FreeCAD UI Overhaul anyone?

[cox]

I think we need to mention the great experimental work ickby did a couple of years ago for an alternative interface:

Thanks for bringing this back to light:- I am watching it over and over.

[nyholku]

Hi,

thanks for the comments and discussions.

I'm not going address each every point as this often leads nit picking details and arguing the meaning of the words if there is no concrete proposal to discuss.

In general I'm positively surprised at the positive reaction so far!

I hope you don't think I'm coming here telling every thing is wrong and you should do this and that.

Far from it but you got to start discussing things from somewhere.

So please don't read my text as me saying that "I think Onshape is perfect".

I well realise that Onshape has huge resources (they raised $64 M) and the founders are from Solidworks so they probably new who to hire and besides it is based an the Siemens geometry engine IIRC.

In that light FreeCAD is nothing sort of miracle. But it also means that there has to be some pedigree in Onshape worth pursuing if not blindly copying which is my main point.

With the resources available for FFOS project I'm not suggesting a sudden and complete overhaul of the UI, I'm more interested in seeing the project be heading in to the right direction. And again I'm not saying I'm the one who know what is the right direction, just airing my views of some possible directions.

A random comment about the icons. Yes I know the size is adjustable and I've done that so my main point is that the default is slightly on the big size and gives *me* the toyish impression. And yes I'm not happy with the totally spartan look of Windows 10 or iOS but I think the shadows in FreeCAD icons add nothing useful and add to *my* impression.

On the otherhand I like that colors are used to convey some meaning and not just eye candy.

I will next look at the 0.17-pre and other links provided and re-adjust my view.

cheers Kusti

[yorik]

I vote for moving the topic to Open discussion.

done

[Kunda1]

Since now there is a UI/UX forum this thread should probably move there, no?

[yorik]

Maybe, but for now this seems mostly a genuine open discussion to me

[Kunda1]

Maybe, but for now this seems mostly a genuine open discussion to me

Fair enough

[NormandC]

Since now there is a UI/UX forum this thread should probably move there, no?

It took me a full 2 minutes to find it. I thought I was losing my mind.

Why was it buried under the Developers corner? IMO it should be separate from it, on the same level, so it can be visible in the Board index...

[kkremitzki]

In terms of impact, I think work on the Start Page would be most fruitful; it's worth considering the first impression someone new to FreeCAD gets when starting the program for the first time. If you look at the main page and see the 4 groups FreeCAD is supposed to be targeted for, hobbyist, experienced CAD user, programmer, and educator, only 1 of those will really care about latest commits, so I think replacing that with something else would be an easy win in user experience.

I think having some links to key web resources like tutorials, etc. from the wiki, the forum, the bug tracker, would make sense. The Recent Files having a preview like the Onshape screenshots would be great; every time you open the program you can feel like a boss by seeing all the cool things you're working on. It'd be great to have links to some sort of curated video resources, if the right Youtube videos were to be gathered.

The Example Projects probably shouldn't be on the very bottom.

The other thing I'd like to mention as far as UI involves the workbenches. Right now, like nyholku mentioned, it's like a sea of icons. This reminds me of the current UI of LibreOffice, and how they're planning on releasing a (gasp!) Microsoft Office-like ribbon UI. The LibreOffice UI, though, will be composable, so you can combine pre-existing tiles, toolbars, and tabs to suit your workflow. I think something similar might work for FreeCAD, but it might be tough.

One issue with the multiple workbenches right now is that (as far as I know) you can't save layouts besides the one that loads on startup. So, if you are switching between tasks a lot, the solution is to make your own workbench and include the tools you want. Instead, it'd be nice if the current UI idea of workbenches was changed to be some sort of checklist, where the UI objects associated for that sort of "CAD concern" are, upon being checked, available to be plugged into a composable ribbon-like UI. This would sort of allow for a workbench to be generated through the interface rather than through code. Hopefully that would allow for a long-term, easily tweaked UI for your own workflow (or even per-project!)

Speaking of per-project, I always thought it was odd that the scale of a grid and the units (metric vs imperial) weren't available on a per-project level. What if I want to open a BIM model of a house in America and a mechanical model of an engine in two tabs? The two files have vastly different spatial scales and units, but unless I'm mistaken the grid size and units are global, right?

[agryson]

for now this seems mostly a genuine open discussion to me

oops... I hadn't read every single post before moving it into the subforum ... moving it back to open discussion - sorry for the bouncing around guys.

But to jump into the discussion, I actually had a very similar experience to @nyholku - I used to work for Dassault Systèmes and when I left I had already been bitten by the CAD bug. Working in 3D printing and laser cutting now, I used Solvespace, OnShape and even tried FreeCAD but didn't grok it and went back to OnShape until they did that 'must be public' thing. So I dived back into FreeCAD and thanks to the great video tutorials finally 'got it'.

Hesitant to suggest changes without being able to code them, I started 'slowly' by starting my icon work so I could get a feel for the code over time.

I think a lot of what you suggest here is excellent, particularly the idea of the primary action being labelled, the start page and the nav cube, I suggest opening a topic for the nav cube in the UX/UI subforum so we can flesh out the idea and start looking at how to implement it. @kkremitzki has already opened one for the start page.

As for language, I agree with @NormandC that we need to tread carefully to ensure we are using terms all audiences will understand properly (but I'm well aware that wasn't the main thrust of your post).

[Jee-Bee]

I like the idea of an UI upgrade!!
But for me is more important how does it work. It is partly related
It is not only looks the buttons like what you're looking for but more are they in the place i think they are...
Example:
I would expect refine shape and parametric refine shape in the same workbench...

It would be nice if at the moment looking to the gui also looking what function are related (functionality) give a related gui.
Example: Part fillet( and Part design fillet
PFillet don't need preselection PDFillet need it
Pfillet shows all edges/faces PDFillet (of course not since it need preselection)
(PFillet can variable radius PDFillet not (would be nice!!) - is function not specially gui related)
Probably there are some more difference but this are basically the most important differences in the behaviour...