[Behaviour suggestion] Copy/Clone/symetric tools

[paddle]

Hi there,

A suggestions regardging the behaviour of the following Sketcher tools :

Copy, clone, move, rectangular array

It's very annoying that the reference point is the last point selected. Because when you use a group select with the mouse, then the last selected point is random. So you have to unselect the point you want, then reselect it all the while pressing Ctrl, which often ends up messing things up.

Similarly for symmetric tool you have to select the symmetric line at the beggining too.

It would be better if you only initially select the geometries that you want to use.
Then click the tool icon.
Then select the reference point.
Then move the mouse with a preview of the copied geometry following. Then dropping where you want it.

For symmetry it would be like :
Select the geometries that you want to use.
Then click the tool icon.
Then select the line. Maybe even give a preview when you are on top of a line.

Your thoughts on this?

Edit : another small thing would be assigning copy tool to Ctrl-C Ctrl-V when in the sketcher.

[chrisb]

Sorry on these too, it works perfect for me. With your proposal for the move tool you save only one click at the cost of more mouse movement. In case of non group selection you even have an additional click.

Besides, Sketcher uses greedy selection, thus no ctrl key is needed to add to an existing selection.

[paddle]

It does uses greedy selection, how did I never noticed that?!

For copy/clone/move, it's mostly used for group select to be honest. For single geometries dragging is much better for moving, and copying a single geometry, when do you do that? It seems that you would just reuse the geometry tool if you want more lines.

I'm not sure to see why it would need more mouse movement. You mean compared to the case where you use the random selected reference point?
In this case yes. But most of the time you need a specific reference point to position the copy/movement precisely. This is specially true for rectangular array where you need to position precisely.

[chrisb]

I'm not sure to see why it would need more mouse movement. You mean compared to the case where you use the random selected reference point?
In this case yes. But most of the time you need a specific reference point to position the copy/movement precisely. This is specially true for rectangular array where you need to position precisely.

If I use this tool - which I don't do too often - I don't use it for single elements either, but depending on the use case I may select several elements with a single mouse click. And I do my selection so, that I select the reference point last. I then invoke the tool and do the move. In your case it is invoke, go back, click and then use the tool.

With group selection it is in your case:
select - invoke tool - go to reference point - click - do the move

as is:
select - go to reference point - click click - invoke tool - do the move; it's one click more without any move between

Going after the selection to the reference point needs almost always more mouse miles, because you often can do the group selection in a way that you can select as reference a point nearby.

[paddle]

If I use this tool - which I don't do too often - I don't use it for single elements either, but depending on the use case I may select several elements with a single mouse click. And I do my selection so, that I select the reference point last. I then invoke the tool and do the move. In your case it is invoke, go back, click and then use the tool.

With group selection it is in your case:
select - invoke tool - go to reference point - click - do the move

as is:
select - go to reference point - click click - invoke tool - do the move; it's one click more without any move between

Going after the selection to the reference point needs almost always more mouse miles, because you often can do the group selection in a way that you can select as reference a point nearby.

One click more indeed, but this is totally un-intuitive. It was a pain to understand and learn to do.
Besides it really becomse a problem with large amount of geometries. It seems the code becomes very sluggish when you have more than something like 200-400 geometries.

Try to make something like this and you'll understand what I mean

large arrays.png (197.39 KiB) Viewed 1906 times

[chrisb]

Besides it really becomse a problem with large amount of geometries. It seems the code becomes very sluggish when you have more than something like 200-400 geometries.

Try to make something like this and you'll understand what I mean

I know what you mean and that's why such things shouldn't be done in sketcher. But that's another story.