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Improved workflow - keyboard shortcuts within features

S1monS1mon Member Posts: 3,029 PRO
edited February 2023 in General
The basic idea (inspired by Plasticity - see below) is that because Onshape is in a browser, many normally potential keyboard combinations are already eaten up by the browser and OS. What if there were shortcut keys inside each feature? There are so many toggles and things that we all need to adjust on a regular basis that take a lot of clicks. If these could be handled by keys that were only bound within a feature, there would be more options for improving the workflow.

For example, in Plasticity, the equivalent of Bridge curve has G0, G1, G2, and G3 options. The equivalent dialog is also shown for Onshape. In Plasticity, the tab key quickly cycles through the curvature options. To be sure, you can select G0 for start and G3 for the end if you want by clicking in the dialog. However, in a typical case, you might want both ends to have similar curvature constraints, and you can change this without a bunch of clicks.





More About Plasticity:
I've been playing with Plasticity a lot recently. It's a new modeling program (in beta) that, like Onshape, is based on the Parasolid kernel. It has no history or parametric functionality - it's all about speed and workflow. Lots of direct modeling. It's not really a competitor to Onshape or other MCAD tools. It is intended to solve some of the pain of doing things like adding fillets on game asset models which, in the past were done with things like Blender or MOI. Some things remind me of Rhino, but the curves and surfacing tools are still relatively basic, although there's a guy doing pretty insane car models in Plasticity.

See these videos/links for more info:
https://nullpointerecho.notion.site/Showcase-Made-with-Plasticity-4138401aff8d4452845012959c25f1b5

Comments

  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 3,029 PRO
    Thinking more about the keyboard shortcuts which already exist…

    In assembly or part mode ‘a’ (flip primary axis) and ‘q’ (reorient secondary axis) only function when dealing with mate connectors. What I’m suggesting is perhaps we can reuse/overload more keys and enable more quick functionality within various features. 

    Currently the ‘c’ key is used for circles in sketcher. Why couldn’t ‘c’ be used after hitting ’m’ for mate in an assembly context to select a cylindrical mate? Right now I either have to select the cylindrical mate icon or select mate, and then the drop down.

    It will take a lot of work to look through all the built in features and think through what keys are available at any given time, and what makes sense, but I think it could improve workflow.
  • shawn_crockershawn_crocker Member, OS Professional Posts: 869 PRO
    I would be cool to be able to temporarily override the browser/OS built in hotkeys.  If this were possible, I'm imagining the standard Onshape feature modal having a little button in one of the corners.  When clicked, another modal opens that looks similar to the onshape configuration panel.  You would be able to go into mapping mode and select inputs from the feature and select keys that the input should be mapped to.  So every user could map shortcuts to there own preference for any feature independent of how the feature was actually created on the scripting level.
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