Tool to delete all broken projected geometry in sketch

[chris_graham]

Whenever a projected geometry curve or point is broken, you have to go hunting through the sketch to find it. This can be a huge pain, especially if the sketch is large or if the broken geometry is covered by something else. It would be so much easier if there were just an option to delete all broken references. After that, it would be easy to just find where the sketch is no longer fully constrained and make new projections as necessary. The user is only going to delete the broken geometry anyways; there's no reason to force them to try to find a needle in a haystack in order to do that.

Alternatively, if you could show projected geometry in the tree so that the user can just click on the broken geometry and click "show in window" or right-click >> delete it, that would be even better, but maybe harder to implement.

[mikeh4]

Agree 110%.  Or add a selection filters for Projected Geometry, Failed Projection geometry.

Regards 

[swalton]

Or not leave broken endpoints after deleting a broken projected line...  

[chris_graham]

I second @swalton's comment as well; the orphaned endpoints after deleting a broken projected line are pretty annoying.

[dan_inv09]

Circle (and arc) center points as well.

I sometimes have many concentric circles and when a projected edge gets filleted or chamfered later on the circle may be easy but you have to find which of the center points in a literal stack is/are broken.

[owlund]

Would rally like to see this enhancement!

[AnthonyHarris90842]

Yes I would like to see this idea as well

[jumatuun]

This is great!

[WCrihfield]

This has been a very annoying and time consuming problem for a long time now, and definitely needs either a one shot solution, or better tools to help us deal with it.

I created an iLogic rule which would allow me to window select sketch entities, then singles out the ones that have a 'ReferencedEntity' (in an attempt to isolate all projected entities).  But there just doesn't seem to be a good way to determine if the individual entities are 'broken' (referenced entity it was projected from is missing).  The main sketch has a health status property, but the individual entities don't.  They just have a ConstraintStatus property, which isn't really that helpful for this purpose.  They need to add some sort of HealthStatus type common property to all sketch entity objects, that we can use to help determine if something's wrong with it, and/or IsProjected and ProjectedFrom properties.

[mikeh4]

Definitely falls into the JDI (just do it) initiative that would affect a very high percentage of the users.

Regards

[Yijiang.Cai]

Many thanks for the idea, and it has been tracked as [INVGEN-54651].

[Yijiang.Cai]

@chris_graham, @mikeh4 , @WCrihfield, @jumatuun  & @AnthonyHarris90842 ,

Many thanks for your idea and comments! is this requirement for both 2d sketch and 3d sketch? Or just top request on the 2d sketch here?

For the broken reference, do we want to remove the geometries? or just need to remove the sick reference constraint and leave the geometries there as maybe the geometry profiles are consumed by downstream features?

Any idea or comments are highly appreciated!

[WCrihfield]

My main focus is definitely on the 2d sketches, because that's what we use like 99% of the time.  A tool for isolating all sick sketch geometry at once into a group then delete (or other options) them would be great.  Of cource it would be nice if that tool also checked for dependencies to the sick geometry and warned us and asked us for permission before deleting them.  Maybe even list or highlight those dependent features while the warning message is being shown.   I want to be able to identify and/or isolate those sketch geometries by code, one way or another.  I'm thinking maybe add a Property similar to 'HealthStatus' with an Enum of possible values, one/some of which would tell you specifically if there is a problem with its 'projected from' entity.  Maybe also a Property called Projected (Boolean)(True = created by projecting other geometry), or something similar.  Add these properties to all the applicable object types that can be created by projecting geometry, so that we could check this property for when something is wrong with it's 'projected from' (or ReferencedEntity) object(s).  Or maybe a Sketch level Method or Property that will isolate all sick sketch entities into an ObjectCollection.  Then we can choose to do whatever we want with them afterwords.  In many cases I'm afraid that if we simply got rid of the reference to it's 'projected from' entity(s), without getting rid of the resulting geometry itself, any dependent features may end up remaining incorrect and not updated, with no highlighted or 'something's wrong here' status left behind to warn us of the incorrect or out of date dependent features.  That's just my 2 cents though.

[mikeh4]

2D sketch would catch 98% of what we do, so if we focused on that to start with would be great.

In my eyes this is how workflow should happen:

• Projected Geometry breaks.
• Highlights as it does now.
• Prompts user if want to delete all broken projected geometry.
• If yes deletes all broken projected geometry with a prompt "Some Existing Geometry may be under-constrained"
• If No, have a right click option when picking any broken geometry that has an option to select all broken projected geometry, then present them with the dialog box again to delete all broken projected geometry.
  • Alternatively have the right click option when picking any broken geometry to select all broken projected geometry and simply be able to hit the Delete button.  Again prompt for "Some Existing Geometry may be under-constrained"

Thanks for listening.

[WCrihfield]

I would say that more often than not, the sketch isn't incredibly complicated and usually doesn't contain projected geometries from tons of different sources/components/features.  In those cases, just being able to right-click on a planar sketch in my model browser or right-click in the empty space of an active sketch in model space, then select 'Delete All Sick Geometry' from that right-click menu would be a huge help & time saver.  Because we can likely figure out why it has a problem without too much effort, and likely know what we have to do to fix it, like re-projecting new geometry from the changed source object.  I'm sure we'll learn to judge whether or not we want to use that tool in more complicated scenarios, by trial/error/undo experience, but at least we would have that tool available if we need it.

[Yijiang.Cai]

@WCrihfield @mikeh4, really appreciate your comments! It is really helpful for us to better understand the idea here. Based on your comments, there are two major steps in the workflow -

1. Use the new command to filter out all the broken references

2. Support to delete the broken references  with prompt dialog showing

2D sketch is the major focus here. We just would like to confirm with you that the downstream features would be sick when deleting the broken references, as these geometries may be used for downstream features. We are wondering whether we just remove the sick reference constraints and keep the geometries. That means the downstream features will work, and users can add the new constraints to keep these geometries constrained.

I can see you are talking about the broken reference and projected geometries. Is this the only sick geometries you are looking for? Or we are looking for all the sick geometries and not only for broken projecting geometries?

Your feedback is really important for us.

Thanks!

[mikeh4]

@Yijiang.Cai  This is the only sick sketch constraints I can think of.  I would be good with deleting the sick constraints and leaving the geometry.  That would be extremely beneficial.

I think the biggest challenge as a previous response noted was when Sick Geometry is stacked on top of other geometry and it's a real challenge to know when your picking the sick geometry, so that's where the Sick Projected Geometry Filter/selection tool is crucial.  Even if the delete sick constraints and/or geometry isn't part of the process, simply a filter to only pick sick geometry would be extremely beneficial.  Your proposal to delete the constraints would be nearly ideal.

Thanks!

[swalton]

I propose a slight alteration to @mikeh4's steps:

2D sketch would catch 98% of what we do, so if we focused on that to start with would be great.

In my eyes this is how workflow should happen:

• Projected Geometry breaks.
• Highlights as it does now.
• Prompts user to select new geometry on the model/in the browser to replace the broken references OR delete the broken projected geometry.
  • Go through the list of broken geometry item by item so that the user can fix or delete the issues.
• If yes deletes all broken projected geometry with a prompt "Some Existing Geometry may be under-constrained"
• If No, have a right click option when picking any broken geometry that has an option to select all broken projected geometry, then present them with the dialog box again to delete all broken projected geometry.
  • Alternatively have the right click option when picking any broken geometry to select all broken projected geometry and simply be able to hit the Delete button.  Again prompt for "Some Existing Geometry may be under-constrained"

I miss the ability to repair broken projected geometry that Creo has and Inventor does not.

[mikeh4]

I have no arguments with @swalton.  It crossed my mind to fix the geometry, but I didn't want to get that Greedy😊.

I'm on board.

Kudos

[WCrihfield]

I totally agree with @Anonymous that either as part of a solution tool, or as a totally seperate ability, it would be GREAT to have a selection filter that we could use to select only broken projected geometry (and any end/center points among them). I don't care as much about other 'healthy' projected geometry, but if that were a seperate selection filter option, that can be useful in some situations too.

Right now, I would have to say that I'm less interested in this tool targeting any other types of 'sick' sketch geometry, other than broken projected geometry. Sure, it's nice to have problems highlighted and options for dealing with them, but we have the Sketch Doctor for handling some of the other simple annoying situations like redundant points, overlapping curves, open loops and such. If the tool goes a step too far, or does more than we want it to, then we likely won't use it as much.

Having more options, is better than less in my opinion, so if all these things are possible, then if some ability/action or geometry type filter is questionable, make it optional somehow if possible. Then the tool will suit the needs of more folks. If the tool detects a related problem, and it has the ability to detect and retain dependent healthy constraints and or features downstream, it could offer to try and retain them, but in my opinion, that ability would be of secondary importance and optional, while to the tools primary function/ability would be to select/isolate/delete the broken projected geometry.
Whether this tool does the deleting of these sick/broken sketch geometries on a one-by-one basis or all at once, is less important to me, but in cases where there may be hundreds of little entities, I would very much prefer the to have either an option or the ability to deal with them all at once, if possible. Having the option to replace broken projected geometry during the process sounds nice, but again I would consider that a secondary perk right now which could be added later if it might delay the implementation of this tool by years.

As a very wise man I knew growing up used to say to those who are getting overwhelmed/confused by all the little details of life, "The main thing...is to keep the main thing, the main thing." 😁

[Yijiang.Cai]

@mikeh4 , @swalton & @WCrihfield , many thanks for all of you! I summarize the top thing for us to do is to filter out all the broken reference geometries. So that user can decide what they want to do with these broken references.

Does it make sense for you?