Offset
Thanks for your post. Your observations are helpful to us in tuning the capability.
a) It defaults every time to "loop select", why?
This is a bug. Fusion commands should now, in most cases, remember the last setting and preserve it (within the same session). We will fix this.
b) It defaults on the last offset dimension used, even if you click the arrow to go the other way
If you are referring to the fact that offset defaults to the last offset value used (if you type in a value), that is intended. Personally, as a frequent user of Fusion, I find this very valuable. If I am making something with 3 mm walls, I like the fact that offset remembers "3 mm" and uses it the next time. So, this one I would say is a personal preference. If we stopped remembering the last typed value, other users would be upset. I'm not really sure what you mean by "even if you click the arrow to go the other way".
c) Why have arrows if you still have to add + or -
Yes, you could argue that we could dispense with the - sign, and just handle that internally. This is something that is somewhat Fusion-wide. To Extrude in a negative direction, you need to add the "-". But, we could certainly change that at some point.
d) The - sign is not visible in the window so you are unawhere where the line is going. If you are using a large dimension it goes off of the screen so you have to zoom out to find it.
This is a good point. The text entry boxes should be bigger, I agree. There will always be values where the "-" is scrolled off, but I agree, the way it is today is not good, even for small values. We can improve this.
e) Sometimes you want to step on from the last offset line, this is not possible
This is a much-discussed current limitation. I won't go into details, but "offset of offset" is hard, due mostly to the complex nature of Fusion offset's tolerance to geometry changes in the offset, and the associative nature of the new offset. The workaround is to just offset again from the original, and add in the first offset value. We hope to fix this, but it will take a while, and we felt that the added benefit of adding associativity to offset was worth the tradeoff of this limitation. Others can disagree, of course.
But, in my personal opinion (as a user of Fusion, not as a developer of the product), the advantages of having associative offset outweigh some of these downsides (the bugs notwithstanding - those need to be fixed). Having a design where you can change the initial sketch and have the entire design update is pretty powerful. Associative offset was one of the big blockers of that. I am obviously biased here, but I do think that the new offset is a significant improvment over the old one.
Jeff Strater (Fusion development)
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
There are at least two ways to do this that come to my mind immediately that would not use the offset tool at all.
The offset tool is more aimed to offset a more complicated profile, berhaps consisting of several connected line segmens, arcs ans splines.
1. Simply apply a symmetry constraint to the two line segments and to the centerline (in that order)
2. If that plate is rectangular you can apply a midline constraint to the line defining the width between the two lines.
@gordonclamp wrote:
Hi Jeff
I was modelling a plate who's width I required to be equal about a centreline. The obvious method for me is to produce a centre line and then offset that line either side by the required amount. I picked the centre line and direction arrow and placed the line to the right of the centre line, I picked the centre line again along with the left direction arrow but the line appeared to the right again, over the first line, so now I have to drag that line right across to the left to place it in the correct position and remember the line is not on the end of the cursor at this point.
Regards Gordon
For your example above have you tried a centre point rectangle, you'd just click the centre line and when you pick a corner for the rectangle it would have symmetry about the centre line. If the centre line is at an angle you could use a 3 point rectangle, make sure you get a parallel constraint as you draw the first line. Here's a screencast making an aligned rectangle about a centre line.
Mark
Mark Hughes
Owner, Hughes Tooling
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One small point. Perhaps this could be considered questionable icon/manipulator design, but I think that there is some misconception about what the arrow thingy is:
This is not a "flip direction" widget. It is what you drag to change the offset. This particular widget is used in several places in Fusion:
For pattern count:
In the Sculpt environment, for primitives, to choose the number of division:
In Sculpt, in Insert Edge (a very close analogy to offset):
And it behaves pretty consistently in all these usages. You drag it one way or the other to change the value that is affected.
So, while some don't like this UI, it common enough that it should be familiar to Fusion users. While I understand that the old UI was perhaps more convenient to use, there are technical reasons why this is difficult in the new world, so the combination of using a familiar paradigm plus the difficulty in implementing the old UI in associative offset is what led us to this decision.
Jeff
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
