[Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

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paddle
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[Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by paddle »

Hi there,
In sketcher
Another small suggestion to make UI cleaner and more intuitive.

Why not merging the two constraints tools 'Point on object' and 'Concident' into one tool?
Then depending on the user selection apply the correct constraint.
If he selects 2 points, then coincidence, if one point one line, then point on object.

It just feels intuitive that those should be together. Coincidence is basically Point to Object when the object is a point.

Having 2 separate tools is useless in this case. It only makes more tools than are necessary and for the new user it just makes life more complicated.

Your thoughts?
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adrianinsaval
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by adrianinsaval »

+1 now I'm used to it and it doesn't give me any issue but now that you mentioned it I did struggle with this when I started.
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by GeneFC »

I do not have any problem with either option, and I do not recall ever having a problem.

However, there is a difference, and I believe there would be new problems if the merger was completed. In particular, a decision will need to be made when the selected point is on a line relatively (?) close to a vertex. Should the join go to the line where it was clicked or to the vertex?

Obviously there are things like click radius, but this is not perfect.

I often want to move some point on an object in one direction only so that the specific point touches a line. If the suggested merge occurred it would be possible that the wrong action was carried out and the connection went to the nearby vertex instead.

I can live with either situation, but the merger would not necessarily be trouble-free.

Gene
chrisb
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by chrisb »

I don't really see the benefit, and I have the feeling that these are indeed quite different. Minimizing the number of UI elements is helpful, but not at the cost of clear concepts. So we sure wouldn't suggest to drop parallel constraint symbol too, because we could use coincidence for that as well if two lines are selected with the meaning of equal first derivative.

I would definitely keep the point-on-object symbol, because otherwise there would be no possibility to distinguish the existance of such constraint. But then it would be cumbersome to have an icon showing something different than what is created.
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adrianinsaval
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by adrianinsaval »

GeneFC wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 2:44 pm In particular, a decision will need to be made when the selected point is on a line relatively (?) close to a vertex. Should the join go to the line where it was clicked or to the vertex?
if you select two points you get coincidence if you select a point and an edge you get point on object, there's not much mystery
I often want to move some point on an object in one direction only so that the specific point touches a line. If the suggested merge occurred it would be possible that the wrong action was carried out and the connection went to the nearby vertex instead.
more often than not you can click somewhere in the line were there's clearly no points to ensure you get point on object so I think this would be a very rare occurrence, getting point on object instead of coincidence could happen more often but I think this is an acceptable trade off for a simpler and easier to use and understand interface. And we could get a hint of which one would be applied before clicking.
chrisb wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 6:14 pm I don't really see the benefit
On the other hand I don't see the benefit of this distinction, can you explain to me what's beneficial about that? The end result is the same, point on object can only be between an edge and a point and coincidence can only be between two points, these rules will be there and this is the kind of the decision that can be safely delegated to machines (just a conditional that checks what was selected, and the conditional is already there since you get an error if you try to apply a coincidence between a line and a point) instead of wasting our time (and screen real estate) with it.
kisolre
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by kisolre »

Maybe something like the radius/diameter/auto combo?
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adrianinsaval
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by adrianinsaval »

that could be a good compromise solution if there's no agreement to just fully combine in the same tool
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by GeneFC »

adrianinsaval wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 6:41 pm more often than not you can click somewhere in the line were there's clearly no points to ensure you get point on object so I think this would be a very rare occurrence, getting point on object instead of coincidence could happen more often but I think this is an acceptable trade off for a simpler and easier to use and understand interface. And we could get a hint of which one would be applied before clicking.
That does not seem like a very compelling reason to "simplify" the interface. The error would only happen occasionally, not all the time. :o

Sheesh!

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paddle
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by paddle »

GeneFC wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 2:44 pm However, there is a difference, and I believe there would be new problems if the merger was completed. In particular, a decision will need to be made when the selected point is on a line relatively (?) close to a vertex. Should the join go to the line where it was clicked or to the vertex?

Obviously there are things like click radius, but this is not perfect.

I often want to move some point on an object in one direction only so that the specific point touches a line. If the suggested merge occurred it would be possible that the wrong action was carried out and the connection went to the nearby vertex instead.
Sorry but I'm not sure to understand what you meant. Either you click the point either you click the line. Being able to click one or the other correctly is another problem and could be solved by click radius?
It feels like you would have this issue because of how your learned to use those two tools. But having learned bad habits shouldn't be an argument against it.
chrisb wrote: Mon Jan 10, 2022 6:14 pm I don't really see the benefit, and I have the feeling that these are indeed quite different. Minimizing the number of UI elements is helpful, but not at the cost of clear concepts. So we sure wouldn't suggest to drop parallel constraint symbol too, because we could use coincidence for that as well if two lines are selected with the meaning of equal first derivative.

I would definitely keep the point-on-object symbol, because otherwise there would be no possibility to distinguish the existance of such constraint. But then it would be cumbersome to have an icon showing something different than what is created.
The benefit is that to be honest FreeCAD constraint toolbelt is overwhelming and frustratingly slow for the new user. It's not as bad as when I started and I kept having a lot of error message anytime I didn't selected the correct things (thanks to continuous mode!), but it's still far from ideal.
I guess it's acceptable when you know FreeCAD very well and know all the shortcuts by heart and that you hands are trained to do them. But for the new user everytime you want to make a constraint you have to look at the toolbelt with the mouse, and search between 10 icons, then you have two almost identical and you don't know which to choose.

You say 'the cost of clear concept' as if new users are here thinking about concepts and spending time learning and read the interface and every tool description. They don't. No one does. People want to make their model and spend the less time learning the interface and get frustrated when they think they selected the correct tool by choosing the icon and that it doesn't work for what they wanted.

And conceptually I do not agree with your argument. It's not two separate concept, it's the same.
- Coincidence can describe both current coincident and point to object as the point can be considered coincident to a curve by being on it.
- Point to object can describe both current coincident and point to object as a point is an object, so point to object includes point to point.

I agree point to object icon is better suited for both. Though I would keep 'coincident' name rather than 'point to object'.
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Re: [Behaviour suggestion] Merge 'Coincident' and 'point on object'

Post by chrisb »

paddle wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:13 am The benefit is that to be honest FreeCAD constraint toolbelt is overwhelming and frustratingly slow for the new user.
I never experienced the toolbar to be slow, and I would say it's not the toolbar which is overwhelming, it's the concept of constraints, which is new for most users, even if they are well experienced in 2D.
This is a frequently seen misunderstanding, that the difficulties should come from a poor UI. Of course there are such cases, but most often, the difficulties rather come from not understanding how sketch based parametric modeling works
I guess it's acceptable when you know FreeCAD very well and know all the shortcuts by heart and that you hands are trained to do them. But for the new user everytime you want to make a constraint you have to look at the toolbelt with the mouse, and search between 10 icons, then you have two almost identical and you don't know which to choose.
Sorry, but it escapes me, where point-on-object Image and coincidence Image are almost identical, except that both have a point. In the opposite: the former shows very clear a point on a (curved) line. And that's what this constraint does; and nothing else.

The coincidence could be open for discussion, but as someone who has helped hundreds of newbies, I can say that there were no complaints since this icon replaced the single dot in 0.18.

I admit that the name "point-on-object" is too general. I would prefer "point-on-line-or-curve" or just "point-on-line", where the latter could do well in connection with the icon showing a curve.

Concerning clear concepts: with your proposal, what would it be if you select two points and a line? Right now it is clear.
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