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Fix-it mode for broken features
CaptainBisquick
OS Professional Posts: 33 ✭✭
In my category selection box on this forum, "Improvement requests" is greyed out. Did I make too many requests?
I generally have a grouping of variables at the top of my feature list, and I use these to make tweaks which are usually done for getting optimal 3D prints. Often changing one value will break several sketches along the feature list. I then manually move the bar through the feature list, starting with the first broken feature at the top, and navigate downward to all the points where things have broken. Usually the changes that need to be made are to update sketch references, or extrusion selections. I continue on down the list until nothing is broken anymore.
It seems to me it would be relatively easy to add a "fix-it" mode, which might somehow trigger or showup has a highlighted button, after a change causes downstream features to break. This would just make it easier to get from one broken spot to the next. Sometimes an extrusion isn't marked as broken, but because the selected sketch areas for that extrusion need to be updated, a downstream feature is broken as a result. To handle these situations, an up/down widget would be good, and I would imagine that being a widget that appears while the fix-it mode is active.
I feel the feature list UI is pretty clunky. It jumps around a lot, I have a lot missed clicks or misplaced drop interactions when using it, and the interactions are pretty slow. One thing I notice is the dead space between elements in the UI. What I mean is that there's a space between the list items where a click will not hit either item in the list. To me this leads to frustration (I also have this complaint with the OSX UI, where context menus will close when a missed click happens). When I say it jumps around, I mean that a drag-drop interaction will unexpectedly jump up or down farther than expected, and in some rare cases, will even jump from the very bottom of the list, to the very top of the list. Trying to drag-drop a feature to the very bottom of the list is annoyingly more difficult than dropping at the second-to-last place in the list.
For all of these reasons, I find that I have to intentionally slow down and exercise patience when trying to manipulate the feature list.
I generally have a grouping of variables at the top of my feature list, and I use these to make tweaks which are usually done for getting optimal 3D prints. Often changing one value will break several sketches along the feature list. I then manually move the bar through the feature list, starting with the first broken feature at the top, and navigate downward to all the points where things have broken. Usually the changes that need to be made are to update sketch references, or extrusion selections. I continue on down the list until nothing is broken anymore.
It seems to me it would be relatively easy to add a "fix-it" mode, which might somehow trigger or showup has a highlighted button, after a change causes downstream features to break. This would just make it easier to get from one broken spot to the next. Sometimes an extrusion isn't marked as broken, but because the selected sketch areas for that extrusion need to be updated, a downstream feature is broken as a result. To handle these situations, an up/down widget would be good, and I would imagine that being a widget that appears while the fix-it mode is active.
I feel the feature list UI is pretty clunky. It jumps around a lot, I have a lot missed clicks or misplaced drop interactions when using it, and the interactions are pretty slow. One thing I notice is the dead space between elements in the UI. What I mean is that there's a space between the list items where a click will not hit either item in the list. To me this leads to frustration (I also have this complaint with the OSX UI, where context menus will close when a missed click happens). When I say it jumps around, I mean that a drag-drop interaction will unexpectedly jump up or down farther than expected, and in some rare cases, will even jump from the very bottom of the list, to the very top of the list. Trying to drag-drop a feature to the very bottom of the list is annoyingly more difficult than dropping at the second-to-last place in the list.
For all of these reasons, I find that I have to intentionally slow down and exercise patience when trying to manipulate the feature list.
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