Secondary Prompt Gets in the Way

[neljoshua]

I was working on a form to represent one of the designs we are currently developing (link to design here).  It is an expanded metal plate.  In any event, I was working on dimpling the surface and so created a box form with a number of faces and selected every other point in order to indent them.  During this task, the secondary prompt infuriatingly and randomly moved around on the screen, at times obstructing the points I was trying to select and generally just being a nuisance (see the Screencast below).  I was able to work around this, but it sure is annoying!

This has been a pet peeve of mine for awhile, but today it was so bad that I thought I should bring it up again.  If you are curious, see an earlier post here and an idea on the IdeaStation here.

For Autodesk employees, I have a few questions:

1)  Why does this prompt randomly move around?  It is distracting/annoying and sometimes gets in the way of what I am trying to do.

2)  I tried to move this prompt, but was unable to do so.  Is this intentional?

3)  Why do these even exist?  All of the options are already present in what I will call the main prompt.  Duplicating the information does not seem to have a purpose.

4)  As to #3, I am certain users would notice if you just removed this prompt (and some may find it useful).  For me, however, it is needless.  Would you please add a setting that allows the user to turn all secondary prompts off?

[haughec · Accepted solution]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the post.  Others have made similar comments, and we definitely understand the concern.  We've discussed a few solutions:

1) Being smarter about how we present in-canvas UI.  Microsoft products, among others, will remove in-canvas UI if you move your cursor away from it.

2) Offer an option to disable it, as you suggested.

That said, we haven't yet devoted any resources to the project.  This is something that we'd like to refine, but it hasn't yet reached the top of our priority list.

Thank you,

Charles

[neljoshua]

@haughec,

Thanks for the reply.  I am glad to hear that this is going to be looked at.

Making the prompt dodge the cursor would be acceptable, but my vote would be to allow the user to determine whether or not to use it.