Research ISO GPS / GD&T for an overall concept as implementation in FreeCAD

[maxwxyz]

Proposal description

Important

The proposal is not delivering a coded contribution, as I am far from being able to code this myself. It aims to research the standards, industry workflows and create an overall issue listing all necessary features and structure the overall project. I'm willing to help implement and test this if experienced developers are going to work on this.

Follow up attempt for #31 narrowed down only for a one of three part idea to get a 3D annotation and tolerancing (or PMI - Product Manufacturing Information) workflow into FreeCAD in compliance with ISO GPS. This proposal is the research part for creating an overall concept of such an integrated workbench capable of creating the most used ISO GPS annotations.

Deliverables

I intent to

• Researching the standards, based on the ones listed below.
• Researching industry workflows for creating PMI / 3D annotations and tolerancing in professional applications
• Coming up with an overall workflow for FreeCAD
• Structuring the project for a future implementation

Deliver

• Creating a single issue as initial overview with a bulletpoint list of all things needed for a basic functionality in FreeCAD

This could be the starting point for creating individual detailed issues for all points on that list, including UI concepts and a GitHub board to track progress.
Ideally, someone can team up for a third implementation stage in the future.

Timeline

This would take approx. 3-5 months depending on the various standards and conventions incl. best practices and industry workflows.

Risks and mitigation

This is a very broad topic which is still growing and even experts do not agree about rules and conventions on conferences about this topic, therefore not all niche features, edge cases and conditions will be possible to consider.
I intend to include the majority of features to be able to work fully compliant to ISO GPS in this overall concept, especially

• dimensional specifications incl. common modifiers and extensions for special conditions
• macrogeometrical specifications (form, orientation, location and run-out)
• surface texture specifications
• annotations
• pre-defined views, including section cuts
• compliance with STPX exchange format

The overall list and structure of such a project needs to be detailed to create individual issues / userstories to be able to be implemented. I intend to apply for a later grant of creating all those individual issues and UI concepts in the future. I hope I can work with someone experienced to implement this into FreeCAD afterwards.

Compensation

I am asking for 3.000 EUR. The FPA does not need to buy all the individual standards.
There is no need to pay upfront or for individual stages, only after completion. There is no risk for the FPA if I cannot deliver.

About you

I'm Max, @maxwxyz on GitHub, the forum and Discord. I'm not a programmer so I mainly contributed to UI/UX improvements in the past and am involved in DWG and CWG.
I am familiar with general pain points and issues users have, how to submit actionable issues due to living in the bugtracker - by day, I'm a mechanical engineer.
f you have any questions, please post them below.

[Reqrefusion]

Wow it's great that you're making this offer again. To be honest, I liked the previous offer, which was a full package, better. But I guess something like this is needed to make compensation more appropriate. I hope that your work will increase the developments in the relevant field.

[chennes]

Thank you for your grant proposal: it is now under review for the Q2 2025 grant cycle. The technical review committee will present its analysis to the FPA in two weeks, at which point the FPA vote process will begin, concluding on or before 1 July 2025, at which point funding decisions will be announced. You are welcome to modify your proposal to accommodate feedback received from the community during that time.

[yorikvanhavre]

Same opinion as before, I'm for it. It is in sync with the effort to increase standards compliance, and although this proposal includes no coding, it clears all the path for coding to be easier later on, and the very subject of sticking to standards is mostly research anyway.