The Eternal EDIT FEATURE Bug

[lindsay.fowler]

When using Edit Feature from the timeline on operations such as a Mirror, if you dare try to change the number of objects selected in the Objects field, you will lose your selection and not be able to select more than one object from then on.

I thought this would have been promptly fixed in a matter of days, but years later it is still a problem.. how has this gone unnoticed / ignored for so long?

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

For me holding Ctrl down allows adding or removing objects.

Mark

[jeff_strater]

please record a screencast of this "eternal" bug.  The way @HughesTooling described it should always work, but if you are seeing different behavior, we'd like to know what you are doing so we can fix it.

[lindsay.fowler]

Thanks @HughesTooling!  - that solves it.

@jeff_strater It's either a bug or a UI bungle -because CTRL is not needed when selecting features initially, just when editing and only for some operations and only sometimes. (never for editing extrude, often when editing fillets.) Where is the consistency? With all respect, a screencast is not required, my words are clear and the screencast tool and upload process is clunky and time consuming.

[jeff_strater]

The reason why CTRL is needed to select edges for Fillet is that when Fillet is in a "preview state" it is destructive of its inputs, and also may partially or completely destroy adjacent geometry.  That is, the edge selected to be filleted is no longer there, so it cannot be de-selected (selection and de-selection use the same logic).  Second, Fillet also produces new edges, which you don't want the user to select as fillet inputs.  So, Fusion needs a way to tell the command "temporarily suspend the preview so I can select/de-select edges".  CTRL is what is used for that function.

Why is CTRL not needed when first creating a fillet?  If the fillet radius is 0 (the default value), there is no preview, so no model geometry has been modified, so you can select edges without CTRL.  But, as soon as you have a radius, you have a preview, you have modified geometry, so CTRL is needed.

Why is CTRL always needed for Edit Feature?  Because the fillet does have a radius value, so a preview is shown, and so CTRL is needed.

[lachlan.ahrensZNTNG]

This functionality has "eternally" been tripping me up, and I was just about to file my own bug report, although I was also going to mention that the mirror feature selection works the same way.

The behavior is very non-intuitive. I would suggest that the UI needs updating to make this functionality more obvious, for fillet, mirror and anything else where this happens.

I don't have access to post on the feedback hub, otherwise I would post there.

[HughesTooling]

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@lachlan.ahrensZNTNG wrote:

The behavior is very non-intuitive. I would suggest that the UI needs updating to make this functionality more obvious, for fillet, mirror and anything else where this happens.

I don't have access to post on the feedback hub, otherwise I would post there.

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Pretty much every windows program that has multiple selection uses a combination of Ctrl or Shift to add to selections. Really puzzles me why people struggle with this, I mean every program from file manager to Excel use Ctrl to make multiple selections,

Mark

[lindsay.fowler]

It wasn’t difficult at all Mark - I use control all the time selecting things - it was the inconsistency of not needing to do it initially, enjoying success, and then having it not work minutes later and being expected to know the UI has changed when you edit the feature. I don’t know why anyone has difficulty understanding this. 

Anyway it now informs the user with a little tool tip "use Ctrl..to edit selection.", and I think that’s very helpful.

[HughesTooling]

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@lindsay.fowler wrote:

it was the inconsistency of not needing to do it initially, enjoying success, and then having it not work minutes later and being expected to know the UI has changed when you edit the feature. I don’t know why anyone has difficulty understanding this. 

Anyway it now informs the user with a little tool tip "use Ctrl..to edit selection.", and I think that’s very helpful.

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Perhaps they should have a default fillet radius so after the first edge selection you always need to use Ctrl. The only reason the behaviour changes is because when first run the fillet is set to zero, setting it to zero at any time will allow selection without Ctrl.

Mark