What does a red "lock" icon mean on a sketch icon?

[RogerInHawaii]

I've get several sketches for a component and one of them has what looks like a small red "lock" icon on it in the lower right corner where the pencil icon normally is. What does it mean?

When I bring up the sketch to edit it, I can't see that there's anything wrong with the sketch. And I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything to "lock" the skecth, whatever that might mean. I 

[Beyondforce · Accepted solution]

Hey @RogerInHawaii ,

This means if the sketch is fully constraint or not. The Lock icon means that the sketch is fully constraint. 😉

Cheers / Ben
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[etfrench]

It means there is a UI designer that doesn't know that red means 'Danger, Will Robinson' and a lock means you can't change it 😀

Fortunately, a few users have deduced the true nature of the icon 😁

[TheCADWhisperer]

All of your sketches should have that lock symbol.

File>Export and then Attach your *.f3d file here and I will demonstrate why.

[wmhazzard]

The red lock means that your other 5 sketches are not fully constrained. 

[TrippyLighting]

I'd have to add to this discussion the this appears to apply mainly to 2D sketches.

A 3D sketch at this point in time cannot be fully constrained.

[Phil.E]

@etfrench (and anyone else) Can I get a little more feedback please? Thanks for your opinions.

It used to be a red pin, was that better?

The old way of doing it

Here's the help page that explains fully constraining a sketch:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=SKT-FULLY-DEFINE-CONSTRAIN-SKETCH

The Fusion UI was recently updated to share icons with Inventor. But the sketch constrained icon was not included. Would this icon work better for Fusion?

Many common icons

[etfrench]

The push pin or the Inventor icon would be much better as it doesn't look like a warning.  As far as colors go, a red icon should indicate a non fully constrained sketch and green should indicate a fully constrained sketch.

[TrippyLighting]

I'd keep the lock icon but some make it green.

Most people here on the forum and on the Facebook group tat ask this question think that something is wrong with their sketch because of the red color.

[GRSnyder]

A pin icon is already used to mean "grounded", so it might be better not to overload that symbol.

I doubt you're going to be able to identify a symbol that communicates "fully-constrained sketch", so whatever marking is used, it's going to be something people just have to learn. My suggestion would be to focus on communicating a more basic message such as "done", "complete", or "good".

I like the fact that unconstrained sketches currently show a document with a pencil. That seems to communicate both the general idea "sketch" and also more specifically "sketch that I'm still working on". Have you considered just removing the pencil portion of the icon when the sketch is complete? It doesn't have to be replaced with anything - you'd still have two obviously related but visually distinct states.

[Anonymous]

As per a previous reply if an icon is shown at all it should be green.

[TheCADWhisperer]

@Phil.E 

I would use a green checkmark - I think everyone associates that with "good".

So then the new users would question, "Why is this sketch marked "good" and this one not?"

Hopefully they would quickly learn how to make all (or at least most) sketches "gooder". 😊

Something similar to this...

[MichaelT_123]

Wrong, ... Mr TheCADwisperer :),

There are places where "red"  is "good", and "green" is "bad"... even when you look back not a hundred but thousands of years.

Regards

MichaelT

[Anonymous]

You are absolutely right that there are examples of green being bad/problem, and red being good. This got me interested, so I just had a quick google out of interest thinking that Chinese users might think the opposite (in China red symbolises good fortune). However I found that even in China their COVID app shows green as ok, and red being a problem which at a guess is as a result of Western conditioning of Chinese software users.  I don't have any evidence to back this up, but I would expect the majority of software users would consider something red as indicating a problem or that something needs attention (like the new notification icon on whatsapp), and something green as being okay or that nothing needs doing.

Pete.

[MichaelT_123]

Hi Mr Peter Goodman,

My post was some kind of tongue-in-cheek with some philosophical under taste.

We have been deeply indoctrinated by ... traffic lights ... beings of supposedly low intelligence.  

So profoundly that we do not realize it, let's think what would happen (or happening) if a higher level of intelligence take on us? 

Regards

MichaelT

[etfrench]

If red was good, we would have fewer L-cones and more M-cones.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

If you like, you can create an icon according to your own ideas or use the sample from the attachment.
To insert the icon you have to proceed like this:

günther

Note: don´t change the file name!

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

Michael... don't worry I had picked up on the tongue-in-cheekiness of your reply. I don't think indoctrination is a bad thing in Human Machine Interfaces, but provides efficicency. Every time something we come across is unconventional people will either assume incorrectly or be confused about what is going on. Imagine if traffic light colours were reversed but words added to clarify, it doesn't matter that the words made it obvious, there would still be many accidents where people assumed incorrectly. Just as an interesting thought around that, now if traffic lights always had been randomly assigned colours but had words, would we be more careful?!  This is actually a very interesting topic, particularly etfrench's comment about the quantity of M-cones (green) and L-cones (red) in our vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell.  I might end up wasting a few more hours googling about it 😀

Günther... I'm not that upset to want to customise the icon now that I know what it means (but its cool that you can do, so thanks for that - btw I like your idea for the icon. maybe something similar with a yellow warning triangle/red exlamation mark inside for an under-constrained sketch?). 😀

I really only want to point this out to the developers that this is an inconsistency to general software convention, to Fusion itself, and (in my opinion) could be improved. It in no way detracts from my enjoyment and appreciation of the software and i don't want this to come across super negative.

Thanks, Pete.

[g-andresen]

Hi Peter,

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Günther... I'm not that upset* to want to customise the icon now that I know what it means (but its cool that you can do, so thanks for that - btw I like your idea for the icon. maybe something similar** with a yellow warning triangle/red exlamation mark inside for an under-constrained sketch?). 😀

---

* I had not understood it that way either.

**I create icons in Inkscape, scale them to the desired size and export them with the requested  name. Using the path shown, you can add a variety of custom icons for Fusion.

günther

[JetForMe]

To me the lock icon means I can't edit the sketch, especially in the context of a pencil icon for other sketches. I also agree with others that the icon used to indicate a fully-constrained sketch should be green, not red. And it should probably be something like

    |-|

Rather than a lock, and if a sketch is not fully constrained, don't have any icon at all.

Also, perhaps at the top of the contextual menu, add an item with the "constrained" icon and the words "fully constrained", or the alternative nomenclature if it's not. Hovering over this item can expand a tooltip that's more verbose.