I have a bunch of _surfaces_... I want to color them all at once

Paul_99

I finally figured out that I have to right (Option) click on the name in the list on the left to get the options menu for appearance... but how do i get this action to work on a few surfaces at once?

3dcad

@Paul Bostwick When you use Feedback in ?-menu, they will be addressed properly and you can follow at [your name] -menu > View support tickets.

From what I have understood feedback is currently the best route for feature request, bug report, modeling question or anything closely related to the software.

abefeldman

Paul - there is indeed a feedback tool which you can access from the ? dropdown menu.  Upon submitting feedback (or a bug) you'll receive emails from Onshape development letting you know if/when your improvement has been implemented or your bug has been fixed so you can go check it out.  You can also view tickets you've submitted by clicking your name in the top right and selecting "View Support Tickets."



@Andrew_Troup - @LouGallo and I have been discussing some other improvements to the forums that might allow for tagging bugs and improvements the way you described, but for the moment the best way to bring a bug to our attention is to go through the feedback tool.  You could also mention us in a forum post, but that's less ideal...

3dcad

@AbeFeldman  hmm.. what is that piece on your screen and how is it made ?

jakeramsley

Hi Paul,

If you select more than one surface from the surface list, the changes in the appearance menu will apply to them all.  For fast selecting, you can use SHIFT+click to select everything between the two surfaces in your list similar to how file explorers do it.

1. Have a bunch of surfaces created and expand the surfaces list.


2. Select the first surface you want to change the color of in your surface list.


3. Make subsequent selections of which surfaces you want to change the color of.  Left clicking on unselected surfaces will add them to the selection.  SHIFT + click will select all surfaces between the last clicked surface and the shift-clicked surface.  Clicking on an already selected surface will deselect it.


4. Right click on one of the surfaces and choose "Appearance..." in the context menu.  This will bring up the appearance menu that will control the color and translucency of all of the surfaces selected.


5. Change to the new desired color.  All of the selected surfaces will update with that color.

Ben_

Click on each surface in the feature manager on the left bottom (expand the surfaces title). Or select the surfaces in the graphic window. Select is sticky so no need for ctrl or shift to get multiple selections clicking it adds or subtracts the selected to the selection group. Now right click on one of the selected surfaces in the feature manager and choose appearance. Voila!

Paul_99

Thanks for the quick answers... I believe I have tried what Ben and JakeRamsey have described (both before and after the suggestion) but it does not work for the 130 surfaces at once in my drawing...

It only works one surface at a time... If the surfaces have different colors (as you might imagine I have quite the harlequin thing at this point with the experiments going nuts) only some change and not to the color selected but to some mix of the prior color and the desired one.... odd

Paul_99

A different sequence gets me what I want but the difference between the "select the group and option-click for appearance menu and get your changes" (does not work for me) and what I am doing (which does work) might be of interest.

This works:

Select one surface. Option click its name in the parts list, select appearance from menu that pops up. NOW go get some other surfaces by sticky clicking them. Once the batch is picked. Set the color, transparency etc and then the green Check. The surfaces are now changed... BUT they show the "selected" version of the color. Un-select them to get a look at the "real" color. (maybe it is just the selection border color that makes "selected version" look subtly different than "real" so ignore that bit.)

cyclonewade

There does appear to be a subtle difference in window picking versus picking the list from the parts list tree.  I created a small video below.  If you pick each part from the tree and choose appearance, all of the parts change colors.  If you window pick from the graphics space and then click appearance only the part in which you right click on will change.  See video.

Paul_99

This seems like a bug. A minor one, but a bug - especially since it cannot be used to get a desirable result... I wish there were a way to mark this thread as a Bug definition thread (but in a way that it only gets marked as one if more than just a cranky me says so...)

andrew_troup

It has traditionally been a big part of a 3D modeller's job description to stay abreast of an ever changing array of bugs and workarounds, and previous packages (where bugs would often take at least a year to be fixed, if ever) it would have been important to be able to tag threads as containing useful bug info.

However it seems (at least in this stage in Onshape's development), once bugs are reported (ideally by raising a ticket) they tend to get fixed so quickly that it seems to me the info would quickly become superfluous, and spend more time confusing us than clarifying things. 

Perhaps a more dynamic tagging system would serve the purpose, by enabling a bug tag to be amended to a 'fixed bug' tag. But if the forum software is off-the-peg rather than bespoke, that may not be an option ... 

Paul_99

Well put Andrew...
I'd be willing to (if the convention was established, and I evolved a bit more as a user) to "own a bug" as a user and occasionally be prompted to review "my bugs" and retire them as appropriate. I don't think I have my arms around the product well enough now to do that.

When you wrote, "(ideally by raising a ticket)" were you speaking generically or is there a reporting feature I have missed?

3dcad

@Paul Bostwick When you use Feedback in ?-menu, they will be addressed properly and you can follow at [your name] -menu > View support tickets.

From what I have understood feedback is currently the best route for feature request, bug report, modeling question or anything closely related to the software.

abefeldman

Paul - there is indeed a feedback tool which you can access from the ? dropdown menu.  Upon submitting feedback (or a bug) you'll receive emails from Onshape development letting you know if/when your improvement has been implemented or your bug has been fixed so you can go check it out.  You can also view tickets you've submitted by clicking your name in the top right and selecting "View Support Tickets."



@Andrew_Troup - @LouGallo and I have been discussing some other improvements to the forums that might allow for tagging bugs and improvements the way you described, but for the moment the best way to bring a bug to our attention is to go through the feedback tool.  You could also mention us in a forum post, but that's less ideal...

3dcad

@AbeFeldman  hmm.. what is that piece on your screen and how is it made ?

Paul_99

3dcad... it is a movie showing how to do feedback within the onshape interface... well done Abe!

abefeldman

@3dcad - just an extrude.  Nothing exciting I'm afraid.