New Featurescript: PP Surface Text 2.0

dave_cowden

@kevin_o_toole_1
@stuart_rampy
@here

I've created a new version of Surface Text ( v2.1.5 ) that includes ability to use expressions. Thanks @kevin_o_toole_1
for the pointers on the syntax, that definitely saved time!

The test case in the new version is pictured below ( it uses Kevin's suggested expression)



Document Link:  https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cfec40e2b66bb4ddb2f3414b

dave_cowden

konstantin_shiriazdanov after a long time, (and another reminder from the community), i finally implemented your suggested edits to this feature. Sorry it too so long!

MBartlett21

ilya_baran said:
One thing I'd like at some point is for the user of a feature to be able to replace a parameter like a boolean, string, or enum (or even the suppression state) with an expression.

I would really like this.
Should I create an Improvement Request?

phillip_sabolta

Hi @dave_cowden I just stumbled across this handy tool. It has made my life so much easier. Thank you. 
However, it doesn't recognise Japanese font.. which Onshape does, under Noto Sans Japanese.

Is there an easy way to add it to the list under fontface library?

jmsaltzman

Wow @dave_cowden thank you for this! The string expression can be fiddly, so I just make another variable with an "any" type value first to form the string. Anyway, much appreciated!

dave_cowden

@jmsaltzman
You are welcome, thank you for taking the time to comment! Eventually i'll make a new version with various improvements folks have asked for, but I'm glad the current version is helpful!

thomas_aa

Thanks for the great script @dave_cowden !

I have run into a problem: When I used "Raised Add", the part I add to gets renamed to "Part 1". Also, children break (I'm making an inverted mold) every time I change the text. I think this can be resolved by having the target as the first element in the add/union list. At least it works that way for the Union tool.

I tried to make a test, but I think the code that actually does this is in the PP_Text_Libraries text.fs, which is not public or I mangled the URL trying to open it.

edit. For anyone with the same problem, my workaround was to us "Raise New" and then do a 0.1mm extrude from the surface into my part to be able to use "Merge with all" to union all the letters with the part.

edit2. It turns out that Raise New failed to handle my text when it is "5", but works fine for "25" :S. It worked fine for raised add. It seems that I always need at least 2 letters for Raise New.

edit3. Work around for the Raise New problem: Do a new on a throw-away part that is then "Merge with all"-merged with my real part. So:

 * Extrude a small throw-away part into my part.

 * Text with Raise Add on the throw-away part.

 * Extrude into my original part and use "Merge with all" to merge the throw-away part with the original part.

otaolafr

Hello,
I am having an issue with using variables in the feature, I want to add 1 mm (the variable is for example #d=1 mm)
the issue is if i say that it is an expression and use #d I get 0.001 m (when i would like to be displayed in mm)
I tried: (#d/1mm)~"mm" but now i get "1 milimeter" obviously I was looking to have a small text length so not the best solution.

mahir

@dave_cowden, I can confirm the behavior @Otaola_Franco is seeing. Work around is to use the syntax below.

#Test / m * 1000  ~ " " ~ "mm"

dave_cowden

@Otaola_Franco
@mahir thanks for the heads up/workaround.  I'm glad this thread is here, whenever i do a new version, i can gather up all of the little things and make it nicer. 

Now if somehow OS made it possible for me to make even a little amount of money on FS development.......    

mahir

@dave_cowden I feel you. I've created a handful of FS and who knows how many SW macros. In both cases sharing code is easy enough, but monetization doesn't work well unless it's an addin/API based prospect.

MBartlett21

Otaola_Franco said:

Hello,
I am having an issue with using variables in the feature, I want to add 1 mm (the variable is for example #d=1 mm)
the issue is if i say that it is an expression and use #d I get 0.001 m (when i would like to be displayed in mm)
I tried: (#d/1mm)~"mm" but now i get "1 milimeter" obviously I was looking to have a small text length so not the best solution.

The reason this doesn't work is because #d/1 is evaluated first, then multiplied by a millimeter.
If you just use (#d / mm) ~ " mm" that should work

mahir

MBartlett21 said:

The reason this doesn't work is because #d/1 is evaluated first, then multiplied by a millimeter.
If you just use (#d / mm) ~ " mm" that should work

I tried this first. Two things happen. First, it converts the number into scientific notation, dividing by 1000 in the process "1E-6". Next, adding " mm" instead of " " ~ "mm" causes the unit to display as "millimeter" for some reason. There's all sorts of weirdness. Not sure if it's a bug in how expressions are parsed by FS, but it sure seems buggy.

otaolafr

mahir said:

@dave_cowden, I can confirm the behavior @Otaola_Franco is seeing. Work around is to use the syntax below.

#Test / m * 1000  ~ " " ~ "mm"

thanks! it worked, i dont get exatly why this happens but thanks a lot!
@MBartlett21
as @mahir said if we use directly (#d / mm) ~ " mm" as I mentioned in the first post, you get the "correct" value (I mean the variable in mm) but it shows milimiters instead of mm.
@dave_cowden I cant imagine how much time have you spend in this FS.... as mahir mentioned i do not think at all that is an issue with the FS itself, I think is more of an bug. nothing to correct in your code, it is great .  thanks a lot for you great work! (right now I use your thread creator and the surface text at least that i can remember, they are great FS!) thanks a lot!

 

Cache_River_Mill

@dave_cowden

Thank you for this! 

There are so many good things about this feature. After using it for a while, there are only two improvements I would request:

- When using the option "Raise Add", the feature takes an existing part and adds it to the letters making it a new part, loosing its id and breaking features to follow. A solution to this would be to select the part you want to add to, and have the feature add the letters to that part instead of adding the part to the letters.

- The text height is not a consistent number when set to one. For example, set the text to center, and text height to 1 inch. The font size will change and adjust to measure what you have typed. A very neat and useful, but could cause problems if you aren't aware it is happening and all of your different text are different font sizes.



Awesome feature! We really appreciate this great tool.

aleks_clark

@dave_cowden this is awesome, and I'd throw some money at you for this sort of quality of life improvement. could you possibly set up a patreon, and find a way to share your stuff only with patreon subscribers?

sebastian_glanzner

@aleks_clark
Good idea I would also think that something like pareon could be a good solution for @dave_cowdenand other FeatureScript creators.


Maybe with different tiers:

Basic $:
You get access to the newest versions of the FeatureScripts.

Medium $$:
You can request improvements for the Basic FeatureScripts.

Premium $$$:
You get customized FeatureScripts based on the Basic scripts available.

dave_cowden

@aleks_clark @sebastian_glanzner thank you all for the kind words about these FS!

Limiting access has been the problem for the most part. Onshape just hasn't made it easy to do it.  It would be possible to manually share new features with certain individuals, but there is no way to limit their ability to share further. Version management becomes hard too.

I have a few other projects right now, but I will consider setting up a patreon, and ill do a few tests to see how far I could get with manual sharing. At the very least I could honor feature requests only for supporters!

Thanks again everyone for your ideas and support!

john_doubleday

Looks like a great script but how does one control the Kerning?......letter spacing right?
 I am using it to make cut out lettering for a Metal work challenge in an Australian high school. Thanks for a great tool

otaolafr

hello @dave_cowden
second time in a row! ehehe, first of all, thanks for another great feature,
secondly, the other day I found myself with a "bug" in the surface text FS? I was using a variable value concatenate with text and when I was puting "1.3 mm" as value surface text showed "1.30000000000000000000000002 mm" I got around by cutting decimals but not sure why there was a problem as for other values worked correctly, E.G for "1.315 mm" it showed "1.315 mm".
thirdly ^^, I am offering to make custom icons for the FS of people that I use as I love the idea of helping with what I can....
i thought of something like this for the surface text (but it is quiet hard to imagine something for it to "visualise" the function...) If you want I could send you the svg file and also if you want modification i could do it with pleasure  
 the surface looks a little bit as a leaf ahahaha

dave_cowden

@Otaola_Franco I love it. Your design skills far surpass mine! that's why i didnt even _try_ to make an icon.
How do you add an icon? i dont even know how to do it.

Alex_Kempen

Info on adding custom icons can be found here. It looks to me like @Otaola_Franco is having a rounding error, which could possibly be fixed by switching the text FS to using roundToPrecision to output numbers, unless I'm misdiagnosing the issue.

otaolafr

Alex_Kempen said:

Info on adding custom icons can be found here. It looks to me like @Otaola_Franco is having a rounding error, which could possibly be fixed by switching the text FS to using roundToPrecision to output numbers, unless I'm misdiagnosing the issue.

hello @Alex_Kempen
yes exactly, it was that way i solve it, thanks to god, i was working in a fs and came across this function, but what was intriging me it was that the behavior was not the same for different values.... as you mention I solvid with roundToPrecision, but what was strange that for 2 different values I got different answers. also the roundToPrecision is not a perfect solution, as I dont know the decimals that could change the rounding number in the function will round differently, and for example if in the case of 1.3155 mm i put roundToPrecision(#variable,3) i will get  1.3155 (as the number of decimals will change..)
@dave_cowden you are way more experiene than me with onshape FS so you might get everything from the doc alex linked but when I was doing it myself I couldnt finish to understand it, here is explained a little bit easier and better in my opinion https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/2499/importing-part-studios-and-feature-studios (septs 1. to 3.)
also another issue with the FS is that it changes the id of the part? at least I think is doing that as when editing the text in the feature sometimes broke the features applied to the part down the line. I think it could come from the boolean operation type UNION at the end where the first element is not the original body so sometimes it changes as the resulting body saves another ids? I think.... not sure.... 

dave_cowden

Ah ok thanks for the 🔗 I'll try to work the roundtoprecision and icon into my next feature version.

tgunr

How do you select the baseline? I have tried everything I can think of and it always remains blank. In the example on a flat surface which  has the "Change Me" text, I deleted the baseline which was the edge of an extrude. I could never get it back.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/a2d4cd65d4fdb270b80e0727/w/ede8a4fc2867490d73f0d14a/e/44b979dcb4aec81089858ce1

MichaelPascoe

@tgunr

Try something like this:

• Hide all sketches, the base surface works best when it is the actual surface of the part.
• Then, select the base line you wanted. Make sure the base line input box is active by clicking on it then selecting your base line.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/8142c7e1306198a02e50c833/w/61bb5e8d797f3e0e6a48b472/e/087e961a785f1a7575907d3f

kevin_mason558

Good afternoon
i can't seem to work out the cut out feature 

I've added text to the surface of a sheet metal lid 
add new works  but cut out doesn't  
I've ended up doing extrude, remove through the new letters and the surface disc 
but the cutout would a lot easier 

any suggestions on what I may have done wrong please? Thanks 

dave_cowden

@kevin_mason558 those look cool! Hey, yeah i think something has happened in FS core land that has broken this, because test cases that used to work no longer work for cut.  Its not always broken, but several cases that used to work do not, so its not something obvious you are doing wrong!

ilya_baran

@dave_cowden Would you mind sharing those cases with support and pointing us to them?  Thanks!

dave_cowden

@ilya_baran great to hear from you after such a long time!
In this document: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cfec40e2b66bb4ddb2f3414b/w/24132f252a02825eb0606641/e/1ac9d45620418b8d1e3154f5
"Surface Text 1" fails but worked previously i think.

One such example is instance #2 of of this tab

In fact, in this document, i'm fairly sure than any examples using "cut out" used to work, but don't.

I fiddled a bit with depth of text and a few other things, and nothing obvious materialized. 

I should point out that its actually very stunning that these have worked this long-- ive not done anything to upgrade them, and i'm shocked to learn that some of these are 8 years old now!  So, even if these finally did break, that's a very impressive track record of resverse compatibility!