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scenario 1. Regular customer where we file jobs by job number and start new ones based on similar jobs...my 24 yr old colleague types in the number of the similar job...and he gets 600 hits on similar jobs then flicks through low res previews...
I go to the customer folder, then drill down by visual searching (with my eyes) for similar jobs.
Who gets there first? 50/50
Scenario 2. "James print me out so and so, project so and so". He searches and gets All the so and so files and usually asks "which so and so"? Me? I go the customer folder and drill down and find issC of project x for customer y in about 10 seconds.
for me, folders and files works best. I'm yet to be convinced about search as the only option. If you have 500,000 files and projects sure search makes sense but even for us with around 1500 projects on the live system, I can beat search every time.
It takes organisation. But what is wrong with that?
bottom line, It should matter not a diddly squat how we find files. There is no reason at all why Onshape cannot offer world class folders and files AND search. All I do know is that the current list format is pants.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Files & folders work (alone) for a tractable quantity of data for which you can apply categorizations which remain memorable. They work well for things that are personal to us - since our arrangement of folders is just that: ours, it's pretty personal. Search on the other hand works well across very large quantities of information that are either just too large to categorize and organize or for which a single categorization per item just doesn't work. If we think about CAD documents on the basis of a shallow view of the data (name, description, last modified date) then folders work well - but if the documents have much more exposed information (parts, materials, features, manufacturing costs) then it can be difficult to organize items into a folder. There can be situations where a document wants to be in two or folders at the same time and it can't (symbolic links are an attempt to work around this limitation). In such situations searching on the data can be a great alternative so long as you can form the query easily and the data returned is ordered well (Google's innovation wasn't search per se it was PageRank - straight search of the internet was already well done by Altavista, but the result ordering wasn't as helpful)
Previously I worked on BeOS which (for those that remember that far back) had a fairly comprehensive search mechanism built into the filesystem. The mechanism was based on attributes of name/value pairs that could be attached to any file. The BeFS would generate indices for the names and their values, that meant you could do things like attach MP3 ID3 tags to your MP3 files and immediately find all the songs by 'Queen' (for example). This is more powerful than just tagging things since the attributes carry semantic meaning beyond just the text content so you can find items with an 'artist of queen' as opposed to things tagged 'Queen' - songs & albums vs. pictures. The BeOS Tracker (Finder) took this a step further and allowed you to save queries which then formed the basis of windows (like folders) that contained those results - with the added advantage that things updated live as the results for the query changed.
We're at the 'data gathering' phase of understanding all this for our users, and comments here, feature requests and so forth are part of this. Onshape has a long standing relationship with Steve Krug who has helped us a number of times to *cough* organize our thoughts on things :-) We also have an intimidating brain trust of experience both inside and outside the company (you :-) that helps greatly.
One last thing! The architect & engineer of BeFS and its searching features left Be and went on to Apple where amongst other things he was the architect of Spotlight and worked in conjunction with the lead engineer of BeOS Tracker who had also moved to Apple to lead work on OS X Finder and today we have things like Smart Folders in OS X - good things don't really have to be forgotten 8-)
I'm looking forward to seeing BeOS related easter eggs on Onshape
EDIT: I think it has been clear but in case it's not, I'm an advocate of both grouping (folders) for organization and bulk operations as well as locating information by search.
I actually commend Onshape for thinking out of the box and considering the future in great ways and am also in favor and advocate the search, tag etc. type of organization. as the way of the future.
I also as Traveler advocate the File/folder method not because I'm so attached and can't see out of the box but because I know it works and I can be much more productive the day after it is implemented.
There was mention that were at the data gathering stage of this Search/tag methodology. Therefore how long will it take to get it functioning, a year? Then the beta & bug fixing process. That's quite a while just to find out if it will actually catch on. In the meantime all we have is an ever increasing trash can.
I don't know if I can work that way or even how you can market it.
I had made an improvement suggestion to turn the Organization listing in the left column of the OS front page into a file folder directory type of organization. Then leave the document listing for development of this new and hopefully grand search/tag method
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/1411/die-infinite-directory-scroll-die-die-die#latest .
https://onshape.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204667118--Die-infinite-directory-scroll-Die-die-die-
If you feel you would like to have an organized file/folder system while the search/tag system is being developed, Please vote for this improvement.
I like the idea of an organization above documents just as a way to categorize things a bit easier. My day job is for a company that is 76+ years old. Needless to say we have a lot of design data. Managing it all in flat documents would be brutal. I like tagging, but if you forget to tag the data, then how do you find it? Also, if you don't speak the lingo of the company then how do you know what tag to search under? I think an organization above documents could automatically apply tags as a rule setup on that level. You could use it to push certain properties down to everything underneath it. I could see value in that.
I also like what Dassault did their 3D Live product wheel (ugghh... did I just say that?) The ability to navigate information visually is SO intuitive it's ridiculous. You don't have to speak the language to find things "Let's see is it a "bracket", an "arm", a "lever", etc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=309&v=YMseRS8-bR0
Why not combine a view mode like this with properties or tags overlapped on top? Such that if you find it visually, you can instantly know what the properties and tags are so you could search horizontally for related items. I can see this would also work well with the augmented reality systems of the future. Metadata could be overlayed, not only on the virtual CAD model - but quite possibly on top of the physical items in the real world. Combine them both please... there is tremendous power and efficiency in that. That is why augmented reality will be huge. It blends so many things in one location.