Bug #2774: [Sketcher] Can not select points in sketcher properly when changing viewangle

[DeepSOIC]

How do you ping DeepSOIC on the forum through a forum message?

If you quote me, I get a notification. Not an e-mail one, but still very noticeable.

I didn't quite get, what you want me to say here. Bug or enhancement? I have a slight preference to calling it Enhancement.

I was exerimenting with this stuff in mid 2016, when implementing Pick Radius setting. I had a plan on a more smart selection logic (everywhere, not just Skether). Abandoned.

[user19243]

Hi. I would like to add my request for this behaviour to be changed.

I loved FreeCAD when I first found it (and I still do), but I noticed there were many serious bugs (crashes) and usability problems. This is no criticism, I understand how difficult this type of software must be to create, and if you look at the prices of commercial software to do this, to make it for free is amazing. I notice how this has improved greatly, it is much more reliable and usability is improving all the time.

So, I had stopped using it for a long time, but when I came back I saw it was much better. After some time of using it, I encountered this behaviour, with a few other problems, and so I think it is good but still not mature enough for me to use properly, so I bought some commercial software and I stopped using it again.

Now I can see what exactly happens with this behaviour, I can try to use FreeCAD again. I really want to use it because I think open source CAD CAM is so great. But I can see it is not considered a bug and might not get changed. I really worry about this because I think it will make other people who like FreeCAD stop using it just like me, if they don't realise why it happens.

I think a different behaviour makes sense:
- Objects of lower dimension always get selected first. So first points, then curves, then surfaces etc. This is good because you can always zoom in more to select different area of higher dimension, but you cannot do this for lower dimension object.
- Then objects of same dimension are selected by which one is closest to the user.
- Then there is a context menu or something to select if multiple objects are on top of each other. This is convenient to avoid zooming in, but it also very important sometimes, if a short line is hidden behind a long line for example. Or if you moved two points on top of each other and you want to move the back one apart. It is not good to reverse the order of objects instead, because there might be 3 or more objects in the same place, for example two long lines overlap and there is a short line in between them. I think reverse the order of objects as a solution is confusing also.

I think the lower dimension behaviour would be good to do first to stop some people thinking FreeCAD broke and they don't understand why. And then context menu for overlapping objects would be good later one day because it would be useful.

Sorry for the long post I really want FreeCAD to be the best CAD software, it is brilliant. Thank you so much for making it.

[if.carbonbased]

I spent hours with trying to edit a complex sequence of lines before I realized it only works on the other side of the plane. The sketch was mounted onto a surface, and it was positioned so that I could only edit it under the body. I could make the body invisible, but whenever I switched back to the sketch edit mode it appeared again. I'd also join the ones, who would like to have this behavior changed.

Other than that, congratulations for the great work. I used Freecad years ago, but then it was really in an early stage. This time i used it as a last hope to edit a step model, to find, it works really well. In quite a few regards it is better than its commercial competitions. If it is possible to make it more intuitive, why not.

[kisolre]

I spent hours with trying to edit

There is clipping plane now while in sketch editing mode. And while editing the sketch you can change visibility of everything from the tree view.

[chrisb]

And in Preferences->Sketcher you can control which objects should be made visible/invisible on entering sketcher.

[if.carbonbased]

And in Preferences->Sketcher you can control which objects should be made visible/invisible on entering sketcher.

Thanks kisolre too. I tried visibility. I did not know about clipping mode. But unfortunately neither really helps me in this particular situation.

I need to work on an existing STEP model by adding parts to it, drilling holes, etc. I create a sketch on one of its faces, then start working on it. Most of the time I project edges on it (linked edge), but sometimes it is not doable. E.g. arches are not represented by arch, but segments of straight line. So I project only straight edges as references, and create sketch-arches by the curve of the body. This is where the body should be visible. And there is no way to edit the sketch, and see the body the same time. Using visibility in the object tree is quite time consuming, because every time I exit-enter edit mode, it sets body to visible. Clipping is not an option either, because the part of the body above the line is not visible. As a workaround I play with transparency, but it never makes a perfect visibility of both the edge and the line together.

My workflow may not fit to Sketch, but it is a quite a common way to work in other CAD programs. Why to use workarounds just because sketch is supposed to work like this? (Reverse engineering workbench would probably help, but it is not there yet.)

P.s. As a thought: reversing the normal of the sketch plane would help. Is it possible?

[kisolre]

I think that this is getting too offtopic for this thread. Could you please start another thread in the Help subforum describing what you are trying to achieve (with screenshots), how did you approach that and what you could not make? You might be missing something obvious or intended workflow might be different from your expectation. Or yuou might have usecase which was not considered before and there is room for improvement... Check IMPORTANT link at the top of Help subforum before posting...

[chrisb]

Using visibility in the object tree is quite time consuming, because every time I exit-enter edit mode, it sets body to visible. Clipping is not an option either, because the part of the body above the line is not visible.

You don't have to leave Sketcher, but you have to change to the model tab which is timeconsuming too.

P.s. As a thought: reversing the normal of the sketch plane would help. Is it possible?

Yes, the sketch has a property MapReversed which can be set to true.

[if.carbonbased]

P.s. As a thought: reversing the normal of the sketch plane would help. Is it possible?

Yes, the sketch has a property MapReversed which can be set to true.

Thank you chrisb, it works. This can be a workaround even on the long run.
(Yet, my vote is on simplifying behavior of sketch.)

[chrisb]

(Yet, my vote is on simplifying behavior of sketch.)

This may turn out to be very difficult. As far as I know the points are virtually raised a bit to make them selectable from the front view. At the same time this degrades the selection from the back.

There are further things you my consider:
- edit the sketch while displaying the object in wireframe mode
- increase the marker size and pick radius in the preferences.