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Body opacity override Active component visibility.

Body opacity override Active component visibility.

I would like Active component visibility to not override body settings for opacity. At the time I noticed this problem I had a component with 2 bodies and I wanted one transparent to make it easier to see the body I was working on. I don't want to disable Active Component visibility because I want the rest of the design transparent as well.

 

So in this example I wanted to work on the highlighted body with the other body transparent.

Clipboard01.png

 

But when I make the component active both become opaque and the rest of the assembly is transparent. The reason I have 2 bodies at this point is because I needed to scale body2 independent to body1 then combine so I don't want to use 2 components.

before.png

 

Opacity at the component level does override Active component visibility I'd just like the body setting to override it as well.

tool6.png

 

Thanks Mark

 

2 Comments
Scoox
Collaborator

In my opinion this is a good idea. The setting under Preferences > General > Design > Active component visibility is too clever for its own good. It makes incorrect assumptions about what users need to see. I've turned it off and prefer just toggling visibility on/off using the browser light bulb icons, as and when required.

 

However, wouldn't it be nice if we had a control similar to he light bulb to control whether items (components, bodies, sketches, etc) are opaque or translucent? All directly from the browser. I thought perhaps we could even re-use the existing light bulb icons, combined with the right mouse button, something like the state diagram below. The circles represent visibility level (full, off, and 50%). The '50%' would be the translucent state, and the amount could be a user-defined value in the Preferences, i.e. it could be 65% if the user so wishes:

 

 

Translucent items.png

 

The right-click action would only work only when the Active component visibility option is enabled, otherwise all objects are always visible, as per the current implementation. Objects for which the global settings is being override (after being right-clicked) should get a different colour to indicate this:

 

Translucent items 2.png

 

Below I throw some more thoughts into the discussion.

 

Interestingly, Fusion devs are well aware of the fact that, even when this setting is enabled, there exist situations where being able to see non-active components is beneficial. Proof of this is the fact that if you call up the Joint command any translucent components (non-active components) suddenly become opaque. That is perfectly sensible, because joints can involve any two components, and Fusion makes any eligible targets opaque to signal that very fact.

 

However, Fusion devs forgot to apply this same logic to other commands. For example, if you invoke the Align command, non-active components stay translucent. even though though aligning one component to another is a very common thing to do; If you invoke the Extrude command, same thing, only the active component is opaque, in which case Fusion incorrectly assumes you want to extrude features of the active component, which may or may not be the case.

 

Another case which often gets me is this: when selecting features for the 'From object' and 'To object' fields in the Extrude tool. I often need to extrude to a face of another component, but if the target component is translucent then it is very hard to see what's being selected (and often end up selecting the wrong face, of course). In this case, it would too make sense if Fusion could intelligently make eligible targets opaque, just like it does when the Joint tool is used.

Scoox
Collaborator

My previous suggestion could be improved upon. The bottom line is that it should be possible to force objects to be in any one of the following states, independently of the default global preference, and with minimal mouse mambo-jumbo:

 

  • VIsible and Opaque
  • Visible and Translucent
  • Hidden

Combining two states into one icon may be a little bit less intuitive. Having a dedicated icon just for transparency would be more intuitive, but also take up more horizontal space in the browser.

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