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Add reports for March
- Improve C++ API documentation - Improve User Experience VarSets - OCCT liaison
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‎reports/improve-c++-api-docs/pieterhijma-2025-03.md

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## Summary of Activities - Improve C++ API Documentation - March 2025
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I have picked up this project again in March. I'm still waiting for DrLite to
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join the effort and to collaborate, but DrLite is busy with other things. I
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don't want to postpone any longer, so I'm simply moving forward, tagging DrLite
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if it is related to the other project.
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Issues/PRs:
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### Umbrella Issue: [Doc] Quality of C++ API documentation of package App is lacking
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For the work in this month, I could define concrete issues and related PRs, but
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in the next stage I will improve the documentation of various files. For that
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stage it does not make sense to create separate issues. Because of this, I
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created this umbrella issue to relate all those PRs.
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- [Issue](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/20503)
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### Old version of Doxygen
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The configuration uses an old Doxygen. This required some discussion, but
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since I'm currently the only one working on it, it makes sense to update
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doxygen to my version.
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- [Issue (closed)](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/20365)
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- [PR (merged)](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/20474)
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### Structural Doxygen warnings
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These are warnings that are not about documentation but about incorrect
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nesting, issues that prevent the documentatoin to render properly.
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- [Issue (closed)](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/20366)
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- [PR (merged)](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/20428)
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### Restructure topics/modules for App
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Topics or called modules in old versions (things that are created by the
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`group` command) are highly inconsistent in general. Solving it for all of the
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documentation is out of scope for this project, but it was solved for the `App`
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namespace.
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- [Issue (still open for anything other than `App`](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/20438)
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- [PR (merged)](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/20484)
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### CMake issues for generating documentation
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Regenerating the documentation has issues that need to be solved. The issue
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and PR need a bit of discussion but there are no real blockers for merging.
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- [issue](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/20478)
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- [pr](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/20479)
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‎reports/improve-ux-varsets/pieterhijma-2025-03.md

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## Summary of Activities - VarSet User Experience - March 2025
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This project has (finally) started at the end of this month, although I did
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some preparations in January. I wanted to start earlier, but I gave priority
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to the OCCT Liaison work.
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By the way, I noticed that I don't have an official contract for this project
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as I have for my other projects.
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### Update the project page
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I've updated the [project page](https://github.com/orgs/FreeCAD/projects/30/views/1).
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### Visibility icon for VarSet
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This is technically not limited to VarSets, but I can try to fix this anyway.
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I contributed to the discussion in [issue
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#16816](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/16816).
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Based on my suggestion there I created [PR
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20573](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/20573) as an alternative to
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Hyarion's solution, but I came to the conclusion that this implementation isn't
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satisfactory as well. I will follow up next month.
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### Units in the VarSet dialog
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Units in the editor for the value are not shown properly as reported in [issue
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#15557](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/15557).
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I've worked on this issue, but haven't been able to make it work.

‎reports/occt-liaison/pieterhijma-2025-03.md

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## Summary of Activities - OCCT Liaison - March 2025
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First of all, thank you very much to all of the community for offering me this
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position. In this and subsequent files, I will report the progress in my role
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as OCCT Liaison. This month was primarily focused on setting myself up.
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### Contact with Dmitrii: Data Exchange
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Yorik introduced me to Dmitrii Pasukhin from OCCT based on [the forum topic on
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Data Exchange (DE)](https://forum.freecad.org/viewtopic.php?t=95294). I tried
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to get an understanding of Dmitrii's offer and studied a [DE wrapper
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sample](https://github.com/dpasukhi/DE_Wrapper-Sample) from Dmitrii to
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understand the technology and how it could integrate.
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My understanding is currently:
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FreeCAD remains as open as it is. There can be a commercial (though possibly
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still open source) addon that may load proprietary libraries for data exchange.
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The addon will "stream" the resulting files to FreeCAD which means that the
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interface with FreeCAD is minimal and most likely already exists.
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The addon is only for users who want to pay for importing and exporting
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advanced file formats, while FreeCAD remains as it is.
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This will need follow up in the next month.
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### Sorting through issues
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A large task was to find a way to organize all the OCCT-related issues. Max
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and luzpaz have already prepared this to a high degree with the OCCT label. I
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created a [GitHub project](https://github.com/orgs/FreeCAD/projects/32/views/1)
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where I and others can track the OCCT-related issues. Max and I have now an
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understanding of how to notify me of new OCCT issues.
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A next task is to study a DRAW harness created by Brad McClean.
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### Building FreeCAD
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An important step is to set up FreeCAD such that I can easily switch between
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various versions of OCCT and can debug OCCT.
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### Setting up a channel on Discord
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I created a channel on Discord to discuss OCCT-related topics and for people to
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find me there. The first discussion is the next section.
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### Discussion on OCCT bug reporting and versions
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I noticed that various OCCT issues reported use different OCCT versions. In
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some cases, the issue does not appear in newer OCCT versions. This makes it
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hard to decide what to do with these issues.
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On top of that, FreeCAD maintains its own version with Blobfish patches on it.
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All this has been discussed with Oursland and Blobfish himself weighed in as
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well, stating that we should not use his patches for FreeCAD.
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We agreed that we try to officially support only one version of OCCT and bug
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reports on OCCT should use this version. Currently, there is a dependency
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problem preventing us to switch to 7.9.0 as of yet.
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This will need follow up in the next month.
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### Present myself in the DEV meeting
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On Saturday 15 March I presented myself as the OCCT Liaison. Since the minutes
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are a bit sparse, I will write a summary here:
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#### About myself
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- I'm honored to have gotten this position. I try to be very approachable by
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the community and I hope to be able to be a bridge between OCCT and FreeCAD.
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- I hope that the interaction between OCCT and FreeCAD both help FreeCAD and OCCT.
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- I'm highly motivated to improve FreeCAD and since various issues rely on
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OCCT, I'm motivated to improve OCCT as well. I want to improve FreeCAD
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because I believe that technology to design things should be widely
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available.
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#### OCCT Versions
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We discussed the OCCT version for FreeCAD and the API stability that OCCT 8
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will present. We touched on the Blobfish patches. An valid issue is that if
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FreeCAD officially supports 7.9.0, then the Ubuntu version is likely outdated.
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We don't have a very good solution for that, FreeCAD will may simply have more
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issues than the official version.
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#### STEP AP242 ed1/2/3/4 support
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This is an issue from Max and he discussed it mostly. Having these file
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formats most likely means that we need support in the Assembly workbench and
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improved GD&T support in FreeCAD. The biggest problem is that we need
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developers that want to work on this.
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##### GitHub Project
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I presented my project and the fillet/chamfer problems are of course well-known
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and perhaps most pressing. Chris mentioned that having this fixed by the OCCT
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team by hiring them is incredibly expensive, too expensive for the FPA
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currently.
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#### Plan
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My plans are roughly for the coming year:
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- Improve the project
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- Study the forum for understanding earlier attempts to organize OCCT-related
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issues
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- Study existing DRAW tests
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- Become an OCCT developer
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- Discuss how to test bugs
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- Talk to other OCCT users
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- Talk to OCCT
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### Set myself up for a high number of GitHub notifications
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I noticed that I can't keep up with all the GitHub notifications that I
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receive, so I worked on improving processing the GitHub notifications. I
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believe I have a process that more or less works now.
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### Suggest a process for a 10 year roadmap
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In the FPA meeting there was a discussion on corporate sponsors. Brad made the
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point that if we want to acquire sponsoring it has to be worth something for
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the corporate sponsors. I believe it would be beneficial to be able to offer a
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realistic outlook, for example for a period of 10 years, to ensure that the
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corporate sponsors know what they are sponsoring. This can also make
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priorities clear for the FPA and where funding should be directed to.
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As a concrete example, I consider OCCT a close partner, so they may become a
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sponsor of FreeCAD. This could not only be money, but they could also decide
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to invest in fixing fillets or for example supporting STEP AP242 ed1/2/3/4.
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Dmitrii has already shown interest in the latter topic, but I noticed that
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FreeCAD needs support for this as well. This means that if we find the route
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towards STEP AP242 important, then FreeCAD should also invest in support for
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this. Otherwise, the efforts of OCCT towards this direction cannot "land" in
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FreeCAD. Having a roadmap as an outlook to the future can show commitment from
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the FreeCAD community and can help with convincing partners such as OCCT to
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invest in this.
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I have discussed this with Brad and one of the plans is to hold a developers
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meeting with this as topic. My next step is to reach out to some people in the
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community to discuss the plan.
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### Check forum on OCCT issues
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I read through all the forum posts on OCCT. The forum makes it very hard to
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get an overview, at least for me, but some community members were keeping very
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well track of the issues. I opted for a GitHub project that gives all kinds of
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ways to present the issues.
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As a follow up, I want to participate on the forum.
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### Register as OCCT developer
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I registered myself as an OCCT developer by signing their CLA.

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