Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

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sliptonic
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Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by sliptonic »

A comment on a youtube video struck a bell with me.
Please read the comments for the details

To summarize, If a monitor is poorly adjusted, it's easy to overlook the highlight color and there doesn't seem to be a color customizaton option.

Second, If the body is selected in the tree, it's impossible to tell if it's active.

Would it be possible to do something more to the node so that it's easier to detect the active body? ie add an icon or set it *bold* ?
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by DeepSOIC »

Nice video btw, and a good set of small but annoying gui bugs.

Yes, I agree, making active body bold seems better. Currently, bold is applied to "active object", which seems to be a totally useless thing.

BTW, part-o-magic addresses the body activation problem quite a bit. It doesn't do anything to the highlight color, but 3d view changes to reflect what's going on. I am actually curious, what if one tries to learn freecad with PoM enabled from the beginning?
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by wmayer »

To summarize, If a monitor is poorly adjusted, it's easy to overlook the highlight color and there doesn't seem to be a color customizaton option.
There is. It's in the preferences under Viewer > Colors where the colors of an active container or an edited object can be changed. Then a few weeks ago I integrated some idea of a PR from Abdullah where for an active container you can additionally make the font italic, underlined or overlined. But for the latter three option there is currently no switch in the GUI, you have to make it directly in the config editor.
Yes, I agree, making active body bold seems better. Currently, bold is applied to "active object", which seems to be a totally useless thing.
I think we can let the community decide how to handle this. But IMO it would still be good to have a visual feedback about what is the active object. There are many functions that work on the active object and thus it's a matter of transparency to know on which object such a function is applied to.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by chrisb »

wmayer wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:03 am I think we can let the community decide how to handle this. But IMO it would still be good to have a visual feedback about what is the active object. There are many functions that work on the active object and thus it's a matter of transparency to know on which object such a function is applied to.
This is perhaps a misunderstanding. The last object added to the tree has a bold font. I could never find any functionality connected with this. It is different from the element being selected in the tree, to which in fact most functions are applied.
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DeepSOIC
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by DeepSOIC »

wmayer wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:03 am There are many functions that work on the active object
chrisb wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:33 am I could never find any functionality connected with this
+1 for chrisb, I just never found a tool that does something to active object. @wmayer, do you have an example?

except I myself often use App.ActiveDocument.ActiveObject in py console and it's very handy there ;) . But that's a coder's use, not a typical user use.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by sliptonic »

wmayer wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:03 am
To summarize, If a monitor is poorly adjusted, it's easy to overlook the highlight color and there doesn't seem to be a color customizaton option.
There is. It's in the preferences under Viewer > Colors where the colors of an active container or an edited object can be changed. Then a few weeks ago I integrated some idea of a PR from Abdullah where for an active container you can additionally make the font italic, underlined or overlined. But for the latter three option there is currently no switch in the GUI, you have to make it directly in the config editor.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by wmayer »

This is perhaps a misunderstanding. The last object added to the tree has a bold font. I could never find any functionality connected with this. It is different from the element being selected in the tree, to which in fact most functions are applied.
In the past the behaviour was:
* if something is selected then use this
* if nothing is selected then take the document't active object
* if there is no active object or wrong type raise an error dialog

This was the standard behaviour in the old Part design workbench and the idea was to reduce clicks as much as possible. In the Part design workbench you actually never needed the tree view and you could do everything with the task panel and the 3d view. At that time the active object was essential.

Now with the new Part design the logic has changed that the central object is the body and its tip object.
+1 for chrisb, I just never found a tool that does something to active object. @wmayer, do you have an example?
I have to admit that I couldn't find a relevant function where it's used like that. In FEM there still seems to be some functions but I haven't tested it.
When looking inside the whole code base then there are still hundreds of calls of "ActiveObject" but all commands using it has created this new object beforehand and as input they rely on selection or something else.

So, there is then indeed no point any more to make active objects bold in the tree view.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by polymer »

Active Body should be Highlighted every time. When I select something it could be highlighted, when I use the context menue it could be highlighted. Or written bold.
So if not it can be problematic when working with multiobject bodies is possible.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by wmayer »

polymer wrote: Wed Sep 05, 2018 6:55 am Active Body should be Highlighted every time. When I select something it could be highlighted, when I use the context menue it could be highlighted. Or written bold.
So if not it can be problematic when working with multiobject bodies is possible.
The active body is always highlighted with a purple color. But there is no further visual indication and this makes it impossible to see what the active body is when it's selected because then the selection overrides the highlight color. Now that there is no need any more to specially handle the active object (in general active object != active body) we additionally can make the active body bold. Then it should always be clear what the active body is.
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Re: Problems with the Active Body highlight color.

Post by NormandC »

wmayer wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:03 am There is. It's in the preferences under Viewer > Colors where the colors of an active container or an edited object can be changed. Then a few weeks ago I integrated some idea of a PR from Abdullah where for an active container you can additionally make the font italic, underlined or overlined. But for the latter three option there is currently no switch in the GUI, you have to make it directly in the config editor.
But how are we to know how to enable it? There is nothing in BaseApp/Preferences/View about Active Body label font style. Do we need to create it from scratch, and if so, what name and value to give it?

sliptonic wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:11 am Second, If the body is selected in the tree, it's impossible to tell if it's active.
How about propagating the active highlight color to the Body's content? With all of it having the highlight color, it would be more noticeable.

FC_PartDesign_Body_Active_mockup.png
FC_PartDesign_Body_Active_mockup.png (34.82 KiB) Viewed 2275 times

In addition to it, for even more contrast the Body's label and its content could also be shown in bold (or in italic, or whatever)

FC_PartDesign_Body_Active_mockup2.png
FC_PartDesign_Body_Active_mockup2.png (35.11 KiB) Viewed 2275 times
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