topic Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project& in Fusion Design, Validate & Document Forum

User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project" command.

jeff_strater — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:29:29 GMT

Hello, Fusion community!

We'd like to get some feedback on a proposed change to the way that the Sketch "Project" command works.

Today, this command works in a one-item-at-a-time way. You click on something, it is projected immediately, then you click on another item.

We've seen a few concerns voiced over the years about this workflow:

I'm sure there has been more, but you get the idea. The limitations of the current method are:

Cancel and OK do the same thing
If you want to cancel the whole command, you will have to undo possibly a lot of times
You cannot window-select a bunch of things to project. (I might argue here that window selection during Project is a bad idea - creates too many projected entities in your sketch, any of which can fail in the future)
You cannot pre-select multiple things to project
It is different from every other Fusion selection-based command

So, we are thinking of changing Project to be like the rest of the Fusion selection-based commands. That is:

allow pre-selection
allow window selection
allow the "clear selection" UI in the dialog
during the command, projections are previewed in the sketch
all projections are only applied to the sketch when you click OK
if you click Cancel, nothing will get projected into the sketch that was selected during this invocation of the command. If you click OK, everything that has been selected will get projected into the sketch, in a single undoable event.

This change will definitely address the concerns. But, this is a pretty big change in the workflow. Is this level of change going to annoy you? Is the cure worse than the disease?

Any input would be helpful. Thanks!

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

LibertyMachine — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:46:11 GMT

Personally, I like the change. It's annoyed me that I have to hit CTRL+Z a couple of times (or more) to back out of a bad selection. Most times I just ignore the extra lines that I accidentally selected and just work with what I have.

High on my priority list is the preselection and Clear Selection. Not a fan of window selection, as you point out, it grabs too much and will include things you don't want.

Will we be able to click on the selection again to deselect it, or must we clear the whole slate and start over again?

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

HughesTooling — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:31:00 GMT

@jeff_strater wrote:

during the command, projections are previewed in the sketch

all projections are only applied to the sketch when you click OK

if you click Cancel, nothing will get projected into the sketch that was selected during this invocation of the command. If you click OK, everything that has been selected will get projected into the sketch, in a single undoable event.

Will there be an option to Ctrl select to remove items from the selection? As @LibertyMachine mentioned the way it works now is quite frustrating if you select the wrong object, the first undo cancels the command the next actually undoes what you want then you have to restart the command.

Thanks Mark

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

TrippyLighting — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:39:45 GMT

I like these proposed changes!

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

jeff_strater — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:58:23 GMT

@LibertyMachine & @HughesTooling- yes, you will be able to adjust the selection (CTRL-click to remove/add new selection), up until you hit OK, and whatever is selected at the time you hit OK will be projected.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

davebYYPCU — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 20:00:02 GMT

Another - in favour of the proposal- thanks in advance,

Lasso, Window select, with individual remove before Ok, please.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

LibertyMachine — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 20:00:40 GMT

While you guys are under the hood tinkering around, can we talk about making the tentative projected edges a bit more bolder/more visible? The brown/tan background of the sketch, in conjunction with the pink projected lines leave a bit of guessing. Maybe just a slightly bolder line until the "Accept" is clicked?

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

etfrench — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 20:07:04 GMT

Allow pre-select, but lose the window select. Window select can be done with pre-select.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

mavigogun — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 14:27:32 GMT

Kudos for polishing this existing feature. As others have affirmed, selecting and deselecting consistent with typical Sketch environment behavior would be appreciated. My primary concern is preserving the ability to convert projections to regular Sketch elements, as, regardless of selection paradigm, this enables all of the editing controls of the Sketch workspace to be brought to bear. Thanks for asking.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 15:29:01 GMT

@jeff_strater

I like the proposed change with the exception of a few things.

Please do not allow window select...people will abuse this then complain that their sketches are no longer responsive.

You said "If you click OK, everything that has been selected will get projected into the sketch, in a single undoable event."

I don't like the fact that this is undoable...I can live with it but don't like it.

Also something not on the list but I think would be very helpful is a checkbox to be able to convert all the projected sketch entities into construction entities.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

jeff_strater — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:12:04 GMT

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone. It sounds like the general consensus is that this is a good direction.

I think I agree with the comments that window (or paint, or lasso) selection is a bad idea in this command. My only concern is whether there is some valid workflow that we are not considering now. And, @davebYYPCU is in favor of mass-selection. Though, as @etfrench points out, pre-selection covers this workflow, though maybe not as obviously. So, I'll rate that one as up in the air for the moment.

To reiterate, yes, you will be able to adjust selection (de-select, add to selection, clear entire selection) before hitting OK. The only thing I don't know for sure is whether you will have to use CTRL/CMD to de-select, or just simple click will do. I tend to think that just clicking will do, since the preview is non-destructive of the selection (as it is in Fillet, for example).

@LibertyMachine: thanks for the suggestion about making the preview more visible. That is a good suggestion.

@mavigogun: Is your request here for an item on the dialog that would say something like "project without linking"? That is, create the projected item, but as if you had already done a "Break Link" on it? Interesting... I can see the utility in that.

@PhilProcarioJr: Can you elaborate a bit on "I don't like the fact that this is undoable."? Since most commands in Fusion create an event in the undo stack, I would think that we'd want this here, too. Is there another concern here? Also, your suggestion to project as construction is also a good one. You can do this today, but the workflow is not ideal, because you have to click on the Construction icon in the palette before you start projecting stuff.

Please continue to comment for a while. I'll try to wrap up the feedback after a while, and report what we decided to do.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

HughesTooling — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:16:14 GMT

@PhilProcarioJr wrote:

Also something not on the list but I think would be very helpful is a checkbox to be able to convert all the projected sketch entities into construction entities.

You can toggle construction while the project command is active now, either on the sketch palette or press X. I guess the new proposed change might not allow toggling while the command is running so some lines are construction and some normal though. They would either all be construction or normal depending on the setting when you click OK.

Mark

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:20:28 GMT

@jeff_strater

My main concern is that if I accidentally project stuff that I really didn't want to, that I can undo that operation and don't have to select all of it again and hit delete. 😉

"Also, your suggestion to project as construction is also a good one. You can do this today, but the workflow is not ideal, because you have to click on the Construction icon in the palette before you start projecting stuff."

Yes I know this but to be honest I think a simple checkbox to make it construction or not is much better.

Also I missed @mavigogun suggestion "project without linking" I second this one...…+10

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

PhilProcarioJr — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:25:59 GMT

@HughesTooling

Good point, not sure how other people do it but I usually select all my construction stuff at once and all my normal stuff separate. I guess it would be good for some and bad for others. I can live with it either way.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

jeff_strater — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 00:56:36 GMT

Yes, @PhilProcarioJr, you will be able to undo each command invocation separately, so if you accidentally project a bunch of stuff you will be able to undo, rather than having to select the projections in the sketch and delete them. So, if you start Project, select 10 edges, hit OK, then start the command again and select 5 more, and hit OK, there will be just two items in the undo menu. The first undo will undo all 5 of the projections, and the second will undo the first 10. Today, there would be 15 undo events. That's the main undo difference. I should have made that clearer.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

davebYYPCU — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 02:20:17 GMT

Probably not a normal workflow, I use Project > Intersect a lot, transferring sections of many bodies to a sketch

While a crossing window / lasso will be a bonus for my workflow, even better would be to have those bodies in a Selection Set, to paste / transfer / plug into Project > Intersect - unavailable now.

Might help,,,

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

whittakerdw — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 15:05:26 GMT

I like the changes being made. I have been using the project command a lot recently, but one of the main things that bothers me with it is what was mentioned with having to undo each individual projection. I also export a lot of my models as dxf files in order to send them to others and they can open them with ease. And though I am not glad this was an issue for me, I am glad to see I wasn't the only user struggling with the issues listed in the "Selection set to project geometry into sketch." I have since limited my use of the project function due to these reasons. I am glad to see they are being improved. I think the changes listed in this post will be very beneficial to users. I look forward to being able to use project more in the future. I am glad to see that Autodesk will take the users thoughts into consideration and make improvements where needed. Keep up the great work Autodesk!

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project"

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 09:13:36 GMT

This would be good. I've always wondered why Project didn't work this way since the pop-up tool dialog looks like this would be the expected behaviour.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

mavigogun — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 12:48:46 GMT

@jeff_strater wrote: *snip*

@mavigogun: Is your request here for an item on the dialog that would say something like "project without linking"? That is, create the projected item, but as if you had already done a "Break Link" on it? Interesting... I can see the utility in that.

That would be ideal. Regardless of implementation, my primary concern is preserving a capacity to Break Link; while there was no indication such was threatened, sacrifices are sometimes made pursuant to change.

@jeff_strater wrote:

Yes, @PhilProcarioJr, you will be able to undo each command invocation separately, so if you accidentally project a bunch of stuff you will be able to undo, rather than having to select the projections in the sketch and delete them. So, if you start Project, select 10 edges, hit OK, then start the command again and select 5 more, and hit OK, there will be just two items in the undo menu. The first undo will undo all 5 of the projections, and the second will undo the first 10. Today, there would be 15 undo events. That's the main undo difference. I should have made that clearer.

As long as the ability to select and delete discrete projection elements remains, I reckon the proposed undo-bundling poses no liability.

Re: User survey: Thinking about changing workflow for Sketch "Project&

jeff_strater — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 15:05:43 GMT

Good questions @mavigogun. Yes, individual Break Link on one projected curve will still be available, as will the ability to select and delete a single projected curve, even if that curve was projected as part of a command where more were projected. The Undo discussion only applies to the behaviors of a command within one session.

The more I think about this "project as if break link were done" the more I like it. We will have to think of a descriptive name for this option, but this seems pretty useful.