Properties for 3D printing options.

[isfwdf]

Hi, I had transition my workflows to FreeCAD from proprietary sw and this wb was one of the greatest step stone for this, so thanks to you first of all.

I became accustomed to FreeCAD properties that allows to quickly make needed changes per object, with many fasteners parameters too, but not with 3D printing scalings and I'm not see why exactly that's the case

I making many 3D printing parts for my job, and I aware of global thread generation option in wb, which allows to give needed margins for FDM process. But I found myself more and more struggling with such approach.

In general my printers quite fine tuned and one of them doesn't need this scaling at all, just printing standard thread works fine, rest works with same values, but I also has big plate printer with 0.8 nozzle, which need sufficiently different settings. Also, even for same printer settings for small and big threads (eg. m4 and m30) are greatly differs.

With not so complicated project with different thread sizes (m4 tap holes for attachment, m30 threaded lead), where I need couple parts to be printed on different machines, I found current approach REALLY unpleasant. I constantly need to go in settings, turn on and off option, change scaling, generate thread, simplify it, then make cut, and so on. I also need to keep separate track on numbers used for each of that.

Also it seems for now changing this settings doesn't affect already placed fasteners, so I need to delete them and tweak all other props again.

So I'm gladly asking for this 3 settings become an object properties, this solution seems to solve all this issues.

[luzpaz]

Hard to read, can you space the paragraphs please ?

Edit: try also x-posting to the forum and reddit

[isfwdf]

thanks for paragraph mention, I'll gonna make cross post on weekends, if attention here would be low.

[shaise]

Hi, Sorry about that but I do not plan to add extra settings for each individual fastener for the following reasons:

1. This feature is not a core technical parameter of a fastener.
2. The fasteners have to many parameters already, no need to bloat it.
3. Most important: Any time I change a filament or use another 3d printer, I will have to go one by one on all fasteners to change the settings.

From my experience once I set good parameters, it works on all thread sizes. Most 3D printers have accurate XY positioning, so most of the inaccuracies are from a filament not having an accurate 1.75mm diameter. So in most cases the main parameter to tweak is the "b" parameter (offset). The scale changes should be minimal.

Regardless, I do concur that adjusting the parameters is a bit tedious now, having to go back and forth to the settings, and recomputing each fastener, So I added a quick command to access the settings and update all fasteners in one click.

[isfwdf]

I've seen couple issues about fasteners classes (thread classes) tolerances are not exactly the same as scale and offset, but might be modelled as so.

I'm also cannot agree on 3rd point, as current approach doesn't allow for usage of tables and parameters sets (I'm using this all over for things that might change). and about scale too, there's big difference between 8*1.1 and 40*1.1, with same settings big threads for me won't engage at all.

I see your points on not implementing this. I would try to hack it for personal use, really feeling need for this in my workflow, I see this as properties that would overwrite default global setting if stated. can you explain 2nd point? is it about performance of just visual clutter?

[shaise]

Clutter and file sizes. Not much of a performance issue.

[isfwdf]

okay, thanks.

Feel free to close this one if have no interest in my future tries on this. I doubt my code would be "production ready".

otherwise I'll update with what I come up someday.