Improve constraint debugging in sketches

[jrychter]

Debugging problems with constraints in sketches is notoriously difficult. It's mostly a guesswork game, modify something, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. One often ends up just destroying the sketch and building it from scratch again. But it doesn't have to be this way.

At a minimum, I'd like to see:

• A full list of constraints displayed when I click a sketch element (icons aren't enough)
• Mousing over a constraint in the list should highlight the corresponding partner element
• If there are problems, don't just show an error message saying "Error". Tell me and show me clearly where the problems are.

This is something that all parametric modeling CAD systems get wrong, so here's a chance for Fusion to make a real difference!

[TrippyLighting]

In general debugging abilities in Fusion 360 are very under developed. On of the the most maddening is when the app throws an error message. That is actually a part many CAD apps get right.

I don't think I ran into that many constraint issues in the 14 Years I've worked with Solid Works. With issues I mean that constraints either don't work as intended due to bugs in the code or simply break.

I also agree on the icons only approach. Sometimes you have three different constrains in on point and the UI (click and hold mouse button on point for more than a second) is really cumbersome.

[AdamEllison]

Hi Colin,

The ability to debug complex sketches would set fusion apart from other CAD software, and create a tremendously powerful advantage for power users.

One additional idea is to display a timeline of the sketch when inside the sketch edit mode (just the same as in parametric modelling mode), that way you can work back through the history of that sketch and see where things went wrong and fix them up.

I'd love to see some power sketch features like the above.