This week in FreeCAD development:

Sketcher

• matthiasdanner simplified the entry of negative numbers in constraints, which now doesn’t require pressing Enter twice (PR#30587).
• Reqrefusion added point-on-object constraint support for arcs (all types), circles, and ellipses (PR#31295).
• maxwxyz added a 400ms delay for drag autoconstraints to evaluate and show the proposal (PR#31725).

Part and PartDesign

• maxwxyz added a new Offset mode for the start position of Pad and Pocket, with an interactive start control (PR#31688 and PR#31839). He also added a MidPlane attachment mode between two planar faces (PR#31574) and removed the limitation where a PartDesign body and its BaseFeature had to live inside the exact same Part container (PR#31763, with another improvement in PR#31767).
• Syres916 fixed a bug where FreeCAD would crash when opening files with faulty geometry (PR#31812).

Assembly

• PaddleStroke added numeric editing of movements in exploded views (PR#30955): you can quickly edit them in the task panel or right-click and open the Placement dialog for advanced editing.
• slendidev added a new, Fusion-like Rigid Group joint type - a fixed joint between all selected components that makes them fixed relative to one another (PR#29605).

TechDraw

• WandererFan fixed a bug that prevented surface finish symbols from being placed precisely (PR#31635). He also fixed the display of leading signs for zero tolerance values (PR#31226).
• eleknader unhardcoded center line colors to follow user preferences for horizontal center lines and vertical center lines (PR#31847).

CAM

Numerous patches by tarman3, including but not limited to these:

• Removed the dependency of Start Depth from Step Down (PR#31282).
• Improved Helix by adding a Start Cone From Bottom property that allows processing cone helices from bottom to top (PR#30975).
• Improved Helix some more by allowing selection of the outer side of cylindrical shapes (PR#30977).
• Moved the LeadInOut logic to Generator and Extend In and Extend Out to the task panel (PR#31069).
• Improved Pocket Shape: allowed using Use Outline with edges and vertical faces and added the Close Open Paths property, which allows processing open wires and vertical faces (PR#29675).

BIM

• maxwxyz fixed several issues in the Views panel (PR#31791 and PR#31813).
• mozman fixed incorrect face orientation on IFC exports (PR#31867).
• Roy-043 added Survey to the Report Tools group in the toolbar and Unclone to the Cloning Tools group (PR#31547). He also fixed an index error for pipe T-connectors (PR#31911).

FEM

marioalexis84 added boundary conditions to magnetic 2D examples (PR#31690) and a magnetization 3D example for Elmer (PR#31856). He also made it possible to save Elmer eigen analysis as multiframes (PR#31851).

Other changes

• pieterhijma added a core feature to move properties from one object to another (PR#23841).
• maxwxyz added more mouse action hints to the hint status bar section (PR#31570). He also improved the Measure tool to use the mass property to calculate inertia around any given straight edge (PR#31157).

Additional improvements and fixes were contributed by adrianinsaval, arkadesOrg, aw-engineer, chennes, codeotaku, darkdi, davidgilkaufman, jlewin, kkchemboli, Lokestrom, marioalexis84, matthiasdanner, offbynull, oliveroxtoby, PaddleStroke, rehan-ahmed-aix, Roy-043, theosib, weslord, and wmayer.

If you are interested in testing the latest weekly build, you can grab it here.

Activity stats

PR stats: since the previous report, 77 pull requests have been merged, and 51 new pull requests have been opened.

Issue stats: overall, there are 3512 open issues in the tracker, up by 4 from last week.