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PySide and 2D tables

BOLTS has transitioned to PySide as Qt bindings and has support for 2D tables.

PySide

Because of license considerations, FreeCAD migrates from PyQt to PySide as Python bindings for Qt.

There is a long thread on the details of the transition in the FreeCAD Forums.

For BOLTS this was a bit difficult, because I want it to be compatible with all Versions of FreeCAD on all systems, but in the end it worked out. At least I hope. I do not have access to a Windows Computer, so I could not test that. If you do and run FreeCAD 0.13 or 0.14, it would be great if you could test whether the latest development snapshot works for you.

2D Tables

BOLTS needs to provide a way to express the relationship between the parameters of parts. As an example, the dimensions of the head of a hexagon head screw are determined by the diameter of the shaft.

These relationships are usually expressed by tables. For most parameters these tables are 1D, i.e. they only depend only on one other quantity. BOLTS can handle tables of this type for a long time.

However, sometimes a parameter depends on two other quantities at once. For example, the wall thickness of NPS Pipes depends both on the diameter and the schedule.

Since today, BOLTS can also handle this kind of tables. I used NPS pipes as test case while developing this feature, so they are now also contained in BOLTS.

Next steps

There are a few things left that I want to do before releasing BOLTS 0.3:

  • I want to add the possibility to share parameter relations between several classes to avoids duplication.
  • BOLTS for SolidWorks is progressing thanks to the help of Dale Dunn.
  • I need to write and improve documentation for a few features.
  • I want to add more parts to BOLTS.

So stay tuned

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