@tierfonorbital. I strongly disagree, parametric modeling’s ability to influence multiple objects with a single change is an advantage. Early design mistakes are no longer design killers. A misplaced hole or forgotten text across multiple parts can be fixed. Direct modeling I would have to fix the part and painstakingly place the objects exactly where they just were.
2 Likes
I strongly disagree, parametric is useful don’t get me wrong, but only in certain instances and use cases. When I was in the corporate industrial design world it was this case for cross company/team ideation. But for non corporate clients it’s not that useful.
Now we have to keep track of a bunch of sketches, can’t have them in the same folder bc then you can’t move things as a whole anymore. So now it’s having double the folders if you need to keep things organized, one for sketches, one for parts. And as is being proven, despite protestations and denial, is that the more info the program needs to constantly reference and compute its performance degrades exponentially.
Large assemblies that had zero issues before now render the program nearly useless. Large assemblies with a crap ton of sketches that can’t be deleted are doing just as much damage to performance if not more. The solution were presented with, collapse history and delete all the sketches, negating HBPM entirely (it won’t be selective) making this entire experiment seem like a comedy sketch.
2 Likes
You mean the majority who are complaining? I can guarantee you there are at least as many members of this forum who are mostly happy with the new changes but just don’t post about it because they’re too busy being productive. You can never base business decisions on comments in an open forum. You really need focus groups for that.
2 Likes
Maybe for you, but I’m just a hobbyist woodworker and I find it extremely useful. I’ve never had any professional training, but I even found the parametric features in Fusion360 to be helpful. I only started using Shapr3D because of iPad support.
The ability to easily repurpose existing designs (or correct mistakes) will save me a lot of time. And while some people claim that it takes longer to do certain things, I don’t really think that is a fair assessment. In any 3D model, the relative sizes, shapes and positions of every object is important – usually critical. Spending a little extra time up front to make sure that Shapr keeps track of the relationships can not only help prevent errors, it makes changes and experimentation much easier.
In the 3D printer you just posted (which is phenomenal BTW), I can envision lots of potential benefits had you been able to design it with the new features. Suppose one of the externally sourced components needed a spec change. Or, maybe you decide to build one 50% larger.
1 Like
Appreciate the kind words Steve, and yes I’ve had this problem repeatedly… there’s one major flaw though, unless the body itself is built within Shapr (let’s face it I’m not modeling screws haha) the HBPM is useless.
100% of sourced part files will be imported and most likely created in another program, either from the manufacturer or someone who has created and shared it. This means if they mis measured something that needs to be corrected it’s still direct modeling.
My model started with someone else’s base model I downloaded. Kudos to them for putting it out there, but so much of it was wrong that I ended up having to start from scratch.
I’ve also encountered an error even within HBPM where when trying to make an adjustment it will say the part is fully defined and can’t be modified. This ends up taking me back to direct modeling.
Once again I’m not saying parametric doesn’t have its place, I just don’t believe that it’s come from common subscription users. And there’s a lot of malcontent voices saying the same, even some that got on board and are now experiencing issues.
Understood, although I was thinking more along the lines of say, for example, adjusting a mounting bracket to fit a different stepper motor.
The benefits of industry standards, all manufacturers meet the same specs for dimensions.
I’ll agree a bracket may need modifications to its mating mounting surface based on interference and say belt pathway. And parametric might help in that instance, but luckily they’re usually square angles and even back in direct didn’t take much to modify. There’s even a specific app for machinery design based on common parts and specs with libraries for more non cosmetic industrial applications using aluminum extrusion frames. Gives a full bill of materials as well.
lmao relax bud. I would hardly call a strong majority of people voicing the same opinion “complaining”. A “smart business decision” would be to listen to your client base and actually do something about it. Which, it seems like the devs at Shapr are trying to do. What I am also saying is, Shapr is a fantastic product. But I didnt come to it for granular parametric history based modeling. I can go to fusion for that kind of work.
3 Likes
Why can you have a setting to disable the history feature. This new feature seems to be a problem for many users. Where there are probably alot of users that find this feature very helpful…there are many that do not.
Please look into the ability to disable this feature in settings so that those of use that do not like this feature can do away with it.
1 Like
We can’t and don’t want to maintain two different CAD systems. We are confident that the hybrid direct-parametric workflow is the right approach for our product. I understand that it initially can be frustrating to adapt your workflow to these changes.
3 Likes
Good luck doing that on an iPad.
2 Likes
I’ve found the history feature quite useful, saving me from tedious redo tasks. I definitely see its benefits.
Steve proved that people often don’t know what they need.
From my perspective, most people are unhappy because:
- Performance Issues: Maintaining performance at all costs is crucial, but currently, even with a fresh, empty project, actions like sketching, hiding/unhiding, or moving objects aren’t as smooth as before. There’s noticeable processing time between steps. I verified this by using Time Machine to downgrade Shapr3D for a 1:1 comparison. Performance is worse as known with larger projects (2090 in my case).
- Efficiency Trade-Offs: While changes in habits can be acceptable, they should require the same amount of effort or fewer steps. People can always adapt, but it shouldn’t feel more cumbersome.
- Minor Annoyances examples:
- Measurements are no longer displayed with a click.
- Frequent filtering is necessary (switching from bodies to planes and axes to hide an offset plane).
These type of issues are the most critical to me and should be addressed. I believe that if these are fixed, and not deprioritized for new features, more users will be satisfied and less resistant to change, like I have been at first.
3 Likes
Good summary @Do.B However, I’d add, there are bugs when there is a lot of complex history which results in the complete loss of parts/items. I’ve recently experienced this, along with two others in the community, @WeBasic and @jon1. I’m starting to discover and realise there are a number of discussions in this community all with the same root-cause.
I have had an update from Support but I’m sure if it’ll help performance issue but should fix the disappearing parts issues, quote:
“The issue that can cause this problem is a bug in Siemens Parasolid, the underlying modeling engine of Shapr3D. The problem is that some direct modeling operations can be flaky (providing different outputs for the same inputs). To avoid this situation, we are always going to serialize the entire Parasolid session, and load it when you open the design, to guarantee that there is no feature tree evaluation is happening when you reload a design.”
“The fix is targeted for version 5.660”
“5.660: July 15th”
Commenting that the bug still exists, albeit it is possibly much worse, on 5.660.
Just lost an entire 8 hours of work to the feature. I guess the program found something wrong in the work at the beginning of the day from which all other modeling was derived (a simple shape), decided to delete that without my permission on reloading, and subsequently destroyed all further data. This is the worst occasion of this happening to me, but it’s happened several times before. Using the new version that dropped today before I ever started this work. 100% of the material that was lost today was done on the current version.
I’m now terrified to open any of my files since I have no idea what will have been destroyed in the latest update without my knowledge or permission.
1 Like
Its July 24 and this app did not improve at all in performance in fact, it became slower and slower after the implementation of History, I wish I could roll back and downgrade to the version before that implementation I’m pro update type of user. Still, this one was the biggest mistake, I also work in IT and I know when is time to change, even though you spent a long time developing this history feature you need to understand that it is not getting well received, at least for the iPad version. I think the responsible for this implementation should step down and let someone with better common sense lead, From everything I read in these comments I can tell how stubborn the development is, you refuse clearly to listen to the majority of your users and you forget that the main reason people start using this overpriced app is due to its simplicity and quick use and fast learning curve. Still, when you have to overcomplicate easy things because you want to be another app, people are considering moving the other app since they are free. My advice from a developer experience what you want to achieve is maybe you can work in the background when you are sure the product is solid with the same performance you can release it to the beta testers, but don’t make us pay full price and force us to be the beta tester and keep saying that this year it will be stable that’s not a smart move at all,. Personally I use this app mostly on iPad and I work on it with small and also hudge projects I mean about 25000 + bodies, that before the history implementation, I could manage to work on iPad, after that implementation this app became unusable, the sadness is that even small projects are now really frustrating to work because its slow and another big mistake you did is to not let us delete sketches that are always in our way blocking us for editing things behind them. your suggestion is to hide them but hide them you need first to unhide everything that you already dont want in front just to hide the sketches, can you imagine how tedious it is to do that when you work in a big project and you need to repeat those many steps over and over again, especially now that your app is very laggy, please do better and listen to you your customers,.
In the other side, if you need any video of a real scenario user as proof of feedback let me know I’d be happy to help you by sending you evidence, I hope my long comment doesn’t get deleted because I said what most what real users of your app are thinking.
Best regards and I hope I can continue using this app if it gets better.
–Ray
3 Likes