[Closed] Feedback request: Object visibility control and overrides

[tyler_henderson]

We're looking at how we can improve visibility control of objects in the Fusion model tree/browser.  There are two main topics we're focusing on:

1.) Improving Folder/Group visibility control works?  (Toggling the visibility of a folder/group versus toggling the visibility of the individual objects contained in the folder/group).  In the example below, "Construction" is the folder/group, and "Plane1", "Plane3", and "Plane4" are the individual objects.

Currently, the folder/group visibility state overrides that of all the objects in that folder/group.  Meaning, regardless of the visibility toggle state of the objects, if the folder/group is toggled Off, then all of the objects become invisible, even if their individual toggle is On.  However, you can still change the toggle of the individual objects while the folder/group is Off, but it won't be noticeable until the folder/group is toggled back On. 

Feedback request:

• Do you like this behavior?
• Is it useful to change the visibility toggles of the objects while the folder/group is turned Off?
  • If not, does it cause confusion?
  • Would it be better to disable toggling visibility of the objects until the folder/group is turned back On?

2.) Enabling the ability to toggle the visibility of objects (Bodies, Sketches, Construction Geometry, etc.) in external components while in the context of an assembly.

Currently, you can toggle the visibility of external components and their child components, but you cannot toggle visibility of objects within those components.  In the above example, I can toggle the visibility of Side Plate, but I cannot toggle the visibility of the XY Origin Plane or any of the other objects inside Side Plate.

When I toggle the visibility of Side Plate, that is considered an override in Ultimaker 3.  When I save Ultimaker 3, it will keep that visibility state of Side Plate even if you open Enclosure and change the visibility of Side Plate there and save it.  The visibility override of Side Plate is kept in Ultimaker 3 until you toggle it to a state that matches the way it is saved in Enclosure.  That is, if Enclosure is saved with Side Plate turned Off, I can have an override in Ultimaker 3 with Side Plate turned On.  But as soon as I toggle Side Plate Off in Ultimaker 3, then the override is removed, and the visibility of Side Plate in Ultimaker 3 will now follow however it is saved in Enclosure.

Our plan is to make object (Bodies, Sketches, Construction) visibility control work the same as Components.  So we want to know what you think of the current Component visibility behaviors.

Feedback request:

• Are you aware of the current behavior? 
  • If you are or are not, have you found it confusing or does it work just fine for your needs?
• Is it ok that we don't have a visual indication when a component has a visibility override?
• Have you found a situation where visibility did not behave the way you expected?
  • If yes, what could help the situation?
• Is there a need for an explicit way to remove a visibility override or to make it match the way it is saved in the Component?
• Is there a need to explicitly remove all visibility overrides in an assembly?
  • How would you want to do that?

We appreciate your feedback to help us make the experience of this feature the best we can!

[26-Taylor]

1. Object visibility: It would be really frustrating if the top level folder/group toggle disappeared. It is a great 'catch-all' filter when you just need to hide something. I do like the idea of disabling the lower level items if the top level is hidden, it may avoid confusion for newer users and will have little effect on regular users. 
2. I think it would be great to have the ability to toggle visibility of any object in any workspace. It is time consuming when you need a sketch for a machine boundary to be shown, or when you need to quickly see how a feature was dimensioned, etc. and you have to navigate to the external file or edit in place. I understand the hierarchy for making changes to a model/assembly, but opening up the visibility toggling would be great. On a side note, the question of needs for matching component visibility to the saved component sounds dangerously similar to component "Configurations". As a former Solidworks user, having component configurations has been on my Fusion wish list for quite some time, I'm pretty sure it has been requested several times as well. It would be fantastic if the visibility stuff lays the groundwork for configurations. 

Keep up the good work!

[tyler_henderson]

Thank you so much for taking the time to provide feedback.  We are definitely working on component configurations.  There are a lot of incremental steps we need to take to support them, and visibility overrides is one of them.  But we want to make sure we get the small stuff right along the way.

Back to visibility overrides, do you have any thoughts about the questions I posed?  I'm mainly interested in how component visibility overrides work today.  Is the current method for removing an override acceptable?  Is it ok that there is no visual indication when an override is present? 

Thanks again for you time.

[26-Taylor]

I think piggy-backing off of the way component visibility overrides work would be fine, at the very least a good starting point since it is familiar. I don't have enough time playing with them to give any suggestions on how they could be completely overhauled. 

As for visual indicators, I think it would be hard to go wrong with adding indicators/tool tips that explain why a button is not "working". For new users especially (but for all users as well) it isn't fun when a button is greyed out/unclickable and you have no idea why. Fusion does a pretty good job for the most part of explaining the what/why/how for features, better to have too much explanation than not enough. 

[tyler_henderson]

Got it.  Thanks again for your feedback!

[daniel_lyall]

I like it the way it is.

[mawilsonWCR]

From a UI perspective, If a user clicks to make a child element visible, it should, by default make the parent visible. If an object can't be made visible, the option shouldn't be presented. Alternatively, it should fail with an explanation.

[rbackman07]

-visibility is super confusing in context of the timeline. can we please have object visibility be a timeline feature (maybe an option)? it seems it already is in the timeline history (ie visiblity changes when you roll history marker)  but there is no way to see when things are turned on or off.

-what is the expected behavior for visibility and joins, I know if I hide objects they wont be merged if I then do a join command. but if you edit the join it gets reset then I have to manually go and hide all the bodies.

-isolate visibility usually does nothing.. 

-turn on or off visibility from a selection set? you can select objects then toggle visibility but don't think you can turn everything in a set visible (if some are already visible) even better to isolate visibility on selection set

-is sketch visibility related? what I would do for two more checkboxes in sketch palette (construction geom, sketch lines) ie you can hide all construction or show only projected.. also being able to export dxf with only visible lines would be amazing 😄 

-sometimes you can select invisible objects. sometimes selecting with component filter there is some other hidden component randomly getting selected. this may be mainly in manufacturing mode.

-also what's the deal with manufacture selection filters.. seems like every time I  am trying to edit a toolpath I have to go back to design mode to reset the selection filter. (maybe not related to visibility)

thanks for the awesome product

[tyler_henderson]

Thank you for the feedback.  A few comments:

-Object visibility is independent of the timeline.  Of course, some things can disappear if you roll the history marker back.  That can be because those things did not exist at that point in time.  Also, some objects may appear if you roll the marker back; this can be because the object was consumed by a feature that was created at a later point in the timeline.  However, any object visibility state that you set in the browser (using Isolate or the "Eye" buttons) will be maintained as you roll the history marker back and forth (as long as the visible objects exist at any given point in the history).

-Most commands maintain the current visibility state of objects when the command is executed, this includes edit operations.  If you had certain objects toggled Off when you activate a command, we don't remember that remember that the next time you use that command or edit the feature that was created.  We assume whatever visibility state you set when you activate the command is the state you want to use.  For something like Combine>Join, if you edit the feature, we assume you may want to add any body or component that's visible at the time you execute the edit, so we don't automatically hide the things you did not select originally.

-Selection Sets are simply for easily selecting multiple objects at once.  After that, the behaviors of command act the same as if you had selected them individually.  With that said, the "Show/Hide" command acts like a toggle on whatever is selected.  So, if you have multiple objects selected, some visible and some hidden, then the "Show/Hide" command will "show" the things that are hidden, and "hide" the things that are visible.  But you have a great point about needing to be able to "show" everything in the Selection Set if some things are hidden.  This can be accomplished with the "Show all components" or "Show all bodies" command while the set is selected.  But that's not effective if your selection set contains a mix of Bodies, Components, Sketches, and Construction Geometry.  That's something I will look at including in this project.

-Currently, "Isolate" is available for multiple selected objects, so you can use a Selection Set then use "Isolate" to hide everything except the objects in the Selection Set.

-Sketch visibility is part of this, but not sketch object visibility.  But I will pass along your request to the Product Manager for Sketches.

-I will also forward your issues with selection filters in Manufacturing.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide feedback.

Regards,

[rbackman07]

hey thanks for the response 🙂 and sorry I went off on a tangent. in regards to the visibility state. makes a lot of sense if a parent is invisible all the children are invisible. I love the idea of visibility overrides from imported components. 

maybe an extension on that feature where you could have groups of bodies that can have their visibility toggled in the same hierarchy. I suppose it is similar to selection sets except bodies would only have one parent.. for my workflow organizing bodies and having control of their visibility would be super helpful

[jean-michel_legoff]

Hi,

On this topic, I guess that everybody may have its own way to work and I'm not sure it will be easy to find a single rule.

For example I like plying with the visibility of some objects and sometimes of the parent.

But It could also be cool to save some "states" as is and be able to recall it independantly of active settings.

The visibility of some objects in Components is a little more boring, because you need to reopen/edit in place the componenet to change the visibility of one object (Sketch, plane, etc...).

As it's easy in an impirted sub-assembly to make visible a component or not (independantly of the saved state of this sub-assembly) I guess that for objects it could be the same...

[Naureka]

Hi

It might be a slightly off-topic, but is it possible to add an "isolate active component" keyboard shortcut? 😁

This is a really trivial feature to implement but would significantly improve user experience in some workflows. Activating this function manually is a bit of a hassle. One user has already made an external app for that.

[tyler_henderson]

We have an option in Preferences>Design called "Active Component Visibility".  When that option is On, the active component remains fully visible, but all other components become transparent (wireframe).  Do you have this option turned On?  Or do you prefer the inactive components to be completely hidden?  If the you prefer them to be fully hidden, would you want to choose this option each time you activate a component, or is it something that could be another Preference option that happens automatically each time you activate a component?

[Naureka]

There is an "isolate" function that works great - it hides all components except active one. This is very useful feature that speeds up design process and doesn't need to be automated in any way. The only problem is that it's well hidden in componet browser context menu and there is no way to quickly activate it from keyboard. Many users have been requesting for this shortcut for years.

[tyler_henderson]

Understood.

Thanks,

[RChritz]

To make designing faster it would be nice to be able to select a face of a body and still use the "v" key to toggle visibility on/off. Then I can remove parts without moving the mouse.

[jeff_strater]

@RChritz - this is not quite what you asked for, but close.  Did you know that if you double click on that face, it will select the parent component of that face?  So, you can double-click, then press V.  The only difference is that it is the owning component, not the owning body.

[Henrik_Horlin]

The current behavior with visibility (eye icon in tree) between child/parent component works as expected in my view.

Having the ability to change visibility of construction elements (foremost) in other components in an assembly would be very nice, having to open a part just to turn origin on/off and then save the part again feels like a bug that needs to be fixed.

[Anonymous]

Oh my gosh! I just re-read your post, realised what you meant and then tried it.

Double clicking selects the component, not the body! What a revelation!

🙂

Thanks

[DavidManivelle]

I can't remenber the name but there is a plug'in that works in this way.
But you're right it should be native.
An other approch would be to Alt+click on the eye to isolate an object.