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Questions about STD feature - Linear Pattern

karl_mochelkarl_mochel Member Posts: 38 ✭✭
Looking at the Linear Pattern code I don't see any manipulator code, but manipulators are shown in Sketch mode. Also.in Sketch mode you don't get the panel so you cannot also have flipped entities.
1) Is this by design?
 - Should the Sketch mode have a panel?
 - Where is the manipulator code that displays them in for the Sketch mode?
 - Should the 3D linear pattern have manipulators?

Comments

  • kevin_o_toole_1kevin_o_toole_1 Onshape Employees, Developers, HDM Posts: 565
    1) Should the sketch mode have a panel?

    The hard one first – Sketch "features" are not truly FeatureScript features. Sketch features are interfaces for generating sketch entities and constraints (which do live in FeatureScript). Once a feature is confirmed, all that's left is the generated entities and constraints, not the original parameters. There is no history of sketch features, and they are never regenerated. After making e.g. a sketch feature hexagon, you can go in and delete one of the equal-length constraints or one of the line entities without issue, but you can NOT go back and change the number of sides of the polygon. Top level features are the opposite – You can always go back and edit their definition and everything will update, but you can NOT delete a partial feature, or delete a whole feature without risking breaking downstream features.

    So, features have panels to keep your parameters in a place you can go back and edit them. Sketch features generally don't need panels because you can't go back and edit their initial parameters.

    Linear pattern is a bit of a special case here because there is special code that actually does allow changing the pattern count after the fact. However, none of that logic lives in FeatureScript, and if you've deleted some of the entities since creating the pattern, this may have some unintuitive effects.

    2) Where is the manipulator code that displays them in for the Sketch mode?

    Like the sketch features, there's no direct FeatureScript implementation of the sketch manipulators. That combination of behaviors is implemented with our TypeScript client code and Java server code.

    3) Should the 3D linear pattern have manipulators?
    It sure could! Personally I don't see much use but a custom feature certainly could do it.
  • karl_mochelkarl_mochel Member Posts: 38 ✭✭
    Thanks Kevin.

    Some thoughts...
    1) Would like OnS to treat Sketches like Objects and allow their parameters to be edited. I thought it was a defect that Linear Pattern in Sketch didn't have parameters and it means that some capabilities are missing - ability to generate a pattern on both sides of origin. I could see additional parameters for Linear Pattern and other tools that would not have a representation in the 3D space, needing a parameter panel.
    2) Seems like Sketch tools should have a FS implementation so users could modify them. In fact, what I was looking to do was modify the Sketch Linear Pattern so that it used overall distance instead of inter-object distance because it would make it easier to build a sketch where I can adjust/test spacing while maintaining an overall length.
    3) If manipulators are useful in Sketch they are useful for Objects. The ability to snap manipulators to features being the most useful thing I can think of.
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