topic Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent. in Fusion Support Forum

I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 18:40:03 GMT

I continue to struggle with constraint highlight. Overall, constraint highlight is very faint. Is there a way to make the constraint element highlighting brighter and bolder. Can it be made bright and bold, similar to the bright and bold highlight that occurs when the cursor touches upon an element.

In the screencast, the first constraint I hover over does highlight the two elements (the horizontal line and the vertical line). Albeit, the hightlight is not very bright or bold.

The second constraint I hover over, only the vertical line has any appreciable highlight and the arc segment is barely noticably highlighted. If I get rid of the overlaid dashed construction circle, the arc segment is more noticeably highlighted.

The third set of constraints I hover over, neither of the associcated gemoetry lines highlight. How am I to know which coincident constraint icon goes to which line?

Am I doing something wrong?

https://screencast.autodesk.com/Embed/Timeline/f369ef06-2c83-4f93-985a-0243ba77aa4d

Here's another thing. I still seem to struggle to include a screencast. I'm trying (as seen above) to embed a screencast link but somehow I don't think I'm doing this correctly.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

jhackney1972 — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 18:33:28 GMT

You tried to post a bit too much in your Screencast Hyperlink and you missed the exact address. Try again.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 18:44:05 GMT

Okay, I think I've made the necessary correction to the embedded link, so my screencast is hopefully visible.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

jhackney1972 — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 19:54:35 GMT

I suggest you try a different Environment choice. Also, on your last example, the two points are under the Origin point so you will not see them.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:56:13 GMT

I tried all of the other environment choices (currently using photobooth), and none of the others provide any improvement. Tranquility Blue does provide a brighter highlighting of the constrained elements (though it didn't help for that arc segment that overlays the construction circle), but with Transquility Blue I find that construction geomentry is very difficult to see.

Even though the constraint is attached to (or under) the origin, the element itself extends well beyond the origin and I'd like the element itself to highlight (no different than how other elements, at other constrained points, highlight). This way I don't have to guess which constraint icon to select in order to delete the constraint from the desired element.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

TheCADWhisperer — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 21:02:28 GMT

@richardrTR6VB wrote:
Here's another thing. I still seem to struggle to include a screencast. I'm trying (as seen above) to embed a screencast link but somehow I don't think I'm doing this correctly.

The forum is broken. Has been for years.
Ping @shaan.hurley to get his attention.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 17:53:26 GMT

Thank you CADWhisperer. I'll see what I can do. Following the link @shaan.hurley I wound up at a couple of community group forums, and after a bit of time reading through a number of posts, I had to walk away. I'm new to this forum (and forums in general), but at this point in time I feel a bit overwhelmed by these Autodesk forums. I think I need to experience the Autodesk forum more, to better understand how and where to post.

At the end of the day, I merely want bolder and brighter highlight of constrained elements, I want elements that originate at an origin to highlight no different than how elements at other constrained points highlight, I want to be able to easily attach a screencast.

(I appreciate John Hackney's help in realizing that I needed to cut and paste just the "https:\\...." portion of the Embed This Screencast dialog. After learning this though from John, I question (probably ignorantly so), if this knowledge John provided could otherwise be articulated within the instruction that is shown on the Embed This Screencast dialog box. For example, modify the current instruction "...copy and paste the embed code..." to read "...copy and paste the https portion of the embed code...". Then too, if I was better skilled with forums, maybe I'd have inherently known that I needed to cut and pasted just the https portion of the displayed code.)

Thanks again (to both of you) for your help.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

GRSnyder — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 00:37:44 GMT

For the record, I completely agree with the OP's complaint. Highlights added by selecting constraints are barely visible and sometimes just not visible, period. The same goes for Manage Lost Projections - in many circumstances, it's nearly impossible to tell what edge or point the sketch is failing to project. The yellow "lost projection" geometry is pretty visible, but when you pick a specific edge from the Manage Lost Projections panel, it's impossible to tell which of the lost projections you are currently working on.

It's kind of mystifying to me that this issue exists because you only invoke these highlights when you are trying to find the highlighted items (or, I guess, when you are about to delete a constraint). They are never part of the normal UI and never appear incidentally, so there is no benefit to making them subtle. There should be a lurid ten-pixel highlight around every item. 🙂

Odd also because normal selection highlighting in sketches is perfectly fine. I never have any trouble telling what's selected.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 14:22:56 GMT

Thank you GRSnyder for your post, you do a a great job of describing the situation and you further raise some key points that are spot on. (lurid pixel, I haven't hear that before, but I like it.)

I believe that these are fundamental issues that are worthy of being addressed.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

abhinav_singh — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 04:27:44 GMT

While I can't comment on the timeline of when this will be resolved. But, just letting everyone know here that I have logged an internal improvement ticket to the relevant team. I'll keep you guys posted as and when I hear anything back. Thanks for your patience and support.

FUS-98978

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:18:12 GMT

Thank you.

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

johan.rutgeerts — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 21:13:19 GMT

I was directed here by @abhinav_singh as I hadn't seen this post and made a very similar screencast. It's in this thread.

It's a confirmation though, not a solution...

Regards,

Johan

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

johan.rutgeerts — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 21:16:40 GMT

@jhackney1972 wrote:
Also, on your last example, the two points are under the Origin point so you will not see them.

I don't think this is the cause, see my similar screencast.

There seems to be a different behaviour in constraint highlighting if the constraint is "between a vertex (e.g. the origin) and an endpoint of a line", as opposed to "between two endpoints of two lines". In the latter, the lines are highlighted on hoover, in the former only the vertex.

Regards,

Johan

I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

johan.rutgeerts — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 21:28:48 GMT

I thought I had posted this around noon, but I don't seem to find it so I post again:

I found a solution for the coincident constraints in this post.

You can right click on any point or line and choose "Delete Coincident". So there's no need to find the actual coincident constraints.

Regards,

Johan

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

richardrTR6VB — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 21:26:58 GMT

Okay, so right click and delete constraint, that looks like a good option.

This option worked fine for line segments that originated at an origin, but when I tried this option on some lines that didn't converge at an origin, it didn't work the same. Instead it behaved like this screencast by johan.rutgeerts.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/b9b4d071-3186-44c3-8076-50b109a4a579?_ga=2.131822535.951126340.1646659823-1620059874.1508791794

Referencing the post

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-design-validate/how-do-you-delete-coincident-constraints/m-p/5638101/highlight/true#M24197

(cited by johan.rutgeerts) I began to better understand, and I worked up a sketch to experiment with.

Not sure if my screencast and file will help anyone else, but working through these examples did help me start to better understand the behaviors.

Curious. Part way through my video I show a different glyph I get when I hold the mouse wheel and perform a slight pan move. This seems to be an odd combination in order to reveal this other "second" glyph. Is there another way to get this other glyph to appear?

https://screencast.autodesk.com/Embed/Timeline/690994d4-d812-4eab-8a60-72db31bde0fc

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

johan.rutgeerts — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 08:03:29 GMT

Fwiw, I noticed the following:

Case 1:

Create a line (somewhere free, not originating from an existing vertex),

Create a 2nd line starting from the same start vertex and acknowledge with the green 'create and continue' bullet,

Create a 3rd line starting from the same start vertex and acknowledge,

--> There is only one sketch point:

Case 2:

Do exactly the same, but start from an existing vertex, such as the origin or a point.

--> There are sketch points for each line as well as the original vertex:

Case 3:

Do the same as case 2, but instead of originating each line at the center point, start the first line somewhere free, then click the center point and then click somewhere for the second line (i.e. the first two lines have the center point as their intermediate vertex),

--> there is one sketch point less:

I've been using the 'right click - delete coincident' in the mean time; my experience is that it is significantly more convenient than hoovering and selecting the coincident constraint icons, but that it still has the same issues: it will not necessarily only break free the line you clicked, so you still have to issue 'delete coincident' multiple times, and then reapply coincident constraints to those lines you didn't want to set free.

Regards,

Johan

Re: I continue to struggle with constraint highlights. Faint to non-existent.

GRSnyder — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 09:12:17 GMT

Very interesting observations, @johan.rutgeerts. I notice that the highlighting for coincident constraints (on hover) is also rather different in these cases. Some constraints highlight one line, others highlight two lines at once, and some highlight nothing at all.

For example, in case 2 above, the center point shows three coincident constraints, one of which highlights two lines at once. The other two coincident constraints highlight nothing on hover (or perhaps just the point itself; it's hard to tell).

I checked the Python API for Fusion 360 to see if there was some notion of a "curve chain" that might claim primary ownership of a given point. If there was such a thing, that might explain some of the variety in display among Johan's examples. However, this type of entity doesn't seem to exist within the public API. That doesn't necessarily mean that it does not exist internally, though.

It seems reasonable to me that an existing point might maintain a separate identity as connections are added. But the other variations above seem surprising.