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Ben's Wishlist
Ben_Misegades
Member Posts: 133 ✭✭✭
My background is ~10 years of SolidWorks in a professional environment, which means 50-60 hour work weeks, 75%+ of that time spent using SolidWorks. Mostly sheet metal design, but also solid and surface modeling, usually in the automotive and transportation industry.
In no particular order:
1. Planes in assemblies for mating purposes. I used to design buses. We used a base part that contained several sketches that controlled pretty much all of the overall dimensional geometry of the vehicle, as well as the location of major driveline components, etc. This base part also had dozens of planes based off of those sketches. Said base part was inserted into every major assembly and subassembly of the vehicle model, and then individual parts were mated to those sketches and planes. If we had to, say, adjust the floor height of the vehicle by 10mm, we could simply adjust one sketch dimension in the base part, and this change would propagate through every assembly containing the base part and move hundreds of individual parts, all in one fell swoop. I don't know how one would accomplish something like this in OS.
2. Assembly-level sketches. I was just modeling a simple pallet in OS, and rather than simply creating an assembly level sketch (which OS can't do?) to set the position of my individual pieces of wood, I had to create an additional part that contained my sketch and insert that into the assembly. I understand that I could have simply modeled parts in context, but what if I wanted to pull existing pieces of wood out of a parts library and set them into my assembly?
3. Some way to more quickly change views. All of the view controls are in the top right of the interface, but it takes time to move the mouse over and click on the appropriate spot in the "diamond" or select a view from the drop-down menu. Multi-key keyboard shortcuts also exist for specific views. In SolidWorks I could hit the spacebar and have view selections pop up where my cursor was, I'd love to see that kind of functionality in OS, as it would make things just that much quicker. I already love that there are so many logical keyboard shortcuts in OS already, things that I had to set up myself in SW (I don't like flyout menus), having quicker view controls would make it just that much better.
4. More sheet metal functionality. I'm sure much of this is yet to come as sheet metal is less than a week old, but I'll name a few regardless: a) the ability to add things like tabs at the edge of a sheet metal piece. Currently, the only way to add tabs to the edge of a part (say for tabbing and slotting) I have to add them in the sketch that is controlling my flange. b) lofted sheet metal, for things like square-to-round transitions c) some way to add features while in the flat, whether it's done in the flat pattern window or with fold/unfold features I don't really care which, but I'd like to have that functionality c) bend information on drawings! Is this actually missing or am I not seeing it? In SolidWorks if you create a drawing view of a sheet metal flat pattern, it automatically adds bend information (radius and angle) for every bend, which is the only real information that someone creating bend programs needs. I'm sure I'll find more things the more I play with OS sheet metal.
5. A quicker way to exit features. Rather than going up to click the green check mark, perhaps right click or something? I'm not lazy, I'm just looking for efficiency here.
6. A quicker way to terminate sketching lines, again in the hunt for efficiency. In SW, after sketching a shape with lines for instance, I can double-click away and it terminates my using of the "sketch line" feature.
7. Surface modeling. I'm not pro when it comes to surfacing, but there seem to be a fair few features missing. Also, the transition from solid to surface or vice-versa doesn't seem to work very well. If I extrude a simple solid box, why can't I just delete a face and now have an open box that is surfaces? In past work, I would quite often start something as a solid, then work on it as a surface model, and convert it back to a solid once some faces have been modified, and then create a sheet metal part out of the whole thing when it was all said and done.
I'll add more as time goes on.
In no particular order:
1. Planes in assemblies for mating purposes. I used to design buses. We used a base part that contained several sketches that controlled pretty much all of the overall dimensional geometry of the vehicle, as well as the location of major driveline components, etc. This base part also had dozens of planes based off of those sketches. Said base part was inserted into every major assembly and subassembly of the vehicle model, and then individual parts were mated to those sketches and planes. If we had to, say, adjust the floor height of the vehicle by 10mm, we could simply adjust one sketch dimension in the base part, and this change would propagate through every assembly containing the base part and move hundreds of individual parts, all in one fell swoop. I don't know how one would accomplish something like this in OS.
2. Assembly-level sketches. I was just modeling a simple pallet in OS, and rather than simply creating an assembly level sketch (which OS can't do?) to set the position of my individual pieces of wood, I had to create an additional part that contained my sketch and insert that into the assembly. I understand that I could have simply modeled parts in context, but what if I wanted to pull existing pieces of wood out of a parts library and set them into my assembly?
3. Some way to more quickly change views. All of the view controls are in the top right of the interface, but it takes time to move the mouse over and click on the appropriate spot in the "diamond" or select a view from the drop-down menu. Multi-key keyboard shortcuts also exist for specific views. In SolidWorks I could hit the spacebar and have view selections pop up where my cursor was, I'd love to see that kind of functionality in OS, as it would make things just that much quicker. I already love that there are so many logical keyboard shortcuts in OS already, things that I had to set up myself in SW (I don't like flyout menus), having quicker view controls would make it just that much better.
4. More sheet metal functionality. I'm sure much of this is yet to come as sheet metal is less than a week old, but I'll name a few regardless: a) the ability to add things like tabs at the edge of a sheet metal piece. Currently, the only way to add tabs to the edge of a part (say for tabbing and slotting) I have to add them in the sketch that is controlling my flange. b) lofted sheet metal, for things like square-to-round transitions c) some way to add features while in the flat, whether it's done in the flat pattern window or with fold/unfold features I don't really care which, but I'd like to have that functionality c) bend information on drawings! Is this actually missing or am I not seeing it? In SolidWorks if you create a drawing view of a sheet metal flat pattern, it automatically adds bend information (radius and angle) for every bend, which is the only real information that someone creating bend programs needs. I'm sure I'll find more things the more I play with OS sheet metal.
5. A quicker way to exit features. Rather than going up to click the green check mark, perhaps right click or something? I'm not lazy, I'm just looking for efficiency here.
6. A quicker way to terminate sketching lines, again in the hunt for efficiency. In SW, after sketching a shape with lines for instance, I can double-click away and it terminates my using of the "sketch line" feature.
7. Surface modeling. I'm not pro when it comes to surfacing, but there seem to be a fair few features missing. Also, the transition from solid to surface or vice-versa doesn't seem to work very well. If I extrude a simple solid box, why can't I just delete a face and now have an open box that is surfaces? In past work, I would quite often start something as a solid, then work on it as a surface model, and convert it back to a solid once some faces have been modified, and then create a sheet metal part out of the whole thing when it was all said and done.
I'll add more as time goes on.
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Comments
To quickly address a couple of your smaller points: (5) You can exit features (equivalent to the red X) with the 'esc' key, and you can commit features (equivalent to the green check) with the 'enter' key (you may have to press this twice if you're editing a value, the first enter submits the value change, and the second enter will commit the feature itself). (6) When you are sketching, you can double click to place your last vertex (this will place a vertex and stop attempting to make more line segments). If you've already placed your last point and want to finish your line without placing another segment you can use the 'esc' key. These workflows will stop the current line, but the 'line' sketch tool will remain selected. To unselect the tool, just press 'esc' one more time.
Hope this helps! I'll leave the depthier questions to someone with more modeling experience
Did your company use Pro/ENGINEER before SolidWorks by any chance?
Same as above - we do not have assembly level sketches, but it's not a major inconvenience to create it in the part? I am guessing a layout sketch of this nature would not change very often.
Would a shortcut key to the Named Views help? Please raise an improvement request in the category to the right --->
Like you say, sheet metal is a week old and rest assured we will be adding new features every three weeks or so. Again, add or vote for existing improvement requests in the category on the right --->
Jake beat me to questions 5 & 6, so I'll leave it there, but please keep the ideas coming. Best place to do it? On the right --->
Thanks,
Neil.
- No, I have no more than about 2 weeks experience with ProE back in college. This method that we used was shown to me by my superior at the time, he may have gotten it from elsewhere, I honestly don't know. I do know that, at least in SW, it works extremely well for controlling large assemblies, such as a bus.
Over lunch I did some more thinking about how I could replicate this methodology in OS using mate connectors. I'll have to play with it to see if I can get it to do what I want and how easy or cumbersome it would be. I still think I'd like to have planes in assemblies. We have to remember that it is often the case that your part or subassembly that you're trying to mate into a higher level assembly will not have a convenient point with which to create a mate connection. I see the mate connectors in OS as working similar to mating origins or coordinate points in SolidWorks. While this can certainly come in handy, I don't see it as being sufficient enough to do away with planes and planar mating.
We used to also mate curved parts (rolled aluminum extrusion) to extruded surfaces in the base part. I'd have to tinker with OS to see if I could get that to work, too.
- No, it's not a huge hassle to create a part with a driving sketch and put that into my assembly, but it seems like an extra step that I have to take. On the contrary, I find that having a sketch that is driving my assembly to be something that I adjust quite frequently. For the pallet that I was putting together earlier today it wasn't since the dimensions were known, but in the past when I've designed handrails, etc. it was nice to have the driving sketch easily available for adjustment. Simply double click the sketch, adjust my dimensions, ctrl-q (rebuild) and voila, my parts have moved. This doesn't seem to work quite as smoothly in OS as double clicking on the sketch in the feature tree takes me to the part studio for that part where I can edit it, etc. I'm not saying that it doesn't work at all since it obviously does, but understand that I'm hunting for efficiency (read: speed) wherever possible.
- Yes, being able to map a shortcut key would be ace, I will try to remember to make a proper improvement request
- I will hold off on making improvement requests for Sheet Metal functionality, I'm sure that area is quite flooded at the moment right now any how
- Jake, thanks for letting me know the proper ways to quickly exit those functions. I should have played around with it more before complaining, SW habits are proving to be harder to break than I thought
Another item I just stumbled across: the parts that I've made for this simple pallet that I'm modeling are dimensioned in millimeters, though the assembly was created in inches. I wanted to add some additional length to a dimension, but by an inch-amount. When I go to edit the dimension, in this case 1550mm, I entered +0.3125 to the end of the 1550mm and hit enter, but it doesn't do anything? I've tried +.3125, +0.3125, +.3125", and +0.3125" but still no luck. Am I using an incorrect syntax, or does OS not support a simple calculation within a sketch dimension like that, across multiple units?
Thanks!
+ 0.3125 in
and it should work.
May I assume that you have to do the same thing for feet? Type ft or something like that? Seems a bit peculiar to me to have to do that, but what do I know, I'm no programmer
*edit* So now when I go back to look at the dimension that I've added to, rather than updating the value to 1557.938 like I thought it would, it still says 1550mm + 0.3125in. That strikes me as odd.
Dimensions should display their total value until you go to edit them. So if I make an extrusion, set the depth to 1in + .5in, then commit it, then go back to edit the extrude feature by double clicking it in the feature tree the value in the depth box should say 1.5in. Then if I click on the number to edit it it should revert back to "1in + .5in" so I can edit what I initially put in the box. Please let us know if this is not the behavior you are seeing.
Regarding the value, if you're not in focus, the dimension should show the sum (1557.938) but if you're editing the dimension, the system remembers the expression you entered -- in this case, preserving the design intent that it's .3125 inches more than 1550 millimeters.
I'm finding that, regardless of the units that I'm using, entering simple calculations into the dimension have to not only include units, but they also have to now follow mathematical "order of operations."
Example:
My starting dimension is 5in. I want to add an additional inch to that, so now it has to read "5in + 1in" since "5in +1" won't work
Now I want to add another inch, so the string will look like this "5in + 1in + 1in" ad infinitum
Now I've decided I only want it to be half as long. I can't simply open the dimension again and add /2 to the end, since it will only divide my last entered adjustment (1in) by 2. I have to go in and modify the string to "(5in + 1in + 1in)/2"
You can see how this could become very tedious? I'm not sure if I model differently than other people, but I tend to change dimensions a LOT, and often in small increments.
I believe I see the intent of this functionality: retain the original design dimension so that you can easily revert back to it. If I had the option to switch it off, I would.
I will do the right thing and create another improvement request
This sort of gets into a design intent argument. From our perspective, if a user puts 5in - .2mm they may have a part that they want to be 5 inches long but needs 2 millimeters clearance for manufacturing. If they go to edit this value because they actually need 3mm clearance, it is now easy to go back, see the design intent of that specific dimension, and make changes. If the value were to calculate out mathematically the design intent is lost.
Additionally, all parameter boxes such as these can use variables (see the feature whose icon looks like '{x}'). If the math were to calculate out as soon as the user put it in, we would need to not respect variable changes in the parameter, or only collapse all the math around the variable (which is somewhat non-trivial).
If you are just using the + - / operations to jiggle your values, I would suggest maybe just jiggling the value itself (you could even use the math operations until you find a value you like, and then replace the whole expression with your desired value). Then when you come back, you'll just have the value you like, and none of the (mostly arbitrary) math you used to get there.
Maybe we could have a control enter a something in this fashion to solve the equation leaving no trace of the equation.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
Just to add my opinion.
Mixing Units
If convenient you can group units like this, these are valid:-
(1 + 5 + 4 + 1) mm + 1 inch
(1 + 5 + 4 + 1) mm + (2 * 7) inch
This however is not (My default units are mm):-
(30 * 10) + 1 inch
I feel it should be as we've set default units for a document. I'd have presumed that units of length would be set to the default unless set otherwise
Calculation
I like the design intent of keeping the formulae, but on occasion it'd be nice evaluate it once and keep only the result. (I've used calcs that will never change just to avoid mental arithmetic errors for example.)
We don't want to change default behaviour as that may alienate existing users but perhaps we could have a function something like this?
CalcOnce((1 + 2 +(37 *16))
Cheers,
Owen S
HWM-Water Ltd