Analysis of 'Point At Edge And Plane'

[lure23]

( This was intended to be a short story. It became a long one. Not my fault. Also, I'm not sure if IdeaStation is the right place for this. It's a full consistency analysis of the Construct features and tries to highlight places where naming, tooltips or both could be changed to make the tools more intuitive for the first-time user. At first, I thought everything was in place. In a deeper study, it's a mess. )

I was looking for a tool to make a point at the intersection of an axis and a plane. At first sight, it seemed that didn't exist.

A walkthrough of the tools revealed that the 'Point At Edge And Plane' is what I was looking for. But it didn't say 'axis' in its title. Well, that could be understood but other tools ('Point At Center Of Circle/Sphere/Torus' and 'Axis Through Cylinder/Cone/Torus') do state multiple options in their title.

So I started digging deeper..

I would suggest renaming this to 'Point At Edge/Axis And Plane' (or making also the others more generic). [Actually the generic naming may be a better approach - even now the long-named ... Circle/Sphere/Torus fail to mention in their name that also Sketch Arcs are entitled to the feature. It's a never-ending struggle to keep them correct.]

Also notice that the tooltips are pretty verbose and repeating. I think the two paragraphs could be merged or the second ones dropped for all the construction tools (the lower information is given anyways once the tool is selected, if one keeps the mouse stationary - that is the right place for it).

Further notice that there's excess empty space above all the tooltip texts (i.e. they are not vertically aligned); please make both the upper and lower margins the same.

The following tips I find a bit confusing:

"normal to an edge or sketch profile". Is this understandable and correct CAD lingo? To me, "normal" means somewhat perpendicular. Here, the idea is that the emerging plane will have the edge/sketch within it, right? How about "covering a 2D edge or sketch profile". The title itself says the thing perfectly, though.

( By saying "2D edge" I'm trying to make a distinction between a "linear" edge (i.e. a line) and a spacial edge (that defines a plane). Intuitively, just saying "edge" makes me think of a straight edge. )

The 'Tangent Plane' and 'Plane Tangent To Face At Point' are almost the same (and their names should be closer to reflect this). How about 'Tangent Plane At Point' for the latter?

BUG: For 'Tangent Plane' the tooltip mentions "at a point". Should be "at an angle".

The current tooltip text for 'Tangent Plane' (first paragraph) can be used as such for 'Tangent Plane At Point'. It works on conical elements as well. It uses a point. For two sister features s.a. these it'd be nice that their tooltips would follow almost the same wording (less confusion for us users).

Same applies for the second paragraphs (if you decide to keep them). They should be similar.

'Plane Tangent To Face At Point' applied to a conical object.

Doesn't this explicitly say "select a planar face and a work point ..". I was expecting to select first a plane, then a point (s.a. one of the corners in the above cone). Turns out, any point in the plane will do - the click of the plane simultaneously also locks the point. Weird - unexpected - unlike Fusion 360 elsewhere - should it behave like this?

The cone after clicking 'Axis Perpendicular At Point' thrice. Note that there are no specific visible 'points' in the places of the axes.

i.e. the 'Axis Through Two Points' only snaps to actual points in the geometry. I think the above is a bug in 'Axis Perpendicular …'

What exactly does the tooltip mean?

I can use this to make a construction axis alongside a linear (straight) edge. But "circular edge"? Trying that gave me:

Trying on a "sketch curve" doesn't have the curve selected. This tooltip is weird. Help me understand it.

"Axis Perpendicular to Face At Point" works the way I was expecting "Axis Perpendicular At Point" to work - i.e. lets one select a particular real point. Why are both here? Why have the no-I'll-just-take-where-ever-your-mouse-pointed (i.e. the first) version at all? Remove it and use the cuter name for this?

What I'm trying to say - thanks for reading so far - is that all this is highly complicated and inconsistent. About half of the Construction tools are simple. Another half is a mess. Make them all clean, and short but precisely tool tipped. Thanks.

One observation:

moving a body (tiling it) makes construction planes (at least a 'tangent in point') not move along. Is this intentional? Is there a way to make a construction plane move along? (maybe grouping both in the same component and moving the component?).

Yep. 

Cone moved as a root-level body.

Cone first promoted to a component, selected as the active component (probably doesn't matter), tangent plane created thereafter, component moved - tangent moves along.

Lesson learned: as Ron says, don't use root-level bodies in actual work. Make everything components, and sub-sub-components. Powerful. Too bad the beginner plays with root level bodies and therefore doesn't realize this power of modularity.

In 'Point At Edge And Plane' the selection order cannot be desided upon. (post: actually you need to select plane first, edge after that)

menu title:wrong order (edge first)

menu tooltip:right order (plane first)

selection tooltip:wrong order (edge first)

Now that surely is confusing.

To ease this burden, try to move to a system which a) removes unnecessary duplicates in 'help' messages, b) allows selection in either order and - even - c) would work on pre-selected edge and plane (or whatever). In other words, less limitations for us.

Versions: Fusion 360 1.8.601, OS X 10.8.4

[lure23]

One more..

The icon for 'Point At Edge And Plane' is wrong (the same as 'Axis Through Two Points').

Noticed this when I got both on the toolbar at once - strange, isn't it:

[Oceanconcepts]

Asko, I'm wanting to follow this, but only the first image in your post shows up.  Links appear missing for the rest. 

Ron

[lure23]

Ron, 

it seemed I had accidentially discovered a clever shortcut for uploading multiple images to the Forums. Turns out the results didn't last (more here). Since I cannot edit the original idea entry (isn't this Lithium amazing!) I'll paste the pictures here in order.

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On the last thing (the selection order) I am no longer sure. Seems one can select them in either order, but that doesn't always work either (I think that has to do with general difficulty of selecting axes). Anyways, I think this is way too much already.

[kat.ingalls]

Hey Asko, seems that the edit restriction is unique to IdeaStation entries only. Will let the Lithium team know that this is an issue. 🙂