Welcome to the Onshape forum! Ask questions and join in the discussions about everything Onshape.
First time visiting? Here are some places to start:- Looking for a certain topic? Check out the categories filter or use Search (upper right).
- Need support? Ask a question to our Community Support category.
- Please submit support tickets for bugs but you can request improvements in the Product Feedback category.
- Be respectful, on topic and if you see a problem, Flag it.
If you would like to contact our Community Manager personally, feel free to send a private message or an email.
Questions about STD feature - Linear Pattern
karl_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?
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?
0
Comments
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.
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.