Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

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kkremitzki
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by kkremitzki »

ickby wrote:I think the part option can be removed from that task dialog. A.part is a general object that can group everything, hence it should be available in a global toolbar for every workbench. This would than also eliminate the confusion what to use, body or part, as part design would be clearly centered around body only. The reason for putting the part tool into part design was laziness and the fact that a one tool toolbar would look strange.
How about this solution:
- I remove "create part" from this window
- to address the issue of clicking anywhere in body reverting from "create sketch"/"create boolean" to this window, and needing to go back to model view to click on your body again, I add a selection list of Body objects in the document (or more inclusive of types?). Similar to "Select feature" dialog when creating a sketch in PD.
- this addresses issue of a one tool toolbar
- eventually, if there's a better idea of "active Body" besides what is selected in the tree, this selection list can be changed to interact with that and still be useful
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ickby
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by ickby »

I can't follow your proposal, I don't understand what it would look like. Could you elaborate the idea of "selection list of body objects"?
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kkremitzki
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by kkremitzki »

ickby wrote:I can't follow your proposal, I don't understand what it would look like. Could you elaborate the idea of "selection list of body objects"?
Sure, so right now it looks like:

Code: Select all

|==============|
| Start Part   |
|==============|
| Create body  |
| Create part  |
|==============|
I would like to make it look like:

Code: Select all

|==============|
| Start Part   |
|==============|
| Create body  |
|==============|


|==============|
| Activate Body|
|==============|
| Body         |
| Body001      |
|              |
|              |
|==============|
I want to add that "Activate Body" list. It will pull in a list of Body objects in the document and right now clicking on one will behave the same as double clicking on it in the Model view.
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HoWil
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by HoWil »

Hi kkremitzki,
I fully appreciate your work. A UI cleanup/simplification is really needed!

Additionally I want to describe my opinion regarding parts, bodies and their creation.

After the introduction of part-design-next I tried to use bodies in parts because it was mentioned that in future assembly-wb parts will be used as container for bodies inside an assembly. I used it several times but did not see any benefit and additionally, part-container are even obstructive in FEM-WB (cant be selected for meshing, everything is done on body or 'feature' level).

So in my opinion Part could be removed from any introductory Task-dialogue until there is a real benefit for the standard user.
There is so much place left in the Task-dialogue .... maybe a link to the related wiki-entry can be posted here?
BR,
HoWil

ps.: I will have a look into part-o-matic maybe this is the better part-container??
ickby
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by ickby »

ah now I understand kurt. That would be nice. But I can
Imagine this is quite some work. I never digged deep into the task watcher system (what displays those options) but had the feeling thst it was rather primitive. You must decide if this is worth the hassle
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by ian.rees »

It seems there's an underlying issue "we've got this whole big panel that we need to use, but only one sensible button...". How about just disabling the Task panel in Part Design, when it's in the state that currently only has two buttons? That'll get rid of most of the issues in Kurt's original post, and the button(s) in the task panel are available in the toolbar anyways. -Ian-
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kkremitzki
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by kkremitzki »

Here's a possible pure-UX fix to this issue:

change the tooltip text for "Create part" and "Create body" from:
  • Create a new part and make it active
  • Create a new body and make it active
to
  • Create a new empty part container and make it active
  • Create a new body feature base and make it active
That way, it is made clear what the buttons do, specifically to the people who needed to read the tooltips in the first place :)
It wouldn't hurt IMO to have automatic PartOrigin, BodyOrigin display and hiding, too...
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by DeepSOIC »

"Create a new empty part container and make it active" ;)

"Create a new body feature base and make it active" :? I don't understand this combination of words.
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by DeepSOIC »

kkremitzki wrote:It wouldn't hurt IMO to have automatic PartOrigin, BodyOrigin display and hiding, too...
Go on!

EDIT: would be great if you make it generic, like:

ViewProvider of Part (or, maybe, extension?) has a method activationChanged(), which is called automatically when active container is changed.

In PoM, I used this footprint for the method, which I give you as a food for thought:

Code: Select all

    def activationChanged(self, vobj, old_active_container, new_active_container, event):
        # event: -1 = leaving (active container was self or another container inside, new container is outside)
        #        +1 = entering (active container was outside, new active container is inside)
event can be skipped for now, as it can be figured out from old_active_container, new_active_container.
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kkremitzki
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Re: Enhancements to starting Tasks dialog in Part Design

Post by kkremitzki »

DeepSOIC wrote:"Create a new empty part container and make it active" ;)

"Create a new body feature base and make it active" :? I don't understand this combination of words.
How about "body feature container"?

Edit: Or, "Create and activate a new body container to serve as base for features"
Edit2: For Part, "Create and activate a new, empty, general-purpose part container"
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