Usability issues with MacOS

[timredfern]

I'm trying to follow the very first FreeCAD tutorial and I seem to be running into major usability issues, it seems to be impossible to complete the tutorial. I wonder if someone could point out if I'm doing something wrong or if these are known issues.

I'm trying to follow https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Creatin ... PartDesign

The problems I'm seeing are:

"Do the same for the other segments, try to aim at the points that you have created which must light up in yellow. Which means that these points will be coincident. "

I can't see points light up yellow when they are coincident. Judging by the screen grabs, it looks like everything inside the setch is being drawn too small: maybe this is a problem with retina displays?

Also: parts of the grid keep disappearing and not returning: scrolling, minimising the application etc. don't make them return. The only thing that brings them back seems to be drawing new points over them: unfortunately these points are now in the wrong positions.

The downside of this is that I end up with a sketch that says it has "free constraints" and I can't track down where the problem is.

Just wondering if these are known issues: I'm using OSX Mojave 10.14, 18A391

[chrisb]

Hi tim, welcome to the forum.
Which FreeCAD are you using (see the IMPORTANT link above)? If using the latest 0.18 version doesn't help, try increasing the marker size in Preferences->Display.

[timredfern]

Hi Chris

I'm using 0.17 - "latest stable release" from here: https://www.freecadweb.org/downloads.php

I'm happy to try the 0.18 release - I presume this is a beta? I don't see a mention on the downloads page.

Do you have a specific reason to believe that these issues are addressed in the 0.18 release? Do you think they are the same issue? (I can see why they might be, if rendering the grid too small was making it disappear)

Tim

[kisolre]

You can download latest dev version from here https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases - section 0.18_pre.

[chrisb]

I'm happy to try the 0.18 release - I presume this is a beta?

It's less beta than 0.17. Many errors have been removed.

Do you have a specific reason to believe that these issues are addressed in the 0.18 release?

wmayer, one of the key developer has worked on a hires display issue. This might have been affected by it.

[timredfern]

Hi,

I tried version 018

It's exactly the same - see screengrab below.

The labels in the drawing are tiny - can't see that the points change colour - the grid keeps disappearing when I click.

I also tried changing the marker size to the maximum, 15pt - can't see any visible effect.

I tried setting a custom non-retina screen resolution using a commercial third-party utility called switchResX - voila, now the display looks like the tutorial and it's now possible to create coincident points - however the grid still disappears. NB this setting is impossible to reach without a third party utility.

Also the zoom is uncontrollable - it goes in huge leaps, it's impossible to get to a zoom point that you want.

I couldn't get the tutorial to work - I tried it three times - I still ended up "under-constrained with 1 degree of freedom" - when I try the trouble shooting steps to set coincident points or horizontal & vertical lines I get "sketch contains redundant constraints".

Thanks for your help - it's a shame but I have to say that freeCAD seems pretty unusable on MacOS. Is it mainly developed for Windows?

Tim

[PunyTune]

Thanks for your help - it's a shame but I have to say that freeCAD seems pretty unusable on MacOS. Is it mainly developed for Windows?

As a Mac user who has struggled with FreeCAD, I can tell you it works very well indeed. In the beginning there are many frustrations. Hell, there still are. But in my experience, most of the things that "didn't work" were things I didn't understand or had to learn how to work around. There's more than one way to skin a cat. My advice is to be patient and keep trying. Now, FreeCAD is not stable and polished like an Adobe app. Save often, and I often have to redraw shapes I started the wrong way. But, I can almost always "get there".

As for changes to the dot size, I think you have to exit and re-enter to see the change.

The grid is funny. It seems to depend on the size of your project. My advice is to not worry about the grid.

As for zoom, no problem for me using a scroll wheel. I can imagine a Mac Magic Mouse might be different. Learn to be subtle.

Redundant constraints sounds like a problem, but it's nothing. Just delete the redundant ones and move on.

[timredfern]

Thanks, this is a great reply and far more useful than any specific advice.

I did persevere and complete it.

I don't expect it to be like Adobe, I used linux for years before I realised I didn't have time

Tm

[chrisb]

FreeCAD is not made for Windows, there are many Linux users out there. Did you try increasing the dot size? What happened? You can control the zoom level in preferences as well, I have set it to 0.02 in the Display tab.

Redundancies are very sure not Mac specific thing but a user problem. You may want to read my Sketcher tutorial . The examples, by the way, were made on a Mac.

[timredfern]

yep, the dot size does change after restarting the application - and this makes it possible to make coincident points

thanks for the tip about zooming

the biggest usability issues as I see it are:

- the text in drawing windows is very small when using retina display modes

- grid disappearing

- view often jumps back to start page on executing operations - this is more an annoyance but it looks like the drawing has been unloaded or crashed

maybe I'll check out the source code..