Feature request: More helpful dialogs in PartDesign-Sketcher

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robinh
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2014 10:06 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Feature request: More helpful dialogs in PartDesign-Sketcher

Post by robinh »

I find I easily lose the path to a sucessful sketch which attaches to the correct parent. One wrong turn and it can be difficult and time consuming to recover.

See for example my ealier problemhttps://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 47#p364547

The core FC code in FC 19 seems quite stable if you follow the right route. But it is easy to go astray.

The dialog program codes have much information at hand when the dialogs are constructed. Adding more information to the dialog would be a low risk code change. Many of the dialogs could just add more words and become much more new user-friendly.

For example, (and I can't remember the exact words), but there are rerences to 'object'. To the newby, it is not clear just which object it is refering, the sketch object or the body object. This would be solved by just adding the object name.

'Map to face' should say 'Map to selected plane (preferred) or map direcly (discouraged) to selected face.

Note, at this point it is easy to click somewhere else and lose the selected face. I forgot what happens, but it is not good. If no face is selected when one is required, popup a messgae "no plane/face is selected' so the correction can be made immediately.

There are many other cases where what is obvious to the seasoned use is not obvious to the new user. Just a few more words or correcting popups would make FC much more usable.
chrisb
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Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:14 am

Re: Feature request: More helpful dialogs in PartDesign-Sketcher

Post by chrisb »

robinh wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:47 pm 'Map to face' should say 'Map to selected plane (preferred) or map direcly (discouraged) to selected face.
I support this concrete feature request, although I would prefer it a bit simpler, such as 'Map to selected face or plane (preferred)'. The general remarks are correct too, although they are well know and not helpful. We don't have a legion of developers who can be advised to search through a huge amount of code and improve the messages. We should disburden them and give very precise hints what and how it should be changed.
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