5.590 - History-Based Parametric Modeling is here

Hi @luiscrsousa , what is the issue?

Since deleting sketches deletes faces, booleans, extrusions, etc without notice, at least it can help showing, where the things are missing. “Fix” is a nice idea, but does not fix anything. You have to redraw hours of lost work again.

Parametric history is only possible if all of the history is retained. You need to simply hide your sketches instead of deleting them. Often (e.g. after extrusion), this will happen automatically. If you are bothered by clutter in the items list (like many of us), try moving the sketches to separate folders.

When, inevitably (ask me how I know :joy:), muscle memory occasionally deletes a sketch instead of hiding it, just use the UNDO function to undelete the sketch and then hide it.

The “Fix” command in the history window will only give you an opportunity fix a missing reference and is mostly intended to allow you to change your mind, say, for example, if you extruded something to an object and that object no longer exists. As you figured out, it can’t fix anything if the necessary history information no longer exists.

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I’ll admit that the “Fix” functionality needs a lot of work, especially in terms of identifying exactly what’s wrong.

Hi,
I have been using Shapr3d for 5 years. You can count me as a professional designer who use Shapr3d. You can check my portfolio on my website. I never feel stress because an update before, but for these updates, I really don’t like it. I wish I can go back to previous version. This updates consume my time more than before ( I found some similar though on the forum) because of these non sense features:

  1. Shapr3d force me to keep unwanted sketches by making it linked to the body that will cost an issues to my entire design even if when I delete a single line which is associated with random body. " Why you delete the sketches when you can hide it" answer from staff is non sense. Why should I keep unwanted sketches? I want to just delete it!
  2. Auto hide sketches after cutting a body is annoying
  3. Disabled auto drawn circle line is annoying, It is harder to find the center of the circle hole on a body.
  4. I don’t care about History feature if it cost 3 things above. Go back to previous version is 100x more efficient.
  5. At least there is a button to unlink all the sketches from the body.
  6. If you really need a feedback from a professional designer to improve your app. Please consider my though.

Best Regards
Reza Aulia

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I agree with a lot of what’s been said to the new update already. It’s completely changed the workflow and made me question if I even want to keep shapr since apparently it can’t be reverted. I got this app because I was used to solidworks and only had an iPad and the simplicity was what drew me from demo to daily (16hrs+) user. But with the new update has been questionable and without many features that would actually be much more helpful.

I get that this update might be helpful to a new user, but most of the new features were already in place by just selecting and moving/rotating and altering before.

Blockquote
If you are bothered by clutter in the items list (like many of us), try moving the sketches to separate folders.

I can say it’s not just about “clutter”. As someone who spent $1,200 on a brand new iPad with the M2 chip and 1TB to get the updgraded RAM just to run this App better just a few months ago, it’s now tearing through RAM faster than before the update. Models that would load within a minute or two can now take 5min just to load due to having to use more memory to process all those sketches that can’t be deleted to conserve memory usage. In large assemblies (sometimes involving thousands of parts) it’s now become about as slow as my old first gen iPad was with the old version.

Also now, i guess a new feature is having half my items labelled in red for some reason? If this is in an indication of an error in the part, there’s nothing that specifies what that error is, it’s just labelled red. All the same parts were fine in the old version. This has become especially difficult when collaborating with others or simply having imported items like hardware, since the most common file sharing format is step. Now almost every item that’s been imported previously is marked red and i have no clue why. But not every part, so it’s not like it’s helping me identify imported bodies.

I’ve been more than happy with Shapr for a few years, minus some quirks here and there, but this new update is a step backwards in my opinion, especially after learning all the ins an outs of it before and without some of the basic functions a lot of cad programs have like relation alignment and limitations between parts for modeling joints and testing movement function. or 3 dimensional splines for modeling tubing path sweeps and wiring with a set start and end point. (Both of those things have been brought up by multiple users for the past few years, sometimes met with derision).

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You are totally right with this. It is a screw up as I see it. It has become extremely complicated and with all the steps the new feature is useless for many! Thank you. Ed.

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Give the Shapr-Guys some more time! We’re in discussions about this issue. Perhaps a compromise or an update to this problem will emerge.
Cheers!

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:

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Please dont impose things on people without consent. Maybe some people may like hiding 1000 sketches or drawing with parametric history. I dont. I am faster sketching from existing 3d objects and surfaces rather than using an existing messed up sketch plane with 1000 lines and circles.

And your history does not help at all. It introduces more problems than it fixes:

  1. how do you recognize when deleting circles or lines, that doing so does not delete modifications of an object that is hidden (invisible or covered)?
  2. what is the point of having history, when you cant “replay”. Isnt this the purpose of having a history? Deleting one object breaks the entire history, which is not good design at all.
  3. Booleans still exist even tho the current object does not show any. After 8 hours of modeling old booleans came up while modifying an object. Who expects such a behavior?
  4. related to 1) how do you know of a list of 200 hidden objects, that if deleting a line will mess up an object or is safe to delete. This will obviously make people keep sketches even tho no objects are related. How many people will have a “garbage” folder now, because of that…

Comparing Shapr 1 year ago and now, time consumption to manage objects and sketches as increased like 10 times.

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If you hide the History panel and turn on the Bodies filter on the Items menu, what is it that you can’t do or need to do differently compared to the previous versions?

There are times, when you want to keep some specific sketches for future use. With the filter, you either do not see any or you see all (dozens or hundreds) of them. Having a separate folder for the sketches is awkward, but still better, or less bad.

I guess you did not get any/much of negative feedback during the beta testing, because the participants were the users who do want parametric modelling. Those who do not, like me, did not care about the beta, because they probably did not expect this to to be forced upon them. I certainly thought it would be an option.

FYI: I am familiar with parametric modeling and use it from time to time in other products, but having it in Shapr3d is like living in Florida and having a snow plough permanently installed on Porsche 911…

That said, you managed to pull off some great things in the past, so I still hope you can figure out some solution, that will allow me to continue to use the application. Fingers crossed.

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As I mentioned here and in other threads, we’ll add a feature to collapse your design history. Will that solve your problem?

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It sounds like might, that depends on how exactly it will be implemented…

Ideally there would be a setting “Flatten after every change” :wink:

Can you give a specific example of a workflow where you need to do this? Sketch reuse this way can be problematic, but you can create a copy of an important sketch, and save it for later. It won’t impact anything in the history.

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Here is the plan:

Here is another perfect tutorial explaining how History-Based Parametric Modeling works. Possibly particularly suitable for designers who have never worked with History-Based Parametric Modeling…

This was very educational for me :slight_smile:

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Although I do not think, your introduction was fair, as this is. Company which is set up to have many professional users, with CAD background and industry know how, I totally agree with all the points you mentioned. The applicatio we decided to use was for the reason of having a simple but intelligent and intuitive way of expressing our ideas. As you said, it is completely overwhelming to see some hundreds of items in the list and if not each of them “named” they have no meaning and a way to control, find.
It’s already enough time consuming to have item list named and organized, let alone more.
As you write why would I have a line which I used for CENTERING an object or circle to be able to see the size of a modified body… and have a list of hundreds of them?
Sure is important for the one who studied the CAD systems and learned this way, but a Car is a Car and not every one need a Tesla with a iPad as a control board.
Thank you and enjoy the process…

Ed.