9 mm along the outer face at 120 degrees with a 4 mm step on a 2 mm wall, 3.5 mm instead of 4.6 mm at 60 degrees. Nothing passes the outer faces of the tubes, every cut is still straight, and a square open corner keeps its shape. See the tutorial.
• Interlock: a new Interlock command (Spanish Encastre) on the Folded Miters toolbar adds fingers cut by the laser at the inner vertex of a folded corner, so the two tubes locate each other: click the inner walls of the two tubes at a folded corner of a Folded Bar and the inner wall band is split along the bend axis into fingers that belong to one tube and the other in turn, each one a step of the Stepped joint, while the corner keeps its own joint below them. Every cut is straight, so any tube laser cuts it; the Unfolded Bar carries the fingers and the developed length stays. The panel sets Count (at least 2), Finger width (Even by default), Tip (Square, Chamfer or Round, with Tip size, to lead the fingers in), Depth (Automatic: the automatic step depth), Clearance (every pair of mating finger faces, half on each side) and Flip; each change shows on the bar at once and the settings last kept start the next Interlock. Apply and continue, next to OK and Cancel, keeps the Interlock in its own Undo step and leaves the panel open with the same settings for the next folded corner; Cancel then removes only the newer one. Faces that are not the inner walls of one folded corner (an outer or side wall, the open corner, tubes that do not meet, a corner that has an Interlock already) create nothing and the panel says what to click; fingers that do not fit are refused naming the corner's two tubes, for example "The interlock of the corner between Profile and Profile001 needs at least 2 fingers.". The Interlock is an object u...

MaxProFrame 1.13.1

Fixes

• Russian translation updated by @c0n5t (#130): with FreeCAD in Russian every text of v1.13.0 shows in Russian, Piece Table, Balloons and Profile Pattern included. Reset IDs and its messages used to show in Spanish.

MaxProFrame 1.13.0

Improvements

• Profile Pattern panel: each reference (piece, direction, face 1, face 2) has its own row with a Change button, so an existing pattern can repeat another piece (its copies follow it; a former piece that Between faces moved while the panel is open goes back to where it was, while the former piece of a pattern already Between faces stays where it was placed, as the panel says), follow another edge or go between two other faces. A click with no Change pressed only fills what is still missing, so a pattern is never changed by a stray click. Long names are shortened in the middle, keeping the face or edge, with the full name as tooltip: the panel no longer widens. A Preview group adds Update automatically (remembered): unchecked, the changes wait for OK. Copies / Pieces and Pitch take expressions (Fx).

Fixes

• Profile Pattern: a double-click on the pattern in the tree opens its panel; it used to start renaming it.

MaxProFrame 1.12.0

Improvements

• Russian translation, contributed by @c0n5t (#130): with FreeCAD in Russian the commands, panels and messages of v1.11.1 show in Russian. Texts added after v1.11.1 (Piece Table, Balloons changes) show in English until they are translated.
• Profile Pattern: a new command (MaxProFrame toolbar, next to Drill Hole) repeats a profile, trimmed profile, cutout or drill hole along a straight edge clicked in the 3D view. The copies are Links to the piece, so a change to it shows on every copy. Count and pitch places the copies center to center in the edge's sense, inverted, or symmetric (the count on each side); Between faces spreads a total count, the piece included, between two planar faces with equal gaps, moving the piece by its own offsets (the edge must run across it, otherwise the panel explains why). Live preview, one Undo step, Cancel leaves nothing; double-click the pattern to change it, delete it to remove its copies. A trim, cutout or drill hole made from the piece after the pattern shows on every copy too: the copies follow the last piece built on it. The pattern follows the frame when it changes size (for example a table sized by a VarSet): FreeCAD loses the names of its edge and faces ("?Edge1", "?Face2") or gives them to others, and the pattern finds them again at the same place on their profile, as Extend / Cut does, links them by their new names, and keeps the equal gaps or its copies; Undo / Redo, and documents opened again, do it too. When no face of the object is there any more (for example a larger section), it fails naming the object. The BOM, the Cut List and the Piece Table count each copy as a piece of the original with its ID, in one row with it, and Populate IDs gives the copies that ID; Reset IDs on a copy clears, and counts, the piece, its profile and every copy.
• Piece Table: a new command (MaxProFrame Output toolbar) puts on a TechDraw page a table of the pieces shown in the selected views: ID, Piece (the profile name only, e.g. TC80x40x1.5), Quantity, Length and both cut angles with their faces, as the BOM writes them (45.0 <80). One row per ID, so the numbers match the balloons; pieces without ID get no row and are counted in the status bar and named in the Report view. The table is a spreadsheet shown on the page of the first view; running it again on the same views refreshes it. Lengths and angles take the decimal separator of the FreeCAD language (45,0 <80 in Spanish). Select the views, or click the button and then a view; Esc cancels.
• Length (BOM, Cut List and its stock bars, Piece Table): the length of a piece is its longest side along its axis, the one a tape measures to cut it, not the tip-to-tip extent. Square ends and cuts converging (\_/) keep their length; a parallelogram cut 12°/12° on a 40x40 tube is 40 × tan 12° = 8.5 mm shorter than before, the length of its sides. A round tube or bar, with no straight side, keeps its tip-to-tip length. A document saved before opens with the new length of every piece (profiles, trimmed profiles, cutouts and drill holes) at once, without editing or recomputing them; a BOM, Cut List or Piece Table already in the document keeps the numbers it was made with until it is made or refreshed again.

Fixes

• Trimmed profiles and cutouts of a custom profile inside a Part no longer make FreeCAD report "links are out of scope" on every recompute: they link the library section from anywhere, as the profile does. Documents saved before, profiles included, open with the new link; a link that cannot be turned is named in the Report view.
• Parametric lines saved by older versions can be deleted after opening without crashing FreeCAD.
• Create Balloons and Refresh Balloons are enabled whenever a document is open. Select a TechDraw view, or click the button and then a view; Esc cancels. Before, Create Balloons stayed disabled until a view and pieces were both selected, without telling why.
• Create Balloons marks every piece of the view, or only the pieces selected with it, and skips the pieces that already have a balloon in that view: running it again creates no duplicates.
• Create Balloons accepts a standalone TechDraw view, not only a view of a projection group.
• Create Balloons: a piece without ID gets no balloon; the status bar counts them and the Report view names them, so they can be numbered with Populate IDs. The bubble sits 20 mm from its arrow on the paper at any view scale; at a small scale it lay on the arrow.
• Refresh Balloons refreshes the selected balloons or every balloon of a view, reports how many it refreshed, and skips the ones whose piece was deleted.
• Create Balloons puts the balloons on the page of the view, even when a detail view of it sits on another page.
• Create Balloons / Refresh Balloons: a click on a detail view, which gets no balloons, says so in the status bar and waits for another view. A failure leaves the document unchanged, with no Undo step, and shows its reason in the status bar and the Report view instead of the click prompt.
• Drill Hole / Cutout: a hole or cutout on a profile trimmed against profiles of other Parts (for example a back rest profile on a parametric line between two side frames) no longer moves every profile of those Parts into its own Part. The hole or cutout joins its profile's Part before it links to the profile. With a face and a sketch selected, Cutout puts the sketch and the cutout in the profile's nearest Part or folder, not the outermost Part, and leaves a sketch already there in place.
• Extend / Cut: a piece cut against a face of a mitered profile (or any trimmed piece) follows the frame when the base sketch changes size, for example a slat between the sides of a table whose width and length come from a VarSet. FreeCAD lost the name of that face ("?Face2") and the trim stopped with "the target face ?Face2 ... is not planar", keeping its old shape. The trim now finds its face again, the one at the same place on its profile (same side, same distance from the axis), links it again by its new name, and ends on it; the Length follows. The same holds when FreeCAD gives the name to another face of the piece (the outer face of the side, when the frame shrinks): the trim keeps the face it was placed on. Documents saved before do it too, from the first change after opening, and so does a trim deleted and brought back with Undo. When no face of the target is there any more (for example a larger section), it fails as before, naming the target.

Contributors

• @c0n5t: Russian translation (#130).

MaxProFrame 1.11.1

Improvements

• Cut List: stock bars of one material cut alike (the same rows, in any order) take one block. Its title ends with the number of bars (×2 bars, ×2 barras in Spanish) and the Stock column lists their indexes (0, 2), so the list is shorter and the bars can be cut in one batch. The Stock statistics still count every bar.
• BOM / Cut List: the numbers written in a text, the stock bar titles (used, left) and the angles, take the decimal separator of the FreeCAD language: usado = 1442,0 and 45,0 <80 with FreeCAD in Spanish, used = 1442.0 and 45.0 <80 in English. Before, they always had a point, while the lengths showed a comma in Spanish. Lengths, weights, prices and the Stock statistics stay numbers.

Fixes

• Drill Hole: changing the anchor of the profile (Anchor X / Anchor Y in Edit Profile) moves its section, and the holes now move with it. They kept the old place of the section, so some or all of them fell off the piece, with "The reference vertex changed". Holes saved before take the anchor their profile is saved with, read when the document opens, so the first anchor change moves them too.
• Reset IDs: a selection with a link that Populate IDs never numbered stopped with an error halfway, inside an unfinished Undo step. The link is skipped and the other IDs are cleared and reported.
• BOM: with Group Profiles / Links unchecked and Include Links checked, a plain Part or PartDesign object in the selection stopped the BOM with an error. It is listed without ID.
• BOM: a grouped row lists its IDs in the order of the pieces, the same every time. The order changed from one BOM to the next.
• Drill Hole: a hole drilled on another hole no longer fails with "Invalid shape name ?Face3" after an edit of the profile (shorter, beveled, another size). FreeCAD loses track of the face of the first hole and names it "?Face3"; the hole now finds its face again where it was placed, and warns as usual when the corner it is measured from is gone.

MaxProFrame 1.11.0

Improvements

• Reset IDs asks before clearing, with the number of IDs it will clear, and reports what it cleared: the count in the status bar and each piece with its old ID in the Report view. Undo (Ctrl+Z) restores them. A selection without IDs is left alone, with a message. Before, it cleared at once and showed nothing.
• BOM / Cut List: every cut angle tells the face of the profile it is seen on: 45.0 <80 on a 80x40 tube means the 45° run across the 80 mm faces; a compound cut gives both, 45.0 <80 + 10.0 <40. The angles are read on the finished piece, so a bevel, an End Miter, an Extend / Cut or a cutout give the same text, inside a Part too. CutAngle1 is the start of the profile (the Bevel A side) and CutAngle2 its end, also for a trimmed end, which always went to CutAngle2. An end that is not one flat cut (Notch) keeps its "@" / "P" marks.
• BOM / Cut List: a new Ends column shows how both ends sit: \_/ (trapezoid), /_/ (parallelogram) or |_/ (one end square).
• Cut List: identical pieces of one stock bar (same ID, length, angles and ends) take one row with their Quantity, instead of one row each (pieces without ID keep one row each).
• Cut List: a piece turned end for end shares the row of the same piece: the Cut List prints the larger angle first, in CutAngle1. The BOM keeps CutAngle1 at the start of the profile.
• BOM / Cut List: the column titles, section titles and legends follow the FreeCAD language, with a Spanish translation, and so does the Create BOM panel. The marks, IDs, lengths and angles are not translated.

Fixes

• BOM / Cut List: the legends list the marks that are printed. The Cut List legend explained "~" while the angles of a TrimmedProfile are printed with "@", and both legends listed "-", which was never printed.

MaxProFrame 1.10.5

Fixes

• Populate IDs: OK refuses a prefix that ends in " x" when its IDs use numbers, with a message in the panel. "P x" + "3" read back as P with a count of 3, so the 3 was not reserved and the next OK gave it again.

MaxProFrame 1.10.4

Fixes

• Cutout / Hole: a count of the Pattern driven by an expression that gives 0 (for example a VarSet set to 0 for now) opens the panel with the Pattern checked. It opened unchecked, and the next change or OK removed the expression.
• Cutout / Hole: a value changed while OK recomputes the cutout is kept, in the same Undo step, without a recompute inside another.
• Populate IDs: Fill when available (inside selection) numbers an already numbered selection from 1 again (1, 2, 3 stay 1, 2, 3). It moved them past their own IDs (4, 5, 6).
• Populate IDs: the first number starts at 1 and cannot be 0, which made OK fail. An empty first letter is refused with a message in the panel instead of an error, and the field takes letters only.
• Populate IDs panel is translated: title, options and lists follow the FreeCAD language.
• Populate IDs: Keep existing IDs replaces Reset existing selection numbering: pieces that already have an ID keep it and only the others are numbered. Before, every selected piece was numbered again, checked or not.
• Populate IDs: Group profiles ID if identical compares the finished solid of each piece, wherever it is placed. Two bars of the same length with holes in different places got the same ID, and a bar turned end for end (its cutting angles swapped) got another ID. A piece and its mirror image still share an ID.
• Populate IDs: Include Part count in PID counts every piece of the document left with the ID, also the ones outside the selection, which get the new count. It counted the selected pieces only, so two pieces with one ID could show different counts.
• Populate IDs: the Profiles Prefix and Links Prefix fields work and are remembered ("P-" gives P-1, P-2): gaps and the next ID are looked for among the IDs with that prefix. They were disabled and did nothing.

MaxProFrame 1.10.3

Fixes

• Notch sees the target and the profile where they really are in the document: a profile or a target inside a placed Part is no longer cut where the target would be without its Part placement. The gap, Keep end and Flip side follow the real target too.
• Extend / Cut and Notch follow a moved Part: changing the placement of a Part that holds the trimmed profile or its target (but not both) now recomputes the trim at the next recompute, without editing it, Undo and Redo of the move included. A Part placed by an expression no longer leaves its trims to recompute again at every recompute.
• Extend / Cut reads the plane of a flat NURBS target face the right way round whatever its surface parameters: a face whose parameters start past zero no longer makes the profile end on the far side of the target.

MaxProFrame 1.10.2

Fixes

• Extend / Cut sees the target and the profiles where they really are in the document: a profile or a target inside a placed Part no longer ends offset from the target face (or fails in a rotated Part). Nested Parts add up. An existing Extend / Cut across Parts placed differently moves, at its next recompute, to end on its target.
• Extend / Cut takes any flat face as target, also a flat face of a NURBS solid; only a click inside a sketch is refused, not a flat face of another 2D object. The panel tells a profile parallel to the target where it really is, as the recompute does.