new tree view behavior is less productive

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uwestoehr
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new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by uwestoehr »

I don't know if this is the right forum place an. I want to give feedback in the new tree view behavior after the App::Link merges:

I used the last days the latest FC heavily for a real-world project.The normal way of working is to open the assembly and then I open from there the different parts I need to change. So in effect whenever I work with FC, I have several files opened at once.

I need to jump between these files a lot and before the App::Link merge I only saw the tree of the current file. Now I always have to scroll down a lot to get the tree of the file I am actually editing. For example In this case I have 5 files open and want to edit the file "FlyMiBird-Seitenwand2_001":
FreeCAD_r4N4OLPdgQ.png
FreeCAD_r4N4OLPdgQ.png (21.57 KiB) Viewed 2016 times
I have now to scroll down so far that I have to touch the scrollwheel of the mouse 5 times and it is really hard to keep the overview in what tree I am actually in.

This is without exaggeration a nightmare in terms of mistakes. I modified now so often the tree of the wrong file accidentally. Maybe it is just me, but as I am an average engineer, others will most probably the same problem.
So the working speed might just be annoying but the mistakes, one will sooner or later make, are a big problem for real-life work. (I went now back to FC 0.18 because of this.)

Therefore I request to return to the old tree view behavior: When changing to another file, only its tree is shown.

realthunder wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 3:25 am .
@realthunder: what do you mean?

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realthunder
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by realthunder »

Please try 'Single Document' or 'Collapse/Expand' option as shown in the picture below,

Screenshot from 2019-08-24 15-16-41.png
Screenshot from 2019-08-24 15-16-41.png (39.3 KiB) Viewed 2009 times
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by uwestoehr »

realthunder wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:07 am Please try 'Single Document' or 'Collapse/Expand' option as shown in the picture below,
Many thanks! It works, however, I vote to make the option "Collapse/Expand" the default. The reason is that not everybody is aware of this new and cool feature. Therefore with Collapse/Expand, he gets kind of the old behavior but sees that there is a difference that all opened documents appear in the tree.

Additionally it would be very nice of you could describe all the changes you made here:
Release_notes_0.19
that testers like me know what is new and what might be a problem/bug.

I regularly have a look at this Wiki page but can for example not find the tree view change there and this is not an app::Link-specific issue. I think a subsection of https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release ... _interface would be a good position for the tree view feature description.
I also propose to remove the section https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release ... Link_merge and sort out its content tom more appropriate positions in the page.
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by realthunder »

uwestoehr wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:22 am Many thanks! It works, however, I vote to make the option "Collapse/Expand" the default. The reason is that not everybody is aware of this new and cool feature.
I prefer multi-document mode more myself, but I don't have too much problem with Collapse/Expand either. The new cross document linking capability makes document switching less needed, and therefore not that much difference between these two modes. Anyway, let's see what others think.

I think a subsection of https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Release ... _interface would be a good position for the tree view feature description.
Here is a video (please turn on subtitle) showing some of the options. I'll write some document about this later. Any volunteer is more than welcome, too.

phpBB [video]



And there is another video about the new drag and drop behavior (with subtitle too).

phpBB [video]
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by uwestoehr »

realthunder wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:57 am I prefer multi-document mode more myself, but I don't have too much problem with Collapse/Expand either.
The point is that people use a new FC version in most cases with existing documents. In my case these are existing a2plus assemblies. Therefore Collapse/Expand keeps you productive from the beginning. Once you are more familiar with the new features you can change that option.

realthunder wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:57 am Here is a video (please turn on subtitle) showing some of the options.
Amazing! Great work!
I'll test the new features out as soon as possible.
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by bernd »

+1 to all what uwe said. Same here on a real world project I did made changes on the wrong project file many times :x and I did not know either this option exists :oops:

In short IMHO we should make Collapse / Expand the default behaviour in tree view widget. It is much much more saver way of working.

Bernd



Is there any piece inside FreeCAD (outside of FEM :mrgreen: ) where you did not made a change :o ;) ?
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by uwestoehr »

realthunder wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:57 am Here is a video (please turn on subtitle) showing some of the options.
uwestoehr wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 12:19 pm I'll test the new features out as soon as possible.
I tested now everything you describe in the first video. It works fine, except of this issue:
I frequently show features of a body to check when happens what. So I view at first only the base pad, then I view step by step the next features in the tree. The problem is that when just showing the next feature of a body, the whole body gets highlighted. This is a disadvantage because I want to see the difference the new feature makes. Highlighting is not desired and makes it hard to see the visual differences.

To demonstrate what I mean, here is a screencast of how it works on FC 0.18 (and what I need):

FC 0.18
FC 0.18
Ge0fantl5A.gif (248.99 KiB) Viewed 1955 times

Here it how it is now in FC 0.19:

FC 0.19
FC 0.19
8KNDllZMfj.gif (550.04 KiB) Viewed 1955 times
You can see that it is now very hard to see the differences because of the unwanted auto-highlighting. (I disabled the option "Pre-selection" and restarted FC 0.19 before I made the screencast.)
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by uwestoehr »

realthunder wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:57 am Here is a video (please turn on subtitle) showing some of the options.
I have another minor issue: In your second video you describe the Move feature and that the cursor should change when pressing CTRL or ALT on dragging. But here on Win, I don't see any cursor change. Do I have to use a special option to get this?

Besides this, I am curious to learn how I can now create assemblies using FC 0.19. What is your plan regarding this? (Will there be a native or external workbench?)
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by vocx »

uwestoehr wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:22 am ...
Additionally it would be very nice of you could describe all the changes you made here:
...
It is quite difficult to list all changes in that wiki page. That's precisely why in the release notes there are links to realthunder's GitHub wiki. It's quite long, and unfortunately there is no way around it but to read them.

Now, I've noticed that in many cases, realthunder has provided alternatives, the old option together with the new option, as the behavior of the tree view that you see here. Other things are a bit hidden, like the selection that you mention. But I think this is still subject to change a bit, particularly if you propose it, like you are doing it right now.

By the way, showing multiple document trees or single trees already existed in 0.18. This wasn't added by realthunder. It's under View -> Document tree. Only the default was changed. I can't remember if this was already available in 0.17.
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Re: new tree view behavior is less productive

Post by vocx »

uwestoehr wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 1:08 pm ...
Besides this, I am curious to learn how I can now create assemblies using FC 0.19. What is your plan regarding this? (Will there be a native or external workbench?)
Assembly3 is the assembly workbench for this. However, in order to use it, you needed the App::Link object and the core changes. Now that these are integrated into FreeCAD, realthunder just needs to provide Assembly3 as an installable package like the other external workbenches. I guess this will come in the following months. He has mentioned this in various threads, but I guess he hasn't had the time to do it.

You can already do basic assembly by using Link as in the videos, but all this will become easier by using Assembly3, which already uses Link in the background. In theory, kbwbe could also upgrade A2plus to make use of App::Link; this is something that maybe needs to be proposed to him. Any workbench can make use of App::Link, as it's an internal object, not specific to any workbench.

And just to clarify, Assembly3 in its current state cannot become the native assembly workbench of FreeCAD because it depends of a 3rd party solver, and this solver uses the GPL 3 license. Code that is part of the base FreeCAD system needs to be LGPL 2 or compatible, like MIT and BSD 3-clause.
Last edited by vocx on Sat Oct 05, 2019 4:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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