Text widget blocks selection set

[bhsharp]

So the text widget that pops up and auto-grabs focus seems ... pretty buggy. A lot of the time I'll be sketching and draw a rectangle or whatever and while I'm dragging those little widgets don't have focus for some reason, so I can't type dimensions in. Other times, I'll click on one and start typing in and it'll immediately close as soon as I type something it can parse.

I love the idea (I've used Sketchup heavily for many many years) but in practice it's just flaky and often frustrating.

Here's one example that just happened to me. Trying to edit a feature in the timeline and add new shapes to the selection set because I edited the original sketch which resulted in more closed shapes... but every time I add one, the text widget grabs focus to ask the extrusion depth and I can't add any more. In the end, I had to edit the feature once for every shape I wanted to add, add the shape, hit enter, edit again. Argh.

[bhsharp]

Another example. Trying to move some lines, select them, hit M, click on the arrow so the text widget pops up - and basically as soon as I type anything into it at all, it insta-closes (which is bad if I keep typing, it'll start doing stuff) and I have to finish over in the actual dialog.

This text widget doesn't feel super ready for prime time, which is a bummer because if it worked well it'd be a huge part of my workflow.

[TrippyLighting]

I am not exactly sure what to  make of the second screencast, as I don't see anything wrong going on in there, however, the first screencast highlights a problem with UI consistency in Fusion 360 that has been reported already a while ago and I am hoping will be fixed in one of the the next updates. That has nothing to do with the dimensioning bos grabbing the focus.

When you are editing an existing selection as you are doing in your first screencast, in all other areas of Fusion 360 you need to press and hold the CTRL key (Windows) or CMD key (macOS) to add something to the selection. In this case it allows you to add one additional profile to the extrusion, but to add the second one you'll have to press and hold the CTRL/CMD modifier key.

Also as I see your design in these screencast, you may want to review what the difference between a component and a body is. Once done with that you may search the forum for the term R.U.L.E #1, because if you do detemine that you should work with components, following that rule will be the best way to do so.

[bhsharp]

In the second one, the important note is that when I am typing into the text widget, I never hit Enter. I just type some characters and am in the middle of typing more and poof, it disappears.

[bhsharp]

Also, note in the first recording where I do press and hold Ctrl while clicking on the second face (after trying Shift and it not working) and it still doesn't add it.

[TrippyLighting]

Aha. I did not notice that! Could you share your design ? (For example export as .f3d and attach to your next post)

[innovatenate]

The holding CTRL tip should help for the first screencast when selecting multiple section profiles. If it doesn't, can you try selecting the "Profiles" button in the extrude command again to see if this will let you start selecting profiles again?

The text widget, a.k.a. head's up display (HUD), disappearing is a bit odd. I notice the key to reproducing this issue is to following these steps:

1. Initiate the move command (with some sketch geometry selected)

2. Select the arrow to indicate the direction of translation (the HUD will appear)

3. Select part of the numbers in the HUD (enter numbers if necessary)

4. Select Delete twice.

Result: The move command is exited

I would expect that you could continue to edit in the HUD until the escape or enter key is pressed. Does that sound right to you?

I've logged the HUD behavior under report ID FUS-26186 for further investigation.

Thanks,

[bhsharp]

Nate - yeah, those steps repro it. The thing I don't understand, also, is sometimes for some operations when that text widget comes up, it has focus immediately so I can start typing. In fact, sometimes it happens for the move tool, too. But sometimes (like this) it doesn't, which is usually when things seem broken. Maybe just needs a pass on cleaning up all that focus management? Even if the text widget didn't disappear at inopportune times, having to click on it is a pain, especially since it appears at seemingly-random locations (probably related to path selection order) - it's often nowhere near my mouse. Again, just feels like someone could spend a week on cleaning up its behavior and have a pretty significant product impact.

I've since changed the model so I can't repro the exact problem with the profile selection bug, but I'm pretty certain I tried everything (including clicking on Profiles again) to no avail.

I'm attaching an f3d of the current / final version of the file in case it's helpful.