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Purpose of Filled Areas in Sketch

Raymond_5Raymond_5 Member Posts: 5
Hello, 

I'm curious, can someone help me understand the purpose of the filled area within sketches, visible when a loop is completed? I understand that it may be helpful to visually confirm an area is in fact a closed loop, but what is the purpose of it being selectable? As it stands, it is bothersome to me to that it constantly be highlighting and selecting the "face in sketch" when my intent 100% of the time is to select the nearest line. Am I missing out on some profound use of this feature? 

The only functionality I have found is that you can select 1 or more individual face regions in the sketch and then transition directly into an extrusion. If your sketch has only 1 closed region then there is no need to select any region, as you can transition directly to an extrusion without any selection. IMO this is a low-value feature, as you can easily exit the sketch, begin an extrusion, and select the desired regions (its just 1 extra click). I'd rather have the display of closed loop faces not selectable in sketches, because it's slowing down my completion of the sketch. What do you think?

Ray

Comments

  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 2,983 PRO
    Are you on mobile or desktop? I don't understand how it's "slowing down my completion of the sketch".

    As you move your mouse around, it will pre-highlight either the faces or the edges.

    Faces in sketches are also selectable as planes for future sketches, or as entities to split a part with, or countless other parts of Onshape.

    Selecting by a whole sketch, or face can have the advantage of future proofing things against changes. In other words, as long as the sketch ID or face ID doesn't change, you can add or subtract entities and the downstream features are fine.
  • Raymond_5Raymond_5 Member Posts: 5
    I'm using the desktop web application. I understand there are many good reasons to select faces of a sketch outside the sketching mode. However, I'm referring to the ability to select faces of a sketch while actively editing a sketch.

    In this picture, you can see I'm editing a sketch. If I select the "face in sketch 1", as shown, what can I do with it? I know I can extrude for example, but it has no use in further developing the sketch.



    I think my preferred behavior would be to disable the highlighting and selection of "face in sketch" while I'm editing the sketch. Otherwise, outside of the sketch editor, the behavior should remain the same.

    What do you think? Am I missing something?
  • eric_pestyeric_pesty Member Posts: 1,885 PRO
    @Raymond_5
    I think the main use case is to be able to pre-select regions before jumping straight into a feature...
    Since you don't have to "close" the sketch before starting an extrude for example, it can be handy when you are working with layout sketches to pre-select things if you don't want to use the whole sketch.

    I do use the space bar shortcut for "deselect" quite often, including to clear this type of selection...
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