Having read back through the responses from AutoDesk staff, this appears to be a fundamentally misconceived product.
Being history free is great. But that shouldn't necessitate being unintelligent.
A modeller is history free if it does not rely on the sequence of actions that was used to created the model data, But only on the model data created.
But that doesn't just mean the instantaneous resolved form of the model. It should mean any relationships explicitly created.
Being history free is not saying that you throw away all deliberate constraints defined by the user. And even if you are taking the dumb approach of not allowing any constraints, then you shouldn't allow the user to create those constraints, and then subsequently throw them away.
Being history free is allowing the user to change those constraints at any time so that he is not limited by previous intent, or the current stage of his activity.
Being history free does not preclude being parametric, or being constraint driven. So long as those constraints can be changed at any stage.
There is an excellent 2D sketch tools built in. That tool is history free (or at least the underlying D-Cubed technology is). One can always change constraints, change dimensions, and recalculate the 2D based on the dimensions and other constraints that exist now. Not on the order or manner in which they were created. It doesn't matter if the constraints were auto generated or manually added. They are all constraints, and all equal. It is not based on history.
When one uses the geometry of that 2D sketch as the basis for 3D there is NO rational reason to not carry forward this constraints or retain relationship between the 2D sketch and the 3D model.
This does not mean that you should HAVE TO go back to the 2D sketch to make changes. So long as changes made in the 3D correctly remove or change constraints created from the 2D.
But one should be ABLE TO make changes in the 2D sketch where convenient, and carry those changes forward into the 3D.
Failure to do this is actually making the system less history free, not more. Because you are saying that the point in time when you go from a sketch to start addend 3D information, this is a historical milestone that throws away all the relationships or associations that the user has worked hard to create in his 2D geometry.
Throwing the relationship away is not being history free. It is being stupid. It wastes deliberate design decisions that have been made.
