topic Re: Bug: Canvas properties dialog is too narrow for its labels in Fusion Support Forum

Bug: Canvas properties dialog is too narrow for its labels

graham.wideman — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 23:48:32 GMT

The dialog for editing properties of the Canvas object is so narrow that it truncates several of the property names, making it difficult to discover them:

For example: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/canvas-shows-through-all-bodies-amp-components/m-p/10623051

Re: Bug: Canvas properties dialog is too narrow for its labels

jhackney1972 — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 23:54:18 GMT

Take a look at the attached Screencast. It shows how to adjust the dialog box to suit your needs.

Re: Bug: Canvas properties dialog is too narrow for its labels

graham.wideman — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 00:17:07 GMT

Thanks for your reply.

OK, the bug is not that you can't resize the dialog, but that it is so dang difficult to do so. On further experimentation, I see that:

1) Docking the dialog to the edge of the window causes a resize-width affordance to appear at to top left of the Edit Canvas panel. Why can't that be there all the time?

2) Yep, turns out there's a resize capability at the bottom right of the Edit Canvas panel, (and it does not first require docking and undocking). But either the target area is too small, or in the wrong place, or the delay time for cursor change is too long so it makes it all but impossible to find and use it. (As observed on Windows 10, in case there's some variation across platforms.)

Why can't this type of panel simply use standard resize gestures, anywhere along the edges, and a decent sized triangle in the bottom left? (OK, I guess there's variation on what's expected on different OS platforms, but these panels don't seem to conform to any of them.)

3) The proportion of space dedicated to the property values is too wide compared to the width devoted to the labels.

Doubtless these are issues not unique to the Canvas edit dialog, so it's good to know how it's supposed to work, even if it's awkward and could stand some improvement!

Re: Bug: Canvas properties dialog is too narrow for its labels

graham.wideman — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 01:33:03 GMT

.... about an hour later, updating this point:

> resize capability at the bottom right of the Edit Canvas panel [...] either the

> target area is too small, or in the wrong place, or the delay time for

> cursor change is too long

Well now that bottom right corner is behaving quite reasonably -- move the mouse tip in a fairly decent part of the corner, and the resize cursor appears promptly. In the intervening hour I did restart Fusion 360, but haven't changed any settings in F360 or otherwise on my system. So not sure what to make of that.

I had tried that bottom corner for resize on property edit dialogs before to no avail, and concluded it wasn't implemented. The lack of a visible affordance contributed to my lack of confidence that the behavior had been implemented.

Only the prodding today got me to return to it and see it working, though difficult to activate. But now it operates easily.