Poll: What should superPlacement be renamed to?

[jmaustpc]

The poll should offer to vote for a second choice.

That can't be done with a phpBB poll, can it?

Hi Guys, really forget the pole, it is of little value. This is not a popularity contest, a pole would be great if we wanted to agree on who was the prettiest girl/bloke etc. but here we want to find the best technically correct answer, hence the value of the discussion rather than a pole.

My opinion has changed since reading the discussion, if I had previously voted then it would now be wrong.

I still think it's confusing to talk about rotational offset.

Yeah I know Norm but I can't think of a better one word term. Just a quick thought, perhaps for angle "deflection" might be a better term? But we have to pick a single term that covers at least the basic usage, angle perhaps could be thought of as a "special" or "corner" case, of the offset functionality and in that sense I think "offset" is at least logical and understandable. But I am happy to listen if someone comes up with a better choice.

[jmaustpc]

Ha! I had no idea this was going to be such a tricky thing.

Yes, indeed! But for me at least the problem is that I did not fully or correctly understand what this functionality is, does or is intended to be. I did follow some of Deepsoic's development posts regarding it at the time but I didn't understand correctly/completely.

SuperPlacement effectively defines a placement value for an object relative to the "Placement" property values. So it is like a set of Placement values which get applied relative to the actual Placement property values of that object, rather than global origin.

You have made the same mistake as looo did at first. It is not relative to the placement property, but relative to its attached position. The placement property contains the "absolute" placement calculated by the attachment engine. If you change the rotation of datum plane attached to a face that is already at an angle, it can easily be seen that it is relative to its attached position.

Yes, as soon as I read Looo's post I had an "Ahhah!" moment. It suddenly made sense.

I wonder if leaving out the term "placement" would avoid the confusion of thinking it relative to the regular Placement property. In fact, what if it was just called "Offset," and leave the rest of the meaning to be inferred by the context (i.e. it is under the attachment section, so it must be something related to attachment.)

If it did not have the term "Placement" in its title then I think it would have saved my confusion. Its an offset from the Attachment (not from Placement) partly from which overall placement of the object is then calculated. Hence if it said "Attachment Offset" or "Offset from Attachment" it would immediately have made sense to me and further it would have logically explained why "Super Placement" does nothing for a default Part Cube since it does not have an "attachment" so of course it does nothing.

Also, it is not just for Pard Design. The complete list of attachable objects is: Anything derived from Part2dObject (sketch, draft objects), Datum features, Part Design primitives, and Part primitives. Edit: The attachment editor can be opened from the Part menu: Part -> Attachment.

So in summary this is an "Offset" value from "Attachment" used in conjunction with other things to eventually calculate the correct "overall placement" of an object. So perhaps we could just call it "Attachment Offset" or "Offset from Attachment".

Jim

[chrisb]

I still think it's confusing to talk about rotational offset. I am not a native English speaker, but I've never seen the word offset used in such manner. It's always been a linear or planar distance.

You are right, but I think it is no problem. Most models I have made and seen use linear offset only, often due to the natural way of designing something symmetric to (0,0,0) and moving it later into place. So newbies get probably in touch with the super relative offset placement before they try the rotation.

I can change the Super Placement of Box (there is no Placement) only once

I had similar effects too, I think that is not on purpose but a follow up of some inconsistent state due to the pending backlink error (the data tab is not populated correctly).

[chrisb]

Hi Guys, really forget the pole, it is of little value. This is not a popularity contest, a pole would be great if we wanted to agree on who was the prettiest ...bloke etc.

No need to poll that, I know him. We hardly talk but he lives somewhere behind the mirror in the bath room

but here we want to find the best technically correct answer, hence the value of the discussion rather than a pole.

I think the poll is not the worst thing, because we don't only search for a correct answer but it has to meet further requirements like one-word-only, understandable-by-newbies, ... We might need an anti poll "Who cannot live with ..." or "What is the worst name" and "SuperPlacement" should be listet as well.
I think any of the terms is an improvement, although any of them has some flaws.

Just to show at what high level we are discussing here: Nobody talks about the notion of "Part". [satire]Part should be renamed, it is ambiguous and far too global. Part of what? Part of the model? Thats anything else as well. ... [/satire]

I would like to see how the poll would look now, can it be cleaned and repeated?

[PrzemoF]

I'm not sure if I understand what the feature does. What about name "Attachment Shift"?

shift:
n. an act of shifting; a slight movement or change

transitive v. To move or transfer from one place or position to another.
transitive v. To alter (position or place).
intransitive v. To change position, direction, place, or form.

[r-frank]

Reading the discussion i was reminded of the Superposition principle.

BTW: What you basically do is a position/placement override, right ?
You are defining a "Master Position/Placement" ...

[triplus]

Attachment Offset is i guess an interesting suggestion. But there i guess is some ambiguity involved as from reading the term itself it isn't all that obvious it is Placement related? Or does the Offset part suggest in clear enough way this is placement related?

Terms like bypass/override could suggest to the end user that should not be done often and should be used with caution?

P.S. Reaching consensus is a hard task in the end isn't it.

@peterl94 as you are the moderator of this challenge therefore first of all good luck. If you want my suggestion at some point you will need to narrow down the options. Try a strategy as used in this challenge:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=23625

It looks like this effort wasn't ready for the voting part just yet. But now that all participants likely did express their opinion and more in-depth understanding was gathered. I would likely go for an intermediate vote phase now (infographic with all the options suggested or to reset the poll and give all suggested options and a time frame to take the vote). To narrow down the options substantially (i guess up to 3 depending on the votes).

[peterl94]

It looks like this effort wasn't ready for the voting part just yet.

At least it was good at stimulating discussion. Now I don't even like my initial choice of Relative Placement. I think it is good in the context of the GUI were you can see it is relating to the attachment, but otherwise it is too ambiguous. For example, doc.Body.getObject('Sketch').RelativePlacement.

That is why I like the suggestion containing "attachment," because it makes sense from code and in the GUI. If not Attachment Offset, what about Attachment Placement? It's kinda long, but there is no mistaking that it is some kind of placement related to attachment in some way, no matter the context.

Pretty soon I'm going to pick a name I like the best, and have people do a yea/nay vote.

[wandererfan]

That is why I like the suggestion containing "attachment," because it makes sense from code and in the GUI. If not Attachment Offset, what about Attachment Placement? It's kinda long, but there is no mistaking that it is some kind of placement related to attachment in some way, no matter the context.

+1

I was hesitant to vote because I still don't fully understand the concept. From the discussion, it seems that a number of fairly knowledgeable FCers are in the same boat.

Maybe the first step should be a concise statement of what "Su***Pl******t" means? A first draft:

Su***Pl******t: the position and orientation of a ?feature? with respect to the ?feature's? "attached position" (ie the Placement of the ?Feature's? Attachment), within the containing Body. See Attachment, Placement.



wf

[cox]

Attachment Offset

Sorry Jim for not reading your suggestion and calling it my own. I did not catch it, just think it is a true representation of the property.

I understand that there is some dissonance with the word "offset" in relation to angles for some languages, if it helps anyone one could think of the process of aiming a gun, you would offset your sights in regards to your distance, orientation, angle, relative speed/acceleration to the target, but also in relation to the amount of propellant, size, weight and shape of the projectile and the wether. All these things are as @NormandC found countermeasures or counterbalances to some force or action that is stopping you from hitting the target.

Also, if I understand correctly. angles are treated as a linear scales by using radians in mathematics. If it helps.