Get rid of redundant constraint editing options and make the UX more consistent with Windows

[ambrose]

I would like to get rid of both the features described below, which I think are redundant and frankly stupid. Failing that, please add a setting to turn them off.

I am a windows user, I am accustomed to the Windows way of doing things, Inventor only runs on windows.

On Windows, a single click selects something and the delete key deletes it.

So, to delete a constraint I click on it and press delete. But instead a little box appears to let me edit the value of the constraint, and now I have deleted the number by accident.

To delete the constraint, I must either use the right click menu, or click it a second time before pressing delete (but not too quickly, see below).

On Windows, a double click selects something and opens/activates it.

So to open up a constraint for editing, I double click it. But wait! A different version of the same little box appears.

To open and edit a constraint I have to use the right click menu, or select it (which already takes one more click than it should) and hit enter.

So, Inventor has two extra ways to edit the constraint value. These both work in a way that I would consider non-standard for a Windows program and both displace other more useful functionality to do so.

The single click behaviour is doubly redundant, given that it does exactly what a double click does, and given that it stops me selecting a constraint in the expected way. The double click behaviour is also unnecessary, because if it simply opened the "edit constraint" dialog, the constraint value is already highlighted, so you can type in the new value and hit enter in exactly the same way that the current reduced functionality works. I think that’s how it worked in old days of Inventor but perhaps I’m remembering it wrong.

I guess the reasoning must have been that editing the value of a constraint is much more common than deleting it or modifying it in other ways. In my experience this is not the case at all. I probably delete constraints or move them to different geometry at more often than editing the numbers. For me, by far the most common value for a constraint is and will always remain zero.

Even if I am an outlier, and most other users do spend lots of time editing constraint values, there was still no need to add the same functionality twice (actually thrice).

I really hope the UX team can take a look at this loose end and tidy it up.

I’m usually more hesitant when it comes to telling other programmers how to do their job. I am going out on a limb this time, I’m certain that fixing this would be trivial. Maybe 4 hours of coding absolute worst case, should be less than 30 minutes if the codebase is well structured.

[ambrose]

I vaguely remember when the single click editing was added, someone at Autodesk was clearly proud of it. The "What's new" for Inventor was disappointing that year. I couldn't figure out why they had bothered with this "feature". It shouldn't have made it past the first review meeting. Smells like the pet project of middle management types with big egos and small ideas!

[swalton]

Honestly, I like the single click to edit feature because I spend more time adjusting constraint values than deleting constraints.  It allows me to spend the least amount of time adjusting a constraint.

[ambrose]

Hi @swalton, that's fair enough, but is having to double click instead of single click really that big of a deal? Of all the extra clicks you might have to deal with, a double click is a pretty minor change. Also, I'd be perfectly happy if there was just a setting to turn this feature on and off. 

I would be interested to know what kind of stuff you design and what your workflow is. Why do you end up having to adjust constraints so often? Perhaps I'm missing a trick!

[ambrose]

Thinking about it, the behavior is not even consistent with other parts of Inventor. If it's true that editing the value of a constraint is the most common activity, then that is certainly true of e.g. the extrusion feature. Yet when I click on an extrusion, it selects it, and when I double click, it opens it for editing.

[SchalkJordaan]

Getting rid of the single click for editing make sense. I would prefer the double click and work from there.

[tstoutYZ3MS]

I will only vote for yours if you also vote for my similar idea.

[Yijiang.Cai]

Many thanks for posting the idea to us, and tracked as [INVGEN-66691] & [INVGEN-65943]

[Yijiang.Cai]

@ambrose @tstoutYZ3MS @SchalkJordaan @swalton we have provided the option in the hamburger menu to hide the input dialog for clicking constraint node in the browser. When it is checked, the selected constraint will be deleted when pressing Delete key. Does it work for you?

[ambrose]

@Yijiang.Cai It is great that we can turn off the single click editing option. However, I would also like to get rid of the current double click behaviour.

At the moment, double clicking a constraint loads this dialog.

However, I think it should just load the full constraint edit dialog. This would be consistent with the way other parts of inventor work (e.g. extrude).

Importantly, when it loads this dialog, the offset value should be given focus and be highlighted for editing. This is not the current behaviour. At the moment the "Type" selector is given focus, which is not helpful to any workflow I can think of.

If this was done, then people who like the existing double click behaviour would still be able to edit a constraint offset just as quickly as they can now.

I hope this make sense. 

[tstoutYZ3MS]

@Yijiang.Cai, this is not acceptable because I must set my editing constraint offsets in the feature browser pane to "Off" in order to enable the delete by "Delete" key behavior. I should not be forced to select between either one or the other behavior. I really need to be able to edit offset values within the feature browser pane, along with ALSO being able to delete constraints with the "Delete" key.