Our customer has brought this issue to our attention. When sketch geometry has projected geometry in it, and that PG has missing references, we'd love to see better warnings that the references are missing. I know it turns magenta, but that's not always good enough to know something is broken.
They reuse a lot of data and are constantly making use of projected geometry and shared sketches in their designs. When a design is reused, often they will delete the features, but leave sketches behind to make adjustments and then reuse those sketches again. If a sketch is shared, they will usually turn that sketch visibility off so that it isn't just visible all the time.
If a sketch is set to be not visible, you will not see the magenta geometry after deleting features, because the sketches remain invisible. They then have to touch each and every sketch left behind after deleting features to see if there are items to correct.
For lines, the color difference is often quite obvious. (Though, not for those with colorblindness... we'll get to that.) But, for projected points, they can be tough to notice. And the lack of a warning of any kind seems counter-intuitive to what happens when other features/geometry gets broken.
So, for these reasons, we'd like to request the following:
- Would like to see some sort of warning dialog box pop up when this happens. Even if it includes a box to "Don't show this again", it will at least be available to assist the user in detecting and correcting broken projected geometry references.
Inventor does not throw a warning when the sketch geometry being referenced is no longer existent. With broken features, usually there is a warning message that comes up. With sketches, especially shared sketches, this information will often have Visibility deliberately turned off. When the features are deleted, the invisible sketches will not warn the user that something is broken.
- If the sketch containing broken references to projected geometry is edited or visible, points and centerpoints can be very difficult to notice. Would like some sort of warning symbol next to broken references, just like when features, part references, and constraints are broken you see the symbol in the browser to indicate a problem. Again, could make this a toggle to switch it on/off.
For those with colorblindness, it can be difficult to distinguish magenta geometry from other lines in a sketch, such as the yellow projected geometry. This would enhance usability for those users. Approximately 8 percent of men experience colorblindness, which is a significant portion of your user base. Enhancing usability for them would be appreciated.
- As noted in the above point, magenta is very hard to notice compared to other colors being used in the default color scheme for those who are colorblind. Not really a bug, but a usability issue to pass along to development or the UI team. This also makes points and centerpoints difficult to pick out in a sketch when they are broken projected geometry. In addition to changing the color scheme or having some sort of warning symbol next to broken reference geometry, have an adjustable point size so they are easier to spot. Even without the colorblindness issue, adjustable point sizes would be really handy with all the high-resolution screens being produced and used in the workplace.
