Suggestion for Alignment Tool

[bejant]

A few days I was trying to make a dodecahedron by adding pentagonal faces to one another, which stemmed from this forum thread.

I selected the two edges I wanted to align:

20140726b_pentagons.png (6.34 KiB) Viewed 1090 times

and when I selected the Alignment Tool (Edit -> Alignment) the views looked like this:

20140726c_alignment.png (19.64 KiB) Viewed 1090 times

The only visible objects are the two pentagons and of course they look identical, so it's really difficult to try to figure out which edge is to be moved and to which edge it should be aligned.

After reading another forum thread which discusses different visibility modes for Sketcher, I thought it would be helpful if when using the Alignment Tool, the other objects in the views were visible but "ghosted" (and also not selectable) so as to help the user see the orientation of the views and also help the user determine which edge is which.

I'm thinking this functionality would be similar to the second post of the forum thread referenced above and issue #0845, which is in reference to only Sketcher.

[jmaustpc]

are you thinking perhaps something similar to the "ghost" objects that are displayed during construction of a PartDesign Pattern feature? I wonder if they might get in the way sometimes, maybe/maybe not I am not sure what my opinion is?

[ulrich1a]

The only visible objects are the two pentagons and of course they look identical, so it's really difficult to try to figure out which edge is to be moved and to which edge it should be aligned.

This is a challenge like a pairs game. But it can be solved. Both shapes are shown in identical orientation as of the time you select the align tool. You may turn the view before calling the align tool in a way, that makes it easier to memorize the edges you want to align.
But how do you start the whole assembly? I would think at least the first two faces should be oriented to the final position, in order to have three points to align the next face.

Ulrich

[bejant]

are you thinking perhaps something similar to the "ghost" objects that are displayed during construction of a PartDesign Pattern feature?

Initially I was thinking that the unselected objects could appear with a high transparency, but this would be a good option too. To me it seems that there could be a way to help the user better visualize the orientation of the items.

I wonder if they might get in the way sometimes

To use the alignment tool, the objects need to be selected before the command can be initiated. So they're already chosen; and I envision the other transparent objects would be unselectable.

Both shapes are shown in identical orientation as of the time you select the align tool

Thanks Ulrich, that's something I didn't notice until you pointed it out. (I also noticed that I selected the objects in the wrong order!)

But after reading this I went back into the same FreeCAD file and tried the Alignment Tool again. This time I also created a new view so I could switch between the Alignment Tool split screen and my original view but it's still difficult to figure out which pentagon is which.

Aligning and placing objects seems to be a frequent topic in the Help section of the forum and it seems the Alignment Tool could be changed to make it more user friendly. I think it could be further enhanced by adding an icon and tooltip (maybe something like "Select fixed object first").

Blue = edit