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 under the bar, edited with a double click and deleted with the bar; older documents open unchanged. Fingers are its first Kind; hooks, clips, a tab and slot for a T joint or a key across a miter may follow. The new texts are in Spanish; in Russian they show in English until they are translated. See the tutorial.
• Extend a Folded Bar: a Folded Bar can take more tubes after it is made. While editing it (double-click), a click in the 3D view on a tube that meets its first or its last tube adds it at that end, before the first tube or after the last one; a tube that meets both ends closes the frame, with the open corner where it meets the first tube. The corners already there keep their Folded Corner objects, their values and their Interlocks, and a new corner starts with the values last set. OK keeps the change in one Undo step; Cancel puts the bar back and shows the added tube again. In the panel of a new bar, a click on an existing Folded Bar extends that bar instead of making a second one: the panel closes and that bar opens for editing with the tubes already listed that meet one of its ends, in any order. A tube folds into one bar only: the panel of a new bar no longer lists a tube that another Folded Bar folds. Before, those clicks were ignored without a word; now the panel says why it takes nothing, for example "Profile004 meets neither end of the bar.", "Profile004 is folded by FoldedBar001: a tube folds into one bar only.", "FoldedBar001 is another Folded Bar: a tube folds into one bar only." or "FoldedBar is a closed frame: it takes no more tubes.", and OK stays as it was. The new texts are in Spanish; in Russian they show in English until they are translated. See the tutorial.

Fixes

• Stepped joint: the clearance now opens the step faces by all of it, like the ends; they only got half.
• Language change: the Create Miter Ends, Cutout / Hole, Populate IDs, BOM and Create Profile / Edit Profile panels kept showing their English form texts after FreeCAD applied a language (in the Preferences, or a language switch delivered while the panel was open), over the translated texts and over what the panel showed (the edit title, the clicked face); they now keep what they show, like Extend / Cut.
• Stepped open corner: the holes, cutouts and notches made on the two end tubes of the bar stay when they are inside the joint or touch it; only the End Miter of those ends is replaced. A cut close to an open corner at a sharp angle was lost.
• Stepped open corner: an end tube too short for the joint, which then reaches into what the folded corner at its other end cuts, is refused naming the tube, "Profile003 is too short for the stepped joint of the open corner.", like the other "too short" messages: the Folded Bar panel shows it and keeps OK disabled. Nothing checked it before. The new text is in Spanish; in Russian it shows in English until it is translated.
• Cutout / Hole: the prompt, the "Select a planar face ..." message and the tooltip name the Folded Bar, which Cutout / Hole accepts, as Drill Hole does: "Click a planar face of a profile, a trimmed profile, a cutout or a folded bar.". Drill Hole says "Select a planar face of a profile, a trimmed profile, a cutout or a folded bar." too. The new texts are in Spanish and Russian.
• Decimal separator: the lengths written in a text (the corner list and the Tube line of the Folded Bar panel, the gap and the pitch of Profile Pattern, the overlap warnings of Drill Hole) take the decimal separator of the FreeCAD language, as the number fields do: holgura 0,5 mm in Spanish. They always had a point.
• Folded Bar: deleting a miter, trim, cutout or hole made on one of its tubes, or undoing it, could take that tube out of the bar, for example an Undo after a recompute of the document. The bar now keeps the tubes it is made from and folds that tube again without the cut; deleting the tube itself still takes it out. Bars saved before get their tubes when the document opens, with the same shape. The new property text is in Spanish; in Russian it shows in English until it is translated.
• Create Miter Ends, Extend / Cut, Notch: a whole Folded Bar selected in the tree, before the command or while the panel is open, stayed selected without giving its tubes; it now adds the tubes at its two free ends as profiles. A closed frame has no free end: the panel says "FoldedBar is closed: click its tubes to add them.". As the target of Extend / Cut or Notch the whole bar is refused with "Click a face of the folded bar." instead of "Click a straight part of the folded bar.". The new texts are in Spanish and Russian. See the tutorial.
• Folded Bar: typing in a corner field while the preview was recomputing could freeze FreeCAD; the panel now waits for the recompute to end before checking or drawing the corners.
• Mixed values: closing a panel while a field showing Mixed values had the focus printed Internal C++ object already deleted and could crash FreeCAD.
• Dark themes: the number fields of the MaxProFrame panels show their values in light text in FreeCAD Dark; their text was black on the dark field once FreeCAD laid them out or bound them to an expression, so the fields of a selected corner looked empty. A field whose value differs between the selected items (Create Profile, Edit Profile, Folded Bar) shows only Mixed values, in every FreeCAD theme; the value used to show through under it.
• Spanish translation: it now ships once, as maxproframe_es*.qm, instead of four copies left from the FrameForge name (frameforge_es*, FrameForge_es*, MaxProFrame_es*) that FreeCAD loaded one over another; nothing changes on screen.