Line drawing function/de

Diese Seite zeigt, wie einfach erweiterte Funktionalität in Python gebaut werden kann. In dieser Übung werden wir ein neues Werkzeug bauen, das eine Linie zeichnet. Dieses Werkzeug kann dann mit einem FreeCAD Befehl verknüpft werden, und dieser Befehl kann von jedem Element der Schnittstelle, wie z.B. einem Menüpunkt oder einer Schaltfläche in der Werkzeugleiste, aufgerufen werden.

Das Hauptskript
Zuerst werden wir ein Skript schreiben, das unsere gesamte Funktionalität enthält. Dann werden wir dieses in einer Datei speichern und in FreeCAD importieren, so dass alle von uns geschriebenen Klassen und Funktionen in FreeCAD zur Verfügung stehen. Starte also deinen bevorzugten Texteditor und gib die folgenden Zeilen ein:

Detaillierte Erklärung
Wenn Du in Python Funktionen aus einem anderen Modul verwenden willst, musst Du es importieren. In unserem Fall benötigen wir Funktionen aus dem Part-Modul, um die Linie zu erstellen, und aus dem Gui Modul (FreeCADGui), um auf die 3D Ansicht zuzugreifen. Außerdem benötigen wir den kompletten Inhalt der Coin Bibliothek, damit wir alle Coin Objekte wie SoMouseButtonEvent, etc. direkt verwenden können.

Hier definieren wir unsere Hauptklasse. Warum verwenden wir eine Klasse und keine Funktion? Der Grund dafür ist, dass wir unser Werkzeug "am Leben" halten müssen, während wir darauf warten, dass der Benutzer auf den Bildschirm klickt. Eine Funktion endet, wenn ihre Aufgabe erledigt ist, aber ein Objekt (eine Klasse definiert ein Objekt) bleibt am Leben, bis es zerstört wird.

In Python kann jede Klasse oder Funktion einen Dokumentationszeichenkette (docstring) haben. Dies ist besonders in FreeCAD nützlich, denn wenn du diese Klasse im Interpreter aufrufst, wird der Beschreibungszeichenkette als Tooltip angezeigt.

Python Klassen können immer eine __init__-Funktion enthalten, die beim Aufruf der Klasse zur Erzeugung eines Objekts ausgeführt wird. Wir werden hier also alles ablegen, was sich ereignen soll, wenn unser Linienwerkzeug beginnt.

In einer Klasse möchte man normalerweise self. vor einem Variablennamen anhängen, damit sie für alle Funktionen innerhalb und außerhalb dieser Klasse leicht zugänglich ist. Hier werden wir self.view verwenden, um auf die aktive 3D Ansicht zuzugreifen und sie zu verändern.

Hier erstellen wir eine leere Liste, die die von der Getpoint Funktion gesendeten 3D Punkte enthält.

Das ist der wichtige Teil: Da es sich eigentlich um eine coin3D Szene handelt, verwendet FreeCAD einen Coin Rückruf Mechanismus, der es erlaubt, eine Funktion jedes Mal aufzurufen, wenn ein bestimmtes Szene Ereignis eintritt. In unserem Fall erstellen wir einen Rückruf für SoMouseButtonEvent Ereignisse, und wir binden ihn an die getpoint Funktion. Nun wird jedes Mal, wenn eine Maustaste gedrückt oder losgelassen wird, die getpoint Funktion ausgeführt.

Note that there is also an alternative to addEventCallbackPivy called addEventCallback which dispenses the use of pivy. But since pivy is a very efficient and natural way to access any part of the coin scene, it is much better to use it as much as you can!

Now we define the getpoint function, that will be executed when a mouse button is pressed in a 3D view. This function will receive an argument, that we will call event_cb. From this event callback we can access the event object, which contains several pieces of information (mode info here).

The getpoint function will be called when a mouse button is pressed or released. But we want to pick a 3D point only when pressed (otherwise we would get two 3D points very close to each other). So we must check for that here.

Here we get the screen coordinates of the mouse cursor

This function gives us a FreeCAD vector (x,y,z) containing the 3D point that lies on the focal plane, just under our mouse cursor. If you are in camera view, imagine a ray coming from the camera, passing through the mouse cursor, and hitting the focal plane. There is our 3D point. If we are in orthogonal view, the ray is parallel to the view direction.

We add our new point to the stack

Do we have enough points already? if yes, then let's draw the line!

Here we use the function Line from the Part Module that creates a line from two FreeCAD vectors. Everything we create and modify inside the Part module, stays in the Part module. So, until now, we created a Line Part. It is not bound to any object of our active document, so nothing appears on the screen.

The FreeCAD document can only accept shapes from the Part module. Shapes are the most generic type of the Part module. So, we must convert our line to a shape before adding it to the document.

The Part module has a very handy show function that creates a new object in the document and binds a shape to it. We could also have created a new object in the document first, then bound the shape to it manually.

Since we are done with our line, let's remove the callback mechanism, that consumes precious CPU cycles.

Testing & Using the script
Now, let's save our script to some place where the FreeCAD python interpreter will find it. When importing modules, the interpreter will look in the following places: the python installation paths, the FreeCAD bin directory, and all FreeCAD modules directories. So, the best solution is to create a new directory in one of the FreeCAD Mod directories, and to save our script in it. For example, let's make a "MyScripts" directory, and save our script as "exercise.py".

Now, everything is ready, let's start FreeCAD, create a new document, and, in the python interpreter, issue:

If no error message appear, that means our exercise script has been loaded. We can now check its contents with:

The command dir is a built-in python command that lists the contents of a module. We can see that our line class is there, waiting for us. Now let's test it:

Then, click two times in the 3D view, and bingo, here is our line! To do it again, just type exercise.line again, and again, and again... Feels great, no?

Registering the script in the FreeCAD interface
Now, for our new line tool to be really cool, it should have a button on the interface, so we don't need to type all that stuff everytime. The easiest way is to transform our new MyScripts directory into a full FreeCAD workbench. It is easy, all that is needed is to put a file called InitGui.py inside your MyScripts directory. The InitGui.py will contain the instructions to create a new workbench, and add our new tool to it. Besides that we will also need to transform a bit our exercise code, so the line tool is recognized as an official FreeCAD command. Let's start by making an InitGui.py file, and write the following code in it:

By now, you should already understand the above script by yourself, I think: We create a new class that we call MyWorkbench, we give it a title (MenuText), and we define an Initialize function that will be executed when the workbench is loaded into FreeCAD. In that function, we load in the contents of our exercise file, and append the FreeCAD commands found inside to a command list. Then, we make a toolbar called "My Scripts" and we assign our commands list to it. Currently, of course, we have only one tool, so our command list contains only one element. Then, once our workbench is ready, we add it to the main interface.

But this still won't work, because a FreeCAD command must be formatted in a certain way to work. So we will need to transform a bit our line tool. Our new exercise.py script will now look like this:

What we did here is transform our __init__ function into an Activated function, because when FreeCAD commands are run, they automatically execute the Activated function. We also added a GetResources function, that informs FreeCAD where it can find an icon for the tool, and what will be the name and tooltip of our tool. Any jpg, png or svg image will work as an icon, it can be any size, but it is best to use a size that is close to the final aspect, like 16x16, 24x24 or 32x32. Then, we add the line class as an official FreeCAD command with the addCommand method.

That's it, we now just need to restart FreeCAD and we'll have a nice new workbench with our brand new line tool!

So you want more?
If you liked this exercise, why not try to improve this little tool? There are many things that can be done, like for example: Don't hesitate to write your questions or ideas on the forum!
 * Add user feedback: until now we did a very bare tool, the user might be a bit lost when using it. So we could add some feedback, telling him what to do next. For example, you could issue messages to the FreeCAD console. Have a look in the FreeCAD.Console module
 * Add a possibility to type the 3D points coordinates manually. Look at the python input function, for example
 * Add the possibility to add more than 2 points
 * Add events for other things: Now we just check for Mouse button events, what if we would also do something when the mouse is moved, like displaying current coordinates?
 * Give a name to the created object