dummy-proof FreeCAD

[chrisb]

Is there a way to archive these types of posts.

We can pin it, which is inappropriate or you can bookmark it in your browser.

[abdullah]

ping

Here what i mean. firt figure simple sketch with infinite line. and the second same figure zoomed out so you can see it is a real long line.

Thanks. Now we can follow this with the ticket.

[abdullah]

it can certainly benefit from a little bit of UX improvement at the moment.

Totally agree with that, the problem is that so far it has been very hard to see anybody formulate real, doable enhancements. I'd love to see another discussion start with ideas of practical steps that could be undertaken to better the whole user experience.

+1

I first tend to think that whatever one may consider "intuitive" depends on what he has been exposed to before.

I shortly used AutoCAD in the late 80's. It was a real pain. I shortly used SolidEdge in 2000. Nothing I saw there was "intuitive" and there were lots of bugs BTW. All this was paid software.

When I started with SolidEdge, I had only been exposed to AutoCAD, so it was no intuitive at all. Ironically, FreeCAD's Sketcher was intuitive to me because I had been exposed to SolidEdge.

All those engineers of commercial software were probably paid to get an UX improvement. It may seem that getting a UX improvement that is seen as an improvement by people coming from different environments is not easy at all. Please proof me wrong and start that thread Yorik indicates.

[Jee-Bee]

See https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31665 as example of a difference opinion in ux/ usebillity...

[easyw-fc]

An other thread on improvement of UX here:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 42#p194242
People were asking for something like Triball in IronCAD
http://www.ironcad.com/training-course- ... l-tut1.mp4
http://www.ironcad.com/training-course- ... l-tut2.mp4
http://www.ironcad.com/training-course- ... l-tut3.mp4

I have implemented a similar approach with my Manipultor WB with python, but having something native like the Transform tool improved, would be very nice.

PS could a moderator change the title of this thread... I just don't like to add weight on this titled thread

[freecad-heini-1]

PS could a moderator change the title of this thread... I just don't like to add weight on this titled thread

+1

[ulrich1a]

You might even want to consider if such posts deserve to be approved.

I disagree to not approve such posts. I try to read it, in a way that the poster was trying FreeCAD and at some point did not find a useful information about its usage he was looking for.

The OP was missing infinite lines. Most experienced users know, that the lines are infinite regarding the constraints point on line, tangency and angle. I had a look into the documentation. It is not mentioned there! So here we can start to make the documentation better, in order to avoid frustration of the next new user.

Other Points are:
The constraints are only introduced shortly in the main page of the sketcher as an alternative to dimensions. One or two more sentences about a definition would be better.

The flipping behavior of sketches is discussed in some tutorials. We may should consider to write some hints or recipes in the main documentation.

Maybe the navigation styles need a hint about usage in the sketcher.

The post gave me ideas, where the documentation can be made better.

Ulrich

[ian.rees]

PS could a moderator change the title of this thread... I just don't like to add weight on this titled thread

+1

I don't personally think that would be appropriate - lots of people have responded already, and part of what was responded to is the original subject. Changing that subject would take those responses out of context to an extent, and I think the responses reflect positively on the FreeCAD community anyway.

[NormandC]

I shortly used AutoCAD in the late 80's. It was a real pain. I shortly used SolidEdge in 2000. Nothing I saw there was "intuitive"

I was introduced to AutoCAD in the late 80's as well (on MS-DOS ), it took 10 years before I used it for work, for another 10 years. I briefly tried Solid Edge at home around 2002 and found it not intuitive at all! I came back to it around 2007 (I found out at my job that we had an unused legit license sitting in a colleague's desk drawer, while we were using freaking AutoCAD!!! ) and somehow it just clicked, and I was hooked. I've been using it for work at two different companies since. It is somewhat similar to FreeCAD regarding the workbench approach, (called environments) although it doesn't have as many as FreeCAD.

I disagree to not approve such posts. I try to read it, in a way that the poster was trying FreeCAD and at some point did not find a useful information about its usage he was looking for.

Did the guy actually post questions first on the forum? Nope. That's what you should do before getting so frustrated that you create a topic with a provoking title. And that's what most people actually do.

Yorik said it best. These topics are always complaints without specifics so their usefulness factor is very low. Here, it happened to produce a useful dialogue between an end user (Jee-Bee) and a developer (abdullah) for a new feature, but IMO this is the exception where those ranting topics are concerned.

Changing that subject would take those responses out of context to an extent

In that case, the moderator could add a comment in the original topic. This is done in other forums. Something like this:

This topic subject was moderated. Please refrain from using incendiary language to better encourage constructive dialogue.