After the 8 months long public beta testing period of this new feature with thousands users, we didn’t get feedback on this issue. We did not expect that for some users hiding sketches instead of deleting them will be such a dramatic change.
That being said, we’ll add a button in the next few weeks that will flatten the current design history, thus you’ll be able to delete the sketches that you created up until then, without changing the bodies.
Until we release this, if you find this new feature frustrating, just turn on the “Bodies” filter in the items menu, and you won’t need to do anything with your sketches.
For those who don’t just want to get rid of this functionality, but eager to learn how they can improve their workflow and take advantage of parametric modeling, we have good news too. If you just want to freely do direct modeling, there are still many advantages that the history can provide. Here are a few examples how the history feature can take your direct modeling workflow to the next level:
- removing fillets and chamfers will always work, regardless of how complex the geometry is
- removing any part of the geometry that was modeled previously will be often easier (eg. removing complex holes)
- you can use the history tree as an explicit undo history
- making more complex and accurate changes to extruded profiles, lofts, sweeps, revolves is much easier, eg. changing a lofted or swept body before was impossible or extremely challenging
- changing the shell thickness of a body is now super easy
- basically most changes in geometry that’s not doable by a simple face offset operation is dramatically easier
- by creating a sketch skeleton you can already create simple dynamic assemblies
- very soon we’ll add topology tracking for imported assemblies and parts, meaning that if you work with large imported assemblies, whenever that changes, you won’t need to reassign materials, and even the modeling operations will be updated based on the changes of the imported assembly
We have a ton of new tutorials where you can learn how to take advantage of this new functionality:
Bevelish Creations made a couple of really good tutorial a few months ago:
Sam Gwilt created a great tutorial on parametric modeling:
We have a great new tutorial series on design for manufacturing, created by Andrew Camardela, Industrial Designer Consultant and Faculty Member at DePaul University:
Also it’s worth spending some time with understanding the 101 of CAD technology:
And finally another 101 on direct modeling: