NOTICE/FEEDBACK REQUEST - Sketch constraint status coloring on by default

[jakefowler]

Hi Fusion 360-ers,

Sketch geometry constraint status coloring (i.e. using color to denote fully-constrained sketch entities vs. under-constrained entities) has been available as a Preview functionality for some time now. Over the past few months we’ve been working to fix the outstanding bugs and performance issues, and we’re now looking to bring this out of 'Preview' status and turn this on as the default behavior in the near future.

Before we do this, we wanted be sure to get feedback from all of you on how the Preview functionality is working today. 

• Is it working smoothly today? 
• Are you seeing any incorrect results? 
• Are you encountering any performance issues? 

Please let us know whether it is or isn’t working well for you at the moment. This will help us make a decision on when to go live with this, and gives us a chance to look into any outstanding issues you might be seeing.

If you haven’t yet enabled this or tried it, please give it a go now. To do so, open Preferences and in the Preview section enable ‘Sketch - Color sketch geometry based on constraint status’:

(Note that you can turn this Preview functionality off again at any time by coming back here and unchecking the same checkbox.)

Many thanks in advance!

Jake

[HughesTooling]

My only problem with it is it needs to use 3 colours not 2. If you draw a vertical line from the origin so one end's fixed it shows fully constrained but it's length is not. This is a simple example, in more complex sketches it's not always obvious a sketch is not fully constrained when the status colour is telling you it is.

Thanks Mark

[macmanpb]

I love it!! 🙂

I think it is the best to turn it on by default. The design sketches are more stable if the user is compelled to fully constrain it. 😉

[mroek]

I agree, it is easy to overlook missing constraints for lines. Not sure if you really need more colors, in Onshape this very same problem is solved by coloring the end point of the line with the unconstrained color (which is blue in that system too). Not overly obvious, but as long as you know, it does work. Here's a manipulated image to show what I mean:

[GrAndAG]

Actually, there is a bunch of variants when line is marked as fully constrained, bun in fact it is not.

Also, the screencast shows 2 lines with dimensioned end-points in between, which are movable (it's correct) unless I connected them with a line. But nothing is changed from geometry point of view. But it's not movable if the ends are connected.

[mroek]

Yes, in your example you should have been able to drag those connection points even after drawing that connecting line. It acts as if it is fully constrained, and this is also shown by the coloring, so in a sense it is at least consistent, albeit nonetheless wrong.

[GrAndAG]

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@mroek wrote:

It acts as if it is fully constrained, and this is also shown by the coloring, so in a sense it is at least consistent, albeit nonetheless wrong.

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But it is not fully constrained. I can add angle dimension between that line and any other side of the triangle. And it will be normal dimension (not driven), so even Fusion internally see that it's not fully constrained. And by adjusting that dimension I can change the shape. But without that angle dimension I still can't change the shape by dragging its corners.

[mroek]

@GrAndAG

I didn't write that it was fully constrained, I wrote that it acted as if it was. Which it shouldn't have, so I agree with you.

[JDMather]

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@jakefowler wrote:

Before we do this, we wanted be sure to get feedback from all of you on how the Preview functionality is working today. 

• Is it working smoothly today? 
• Are you seeing any incorrect results? 
• Are you encountering any performance issues? 

---

No

Yes

No

[TrippyLighting]

I agree with @JDMather

No

Yes

No

[CarlFrischmuth]

i agree with the others

no

yes

no

[CarlFrischmuth]

also users should be able to change the color scheme to something that works for them.

*especially to more easily visually differentiate 3D sketch geometry from 2D sketch geometry.

[daniel_lyall]

 No

yes

no

I would rather have the sketch solver fixed

[FrankCao]

Hi GrAndAG,

Thanks for reporting this issue. In your sketch, the line you added collinear constraints should not be shown as fully constrained. So this is definitely a bug. 

We will try to fix this problem soon. 

Thanks,

Frank

[jakefowler]

Many thanks everyone for the feedback! In response to the specific issues:

@HughesTooling @mroek

Great point. Currently we’re just using a white point to denote a non-fully-constrained point (fully-constrained will be black), but we can do more to tie that in with the general color-coding. We’ll look into this.

@macmanpb

Great to hear!!

@GrAndAG

Thanks for reporting this! As Frank said, we’ll investigate this one.

@CarlFrischmuth

This is a good point, we’ll certainly look into alternative colorings. Any thoughts on what colors you might choose? 🙂

@daniel_lyall

Rest assured, these aren't mutually exclusive - we’re also working hard on solver fixes in parallel right now.

@Anonymous @TrippyLighting @CarlFrischmuth @daniel_lyall

Thanks for the feedback. Are you able to provide examples/models showing the issues you’re encountering? The dev team can then look into these in detail. You can email to jake.fowler (at) autodesk.com if you'd rather not post here.

Many thanks,

Jake

[CarlFrischmuth]

hI @jakefowler

whats leftover to select from?

inventor used to have a little free app that came as a sample with the SDK that you could use to tweak the registry values for the standard colors, I was thinking if you are trying to hard wire some colors in there or choose some then its OK to have something to start with that's easily visible that's not already taken by some other geometry type but it wont fit all needs there will be some that need higher contrast colors or even less colors (as they cant see some that well). i think orange blue black and magenta are used up already a lighter mid stenght blue may be good enough and reasonably easy to see by default and could be good for 3D splines but just as i say that someone somewhere will be starting to make vomit sounds..especially if they can see blue tones very well.

I think there will be a bunch of colors used up already. -- is there a way to gather up all the color definitions for constrained / under constrained 2d/3d sketch entities and show it in a dialog with the color codes next to them - or use a similar  simple color scheme selector like in gmail rather than color hex codes obviously were not changing text colors here but could be good for making it easy to set up or just tweak the colors to suit anyone's screen  / sketch color setup.

 the problem i ran into today was :

i was drawing some lines that i thought was in my current sketch plane but what had happened was that it automatically projected a part edge below the sketch plane and the horizontal line i drew wast in the sketch plane as i had accidentally left the 3d sketch toggle on, i was wondering why i couldn't add in a perpendicular constraint and thought there was some selection filter switched or something weird, it wasn't until a bit later when i turned the view around that i realized the line that i thought was on the current sketch plane was constrained to the midpoint of another edge off plane below the edge that i thought i had projected.

If this line was a different color because it wasn't in the current sketch plane then i would have noticed it straight away as i was drawing it and understood why the majority of the constraint types were failing to use it as a selection, rather than blaming the sketch constraints or suspecting some sketch constraint bug etc..

cheers

Carl

[Anonymous]

I've had hideous breakage* when I've changed dimensions on a sketch that wasn't fully constrained so I appreciate any work towards indicating this status. What I've tried to do is create a Python script that would run through a sketch and determine its constraint status. However I'm not finding this easy to do so I understand your programming problems!

* A line wasn't perpendicular constrained. Thus when I changed a side dimension, the line became tilted. This was a line that, on the body, was projected into another sketch as a reference line. When the line became tilted, the projection was lost and Fusion 360 changed the fixed reference line into a floating one, leaving its position where it was originally. It went downhill from there...

[mroek]

@jakefowler

Just one additional comment:

Even if the current implementation has issues (as pointed out by people in this thread), it is still way better than to have it turned off, so in that sense I think you should take it out of the preview state, and make it the default.

[JDMather]

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@mroek wrote:

@jakefowler

Just one additional comment:

Even if the current implementation has issues (as pointed out by people in this thread), it is still way better than to have it turned off, so in that sense I think you should take it out of the preview state, and make it the default.

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I agree.  Should be the default so that it gets tested to the max.

I can't seem to do much of anything with Fusion sketching without running into frustrating issues.

[FrankCao]

Hi conor.orourke,

Thanks for reporting the problem. I think the "project break by dimension change" issue is a bug. 

Could you help attach your model here or send it to weining.cao@autodesk.com to help analyze the issue?

Thanks,

Frank