Drawing changes in next update?

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Can I get a detailed description of what will be added for drawings in the next update?
I have to say I was expecting a lot more in this one and was pretty depressed to see it didn't get more attention.
I feel like a lot of development time in F360 is spent on flash and glam that might be more likely to suck people in because it's cool and pretty not leaving enough time to focus on the real workhorse areas of what a CAD program should do.

[scott.price]

Hi, thanks for your note.

I'm sorry to hear features you were looking for didn't make it into the last update. We, also, wish we could fit more into each update, I assure you. On the plus side we are targeting an 8 week release cycle so improvements and additions to the product are always just around the corner.

Currently we're working on adding Parts list and ballooning tools as well as detail views; these are coming along well and will be pushed out in coming releases when they are ready.

Would you mind going into more detail about what features you feel you are missing from drawings - as well as how you feel these missing features are impacting your work?

Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing more.

Best,

Scott

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Can you give more detail on what you mean by balloning tools?

It's been too long since my GD&T classes and since I regularly used a program with all the proper drawing features for me to give you as intelligent and thought out a reply as I would like but I mean pretty much everything.

I feel like the ability to do proper GD&T should be like top priority.
http://www.etinews.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/effective-training/fig_2-13.jpg

I could only figure out how to do about 20% of that drawing in F360.
There should be the ability to place datums and the ability to use GD&T symbols.

On top of GD&T I would expect it to be able to recognize and call out hole depths, thread size and depth, and other basic features.
There should be some base tolerances and different ways of displaying them.
You should be able to select from baseline, ordinate and other dimensioning styles and it should stay in that dimensioning style till you select another one.

As for how they are impacting my work?
Either I can send manufacturers and customers drawings that look like a second grade art project or I have to export my models or DXFs, import them into another program like draftsight and use it to make detailed drawings.

[scott.price · Accepted solution]

Thanks for getting back.

That drawing is great reference point. GD&T is a huge goal of ours and it is very highly prioritized on the development roadmap.

As far as ballooning tools; they will provide for placing associative balloons on components in an assembly to identify those components referenced by an associative parts list.

Your other feature ideas are helpful too - the core drawing functionality is being continually developed, and hilighting painpoints as you have on the other thread really does help us reassess and rework our designs.

Please let us know if and how the updates are falling short of your expectations - A short release cycle has it's disadvantages as far as how much we can push out each time, but it allows us to recieve and act on concerns from you and the rest of the user group much more rapidly, which is incredibly valuable.

Best,

Scott

[TrippyLighting]

OK. fair enough, even though that question has been asked many times with basically the same type of people answering the question the same way. 

 GD&T is a big goal, so lets start with the simple stuff, e.g. the ability to insert centers for holes and radii.

In order to greate the simple drill template (see attachment) that I am going to use to create the breakouts in my Hammond Aluminum Electronics Enclosure (by hand, no fancy CNC here) I had to go back to Geomagic Design so I can insert the centers into the drill holes not even for dimensioning but for the simple purpose to be able to accurately locate the center punch before starting to drill holes.

That feature (adding centers )has been listed in any thread in recent weeks that pertained to required drawing features.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

While I am sure that some areas may be more of a challenge it seems the majority of it should be pretty simple.
To do a lot of the GD&T I would think you would just need a symbols library and a basic formatted annotation type cell where they could be entered manually.
Same thing like with depth callout symbols and such. It would be awesome if the software was able to see those things and add those callouts intelligently or for there to be a way to select them easily referencing the model but for now a symbols library would be a huge step forward and I can't imagine it would be as hard as developing half the stuff that I never use in F360.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Scott

I understand that you guys must have a ton on your plate and it's very impressive seeing the progress that has been made since I subscribed. 
I have just wondered many times what the main driving forces are behind the development direction.
I think the idea station is a great idea but I have wondered if it might be better if there was some priority given to paying customers or people who use the software in a proffessional environment.
If I was retired and playing with my own little projects or if I was in highschool and using the software for a class project I might have a lot more time to post suggestions and ideas of where I wanted the software to go but should that be the driving force behind CAD software?
I am a forum whore. I love the format, I love colaborating, sharing and learning. I spend a lot of time on the automotive forums that revolve around my passions and my business.
With all those things going for me I am still trying to run a small startup business, trying to take care of a million things a day and trying to keep my sanity doing so and I just don't have as much time as I would like to put into suggestions, troubleshooting and the potential future of F360.
For each of me I know there are probably 100 professionals working 80 hours a week who don't have time to post on the forums or idea station. People who are too busy just dealing with software crashes, hangs, glitches or workarounds to missing features to even consider taking the time to share it. These are the people whos opinions I would want for software development.

A lot of the things that I see changing F360 seem to me more like these things that would either just be good for marketing and catching peoples eye or things that are not as important to proffessional use.

I kind of miss the old dashboard where we could do eferything from F360.
I would have liked the addition of the quick view tab but if I had to choose just one I liked the old way better. I definitely would have taken increased drawing capability over the new data panel any day.

I do wish it was done in addition to instead of replacing altogether the old file manager. My organization has gone to hell since then because I can't be bothered to open up a browser to move a file or make some of the other changes that you used to be able to do on the fly.
Same goes for a lot of the visual changes.
The rendering isn't as good as it could be but it was good enough to get an idea across in a way that looked pretty **** nice.
The user interface seems to look a littler shinyer since the last update but it was good enough for me not to care before. Heck I used freecad for a couple years. I left because of lack of features but I would take freecad level graphics with a full featured drawing package over pretty and shiny.

I guess all I'm really getting at is that I oftentimes don't feel like the priorities are around what's important in a professional application.
But maybe I am just not the target audience for what is leading the development of F360.