One week in, initial impressions, feature requests

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After playing with Shapr3D for a little over a week these are my initial impressions.

I’m not a professional, but have messed around with blender and took some 3D CAD courses more than a decade ago in college.

First, I love how easy it is to get started. A lot of the default features and behaviors make sense and are intuitive. Initially the behaviors feel exactly how I would draw out a design on a napkin. Love how extruding a face will default subtract from a larger body if they intersect, etc. However, once I start trying to work on more complicated projects I’ve found that the features I expect to be present are simply missing altogether. As a software developer who’s written my own proprietary 2D CAD program I have some very specific features I would expect to see. I realize some of these might already exist in Shapr, but I wasn’t able to find them. Also, I’m sure this rabbit hole could go much further, but without these I’m just not able to use Shapr without reaching a level of frustration that makes me want to throw my iPad across the room.

Rich selections:

  • Co-planar edge selection
  • Selection of surfaces by max angle(i.e. less than 90 degrees)
  • Loop selection - with optional cutting plane/visible features only
  • Select edges on face.
  • Select actions as undo/redo-able
  • Saveable selections, i.e. interior/exterior surface of object(s), gear teeth vs body, etc.

Modeling/Sketching:

  • Cut geometry with sketch projection
  • Zero-thickness geometry(plane, cylinder, tri-mesh)
  • Cut/divide object by zero-thickness geometry

Tools/Actions:

  • Redo-N-times, such as with move/translate/rotate

  • Parametric translate/rotate/scale, i.e. ideally could create a reusable gear or screw part by:
    — changing radius - add/remove teeth of same size
    — change tooth size - add/remove teeth to fit on same radius
    — change number of teeth - adjust tooth size/angle to match number
    — link these parameters/constraints between interfacing parts, i.e. screw holes match threading of screw, interfacing gears have equal tooth size, camera mount tutorial radial teeth align with interfacing teeth.

  • Copy-rotate/translate/scale n times, with N as parameter that can be adjusted

  • Combined rotate/translate/scale as single action(even if you need to supply full transformation matrix)

  • Instant repeat last action(copy—rotate/translate/scale)

  • Scale/translate/rotate/copy creation plane

  • After de-selecting action(i.e. translation, undo should return to modify/finalize action parameters instead of deselected unaltered.)

  • History list/viewer small pop up visible by default when undoing/redoing, also can be kept open.

I do realize these might not be simple to add.

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