“Get used to it’ not working

[jb7]

I have many projects, some spread over several shapr files, as my workaround for shapr not having any real strategy for dealing with complex assemblies.

Some of the sketches in those shapr files are buried deep inside the folder structure of the items menu.

Filtering for sketches brings up sketches, and folders which might have sketches buried deep inside.

Manually moving all these items into a folder for sketches is tedious and time consuming, and my ability to spend any time designing has been destroyed. This is a disaster for me, I’ve started looking at my iPad like a dog might look at a shock collar.

Another ‘solution’ which has been suggested is to export everything as an x_t and start from scratch. Is this really my best option, or should shapr engineers devote some serious attention to some of the suggestions they seemingly blithely make, such as- just put your sketches in a folder.

If this is such a great idea then why don’t sketches go into their own folder by default? Why, after the tedium of identifying and moving sketches in order to make a project workable, why do I have to continue to put every sketch into a folder? Or maybe this isn’t such a good idea, and it’s just a knee jerk response to the mass frustration being experienced by so many users.

So the question is, when is this program going to be an intuitive pleasure again to use again?
When will I be able to design something without cluttering up my screen and items list with intrusive sketches?
When will I be able to spend most of my time designing, rather than half my time moving sketches into folders?

When are the shapr staff going to take this seriously, this program should still be in beta. For those who have been spending the last year using the beta, well that was their choice, but I chose not to use a beta program, for the most part I liked the workarounds that made the old shapr usable. And my main workaround was deleting obtrusive sketch planes.

When is there going to be a professional, grown up solution to hiding all sketches except the ones you actually need to use, and when is this program going to address the problem of dealing with complex assemblies, a feature which actually has been requested far more than history based modeling?

I paid my annual subscription last month, maybe my last. Had my renew date been set to next month, I doubt I could have found any justification for paying it, and just as I may do now, go back to Vectorworks and F3D.

When are these issues going to be taken seriously, when will there be a functional solution to hiding unwanted sketches, and when are you going to stop telling us to just get used to it?

[Istvan]

I’m sorry to hear that having sketches in the items menu is causing so much frustration for you. With the next release we’ll add an option to collapse the history.

Regarding your other question, assemblies are coming next year.

[jb7]

It’s a lot of clutter, both in the items list, and in the main window. Every new sketch needs to be manually moved to a folder, or the items list becomes more unmanageable.

Hide all sketches would be a useful command.
Move an item to the top or bottom of the items list with one click would help.

There have got to be ways that make this program work with less effort and pain. For those making the hard transition from old shapr, this new program seems like a disconnected bad beta.

[jb7]

Really, is there a way to work on models that doesn’t force you to hide every sketch every time?

When I could delete unwanted sketches I could work on the objects, an early selling point of this program.

Now, when I click on anything, an unwanted sketch is selected instead.

[justin]

Sketches hide automatically when you create a body from them. If you’re worried about clutter, I’ve been using the filter dropdown in the items sidebar to just show bodies:

Some more control over that would be helpful, though.

[jb7]

That filter doesn’t work on my projects, which were all made in the old shapr, and opened in the new one. They’re an absolute mess of sketches.

Click bodies and there’s still a lot of sketches showing. It doesn’t work.

[Istvan]

It should work. Can you share a design where it doesn’t work? Especially if they are old projects, where you deleted your sketches, they won’t show up magically. We literally cannot restore deleted sketches.

[jb7]

Sent you a file

[Istvan]

Yes, thank you, I looked into it, and answered your email.

[Nicket]

I realy tried to get use to the new update. But no, it´s just a mess in work. with over 100+ sketches on a complex project. It´s over for me and my business, time to unsubscribe. Parametric Design simply don´t work for Shapr3d, it was never needed, but we got it. Makes everything way too slow and complicated. NO it don’t work like before with just hiding the History. The entire workflow is disturbed/unusable. Simple stuff like Pocket holes is a nightmare now. I hate that those sketches are linked to the damn body. Easy stuff like copy a sketch result in an another nightmare.
But yeah, pretty useless to say anything here, since the Staff don´t care… as you already mentioned “get over it”

[Istvan]

Pretty wild to say that the staff doesn’t care when I spend my entire weekend with customer support. If we didn’t care I’d be on the playground with my son now.

We’d love to help. If you turn on the bodies filter in the items menu, and hide the history panel, what is it that is disturbing you? Can you be very specific about the issues that you are facing? We can fix usability issues, but we need to understand the problem, with which a less emotional description of the problems would help.

[Nicket]

@Istvan

We’d love to help.

Then give me back the previous Version which don’t feels like an unwanted pre-alpha.

@Istvan

with which a less emotional description of the problems would help.

Pretty much a lot of ongoing problems are mentioned in jb7 in his post.

As for us, simple stuff as copy a sketch or body result into hide the original body/sketch, which is a clear nightmare to search when you have 1000+ bodys/sketches. The mass of sketches results into a performance nightmare too.

@jb7

When will I be able to spend most of my time designing, rather than half my time moving sketches into folders?

I can refer to this statement too. Those Filter are “ok”, but is another step into slower down my work progress.

As I mentioned earlier, Shapr3D will be no longer a thing for my company.

[Istvan]

With the next release you’ll have the option to collapse the history and delete all the sketches with it.

@Nicket

I can refer to this statement too. Those Filter are “ok”, but is another step into slower down my work progress.

You have to turn on the filter once, it’s not an ongoing thing. It’s a single click.

You shouldn’t experience performance issues (definitely not more than in the past). If you do, please let us know, we’ll fix it.

5.590 - History-Based Parametric Modeling is here

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 feat…

[symon]

Oh, I noticed copying seemed to be getting me in a mess, I wondered if it was cos I have not used shapr3d for a while. What’s the new procedure?

I also had problems deleting parts of models. I have also have sketches stick to geometry, is it my or the new parametric process?

Is there a tutorial I should watch to acquaint myself with the new procedure for copy etc.

[Istvan]

Please read this post, you can find many tutorials here: 5.590 - History-Based Parametric Modeling is here - #30 by Istvan

[justin]

In fairness, having to hide sketches instead of deleting them was a fairly common post/comment topic during the beta period. There was definitely feedback on it.

As for the filter, it does hide objects in the item hierarchy, but if, as I’m sure others are experiencing with old projects, they’re visible in the viewport, the filter doesn’t hide them. That has to be done manually. (though, are sketches from old, pre-HBPM projects even linked to their bodies? That seems unlikely, so I’m not sure what those people are really complaining about)

Once the “flatten history” functionality is in, could that potentially lead to being able to add a feature to the extrude tool when extruding sketches: “Keep linked to sketch”? It seems like the vast majority of the history complaints are related to that sketch->body connection, which, IMO, is not implemented as well as it could be, from a UX standpoint. Maybe this could be a happy medium for people that just want to pretend that HBPM doesn’t exist.

As for ways the sketch/body link could be improved, it really needs to be more obvious/intuitive. The rest of Shapr3D’s UI makes so much sense, then there’s this feature that, yes, makes sense once you’re used to it, but is not at all apparent until you adjust your sketch and it destroys (temporarily, admittedly) your design, often after processing for a decent amount of time.

Anything that visually links a body with its sketch in the UI would go a long way to easing user discomfort.

[APDesignMachine]

@justin

“Keep linked to sketch”? It seems like the vast majority of the history complaints are related to that sketch->body connection

I agree with everything you said, just want to highlight this topic.

After reading everything, as well as a background in HBPM pre Shapr, I can say that the idea of it is great and is very beneficial for a sub-sect of 3d modelers. Mostly professionals and those that prototype and require quick iteration and alteration. Shapr didn’t really cater to that with the previous direct modeling versions which is why many people opted for the simpler interface. Yea it took more steps to modify something but it was still fairly straightforward. I’m in no way saying that advancement is a bad thing, just that it’s a completely new way of doing things.

Having said that, I have to partially disagree. I say that knowing that if this is how an object is modeled from the very beginning, HBPM can be incorporated into the workflow easily.

However, I personally believe that the main complaint is how this update has been applied to pre-existing models with no history. It created an abrupt disconnect. Now new parts will have these connections/relationships while old ones do not. Meaning, we as users, have to adjust how we’re treating and modeling individual bodies on the fly. Direct modeling on old parts, HBPM on new parts, modify an old part with new sketches and features and it’s now half and half. When you’re doing this all in a pre-update complex assembly this can be quite frustrating, I’m one of those people. Especially when it’s a project you’ve been working on for a long time, or that you’re in the middle of with a deadline.

This is the best way I can to describe the interruption and frustration to the workflow based on the update. I hope it’s succinct and easy enough that others may agree.

[TheBum]

I get a lot of use out of linked sketches when designing for 3D printing. Holes aren’t always the size I design them to be due to the way filament flows, so I tend to iterate a lot. I’m a hobbyist, so it’s not just professionals.