After moving sketches thousands of times in the Windows version, suddenly today I am unable to move them. If I attempt to do that, I receive this error message: “Locked or constrained sketch parts can’t be moved.”
There is no obvious way to remove that lock/constraint; there is no symbol associated with it that I can click to unlock, and the constraint menu is entirely grayed out. Frustrating, and one of the needless “features” in Shapr3D that serves no useful function other than making work with it more difficult than it should be.
A quick tip to Shapr3D programmers: endeavor to make everything as user-friendly as possible. In this case, and others like it, whenever some message is generated, always provide a clear-cut way to circumvent it. For example, say “Locked or constrained sketch parts can’t be moved. To remove the lock/constraint, do …,” then explain what needs to be done.
To understand my frustration in how Shapr3D wastes time needlessly (IMHO), I will explain why I created the sketch plane today. I had a hole in an existing body and wished to create a hexagonal pocket on one face of the body to hold a recessed bolt head. If Shapr3D made CAD easy, I could immediately begin sketching on the plane with the sketch cognizant of the axis of the existing hole (for the bolt, in this case), but of the thousands of times I’ve done this or related operations, the program pretends as if it has absolutely zero knowledge of what is on the plane. Even if I previously create an axis for the hole, Shapr3D acts as if it has zero knowledge of the axis, refusing to snap to it. So, to work around these limitations, what I previously did was:
- Create a plane on the surface I want to sketch on.
- Move that plane out some distance (say, 20 mm).
- Highlight the plane on the surface I want to sketch on.
- Project that surface onto the new created plane.
- Delete the plane.
- Select the newly created sketch, then move it back to the original surface I want to sketch on (back 20 mm, in this case).
After all that rigmarole, THEN I can finally sketch with the sketch cognizant of the hole (in this case) center so I can precisely align to it. Now imagine doing this thousands of times — understand the frustration?
Clearly something has changed, at least on my copy of Shapr3D. Changes are usually beneficial but too often a giant step in the wrong direction, and usually with users not being notified of the changes and how to adapt to them. I could write a book on that subject, but here are a few more: I can no longer import to the current project with “CTRL-SHIFT-I,” nor can I rename projects within them as I previously did many times.
I appreciate the ongoing effort to add new functionality to Shapr3D, but it seems that this is prioritized over thoroughly testing and perfecting what we now have.
One BIG chronic problem is that Shapr3D is glacially slow; even if it is the only program running on my computer, I often must press keys or click the mouse two, three, or more times until the program responds. I am not being facetious about this, but the program is so slow that I often wonder if all of the data crunching occurs on my computer or if it is essentially acting as a dumb terminal with every keystroke and mouse click sent to Europe for processing, then eventually making its way back across the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve used other CAD programs, all of which respond instantly with no obvious lag time whatsoever.
For the geniuses who thoroughly understand Shapr3D, I would sincerely appreciate your input on solving today’s frustration (inability to move the sketch plane) as well as the others. Thank you!
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