FreeCADWasmDev/docs/current/PART_HELIX_SPIRAL_PROGRESS.md

Helix and Spiral Primitive Progress

Continuation: manual placement and rotation now implements the position/axis-angle controls with native transaction and persistence evidence. The remaining container and desktop task interactions are listed there; do not repeat the manual placement or type-creation work below.

Updated 2026-09-17. Requirement Part:desktop:Part_Primitives remains incomplete. This increment covers the two previously missing native curve types only. It does not revalidate the previously exercised fourteen primitive types or IFC.

Implementation

• The native setPrimitive route now creates and edits Part::Helix and Part::Spiral, preserving their native properties, OCCT curves, transactions, unique object names and FCStd serialization. The task panel now lists all sixteen desktop primitive types.
• Helix exposes Pitch, Height, Radius, taper Angle and the LocalCoord enum as a handedness menu. New objects receive Style=1, matching the desktop creator; editing an existing object preserves its style. Spiral exposes Growth, Radius and fractional Rotations. The task's 1000-rotation limit matches the desktop control. Native guards reject invalid pitch, excessive helix turns, degenerate curves, invalid handedness and a taper crossing the axis.
• Enum serialization is explicit; it is not treated as a floating point field. Facade and native callers both validate before changing the document.
• Visual inspection found that the existing whole-edge deflection sampler skipped complete turns of a planar spiral. Native topology and length were correct but the displayed line showed only the final quarter turn. For the two spiral feature types, sampling now seeds quarter-turn intervals before calling OCCT's deflection algorithm. It retains the actual native curve and its placement. The acceptance helper now checks rendered polyline length and unwrapped winding in addition to native analytic geometry and pixels.

Desktop references: DlgPrimitives.cpp HelixPrimitive::create and SpiralPrimitive::create; PrimitiveFeature.cpp Helix/Spiral constructors and execute methods; TopoShape.cpp makeSpiralHelix; DlgPrimitives.ui rotation control. All sources were already available locally.

Focused Evidence

tools/part-helix-spiral-business-cases.mjs is now the active primitive increment in tools/part-primitive-business-cases.mjs. Earlier helpers remain on disk, but are not invoked. One native runtime and one browser are loaded for the two new types together.

Command:

python3 tools/run_business_acceptance.py --module Part --ids Part:desktop:Part_Primitives --reuse

Final evidence: docs/current/business-evidence/13fb362e5bcf598a7f1f90a6-20260917T092342683238.json. Duration: 12.766 seconds. All 13 new scenario groups completed without an assertion error. The helper deliberately returns not_implemented, and the runner returns acceptance_incomplete, passed=0, because the complete command still has the interaction gaps below. Scenario groups are not requirements.

Covered in this increment: analytic curve length, endpoints, left/right handedness, positive and negative taper, zero start radius, fractional turns, rendered winding/length, creation and editing history, duplicate names, second-document isolation, invalid native/facade input rollback, FCStd reopen and further editing, browser OPFS reload, enum undo/redo, canvas orbit, and 1440x900/390x844 layout and pixel checks. Desktop and mobile images were visually inspected after the sampling repair.

Detailed result and screenshots: docs/current/part-helix-spiral-business/2026-09-17T09-23-30-232Z/.

The earlier 20260917T091832233789 report completed weaker assertions but its Spiral images revealed missing turns. It is preserved as diagnostic history; use the final report above for this increment. Reexecution occurred only after fixing the newly discovered rendering defect and strengthening its assertions.

Native DocumentProbe build, TypeScript checking, production Vite build, and scoped native whitespace checks completed. Existing server: http://127.0.0.1:5180/workbench.html?module=Part&command=Part_Primitives.

Next Gaps

Do not recreate or replay Plane, Box, Cylinder, Cone, Sphere, Torus, Ellipsoid, Prism, RegularPolygon, Circle, Ellipse, Line, Vertex, Wedge, Helix or Spiral type-creation cases unchanged. The previous six-type work is documented in PART_ADDITIONAL_PRIMITIVES_PROGRESS.md; Wedge evidence is in part-wedge-business/2026-09-17T09-02-54-877Z/result.json.

Implement and add only new scenarios for:

1. Placement/orientation controls and active-container membership, including native history and persistence. Consult the common DlgPrimitives placement and active-part creation code before extending the task.
2. Cylinder skew controls and circle-from-three-points interaction.
3. Any remaining full desktop task-lifecycle semantics identified from those source paths. Current type availability is not full command acceptance.

The other selected requirement, Part_ProjectionOnSurface, is being developed by the existing unattended service. This increment does not claim its linked projection, preview transaction or selection-gate behavior is complete. All original 1507 requirements and the supplemental IFC requirement remain.