This app was absolutely great when first introduced, part of the magic was the simplicity and the speed in which one could get basic concepts into a digital model.
Did this company sell? Have they fired the original developers?
Every “update” introduces features that appeal to a very small and technical group while alienating the vast majority of consumers. To add insult to injury, there is no option to toggle these settings on or off - so we are all left to waste hours of our time cruising forums and skimming the settings only to find there is no fix.
Initially it seemed as though the SHAPR team was pretty attentive to input and feature requests but sadly those days are gone. The responses explain why they implemented new features but a request to opt out of them falls on deaf ears.
To put it simply - they had it right early on. If they continue to clutter and slowdown workflow in this manner I expect this company will not make it.
We’ve asked you since its implementation: return the ability to delete sketches without deleting bodies, get rid of the pop-up box when selecting edges, and a plethora of other major issues.
Please reply with your frustrations, hopefully someone at SHAPR will actually see this >>
Correct, however it is all or nothing. Either keep all sketches or delete all sketches via merge history. I prefer to delete sketches that are no longer needed. There are many times I would like to keep some sketches for reference. I’m sure others are in the same camp.
I’m surprised people still complaining on that. I never deleted sketches even when it was possible. I alway trying to make maximum usable sketches so deleting it is bad idea.
Just for fun, here is one variant how you can delete sketch and not loosing extuded body:
After receiving a 3D printer I was looking for a “modern” CAD program for Mac that would enable noobs like me to create simple things and do quick dirty edits on existing models without spending a month to learn what menus to dive for a fillet.
I was very happy to learn Shaper3D exists around end of last year as it definitely ticked my boxes and was performing much much better than FreeCAD on Apple silicon (M2 Pro 16gb, M4 Max 64gb).
Now fast forward ~3 months and I find myself in a situation where I rather open any other CAD program as any non-trivial shape in Shaper3D becomes a huge lag fest where I spend +10 seconds waiting for Shaper3D to compute that eg. my 0.5mm chamfer on some threading is impossible to do. Also very frustrating when eg. accidentally moving a face instead of the object it is better to just kill the app and reopen rather than wait. Also I have to keep on restarting the program as it seems to have a lot of surface for leaking memory.
It seems to me all processing is synchronous with no way to cancel and it feels like no debounce or throttle is used on eg. mouse movement.
Now, I am a CAD-noob and my workflow is most likely far from optimal (but I do merge my history all the time) - but this only started being a blocker after feb-may updates (vars, expressions, fully defined sketches) and these lag issues definitely feel like a symptom of the implementation rather fundamentals. Like from the get go Shaper3D needs +5x resources for an .x_b file compared to another similar CAD(ish) application.
Also there are other stuff I just cannot believe does not exists:
Reset object positioning to origin (or any other axis) (translate requires too many clicks and it is not very clear when, how and with what targets it will actually snaps to the origin). I do not know if it can be even used to also reset your rotation).
Measure. I mean I just gave up on the Measure tool in Shaper3D and rather do it elsewhere. I have not found a way to eg. measure distance between arbitrary edges of two cylinders without a sketch or a construction plane.
Why triggering a shortcut key is different to eg. mouse click to the icon on the toolbar? If I have an object selected and press a shortcut key with eg. Translate I will have to press “Next” and I do not know if there is a way to bind a key to “Next” so I have to use the mouse which makes the whole keybind useless.
Also could I just get a regular copy and pasta without extras thanks
My impression is that the Parametric modelling that Shapr were working on was a huge project. While it was something worth having, it may have caused more than a few issues that are still being worked out.
That said, I still love the ease of use and the speed at which I can get things done in Shapr3D.
Maybe I’m crazy, but to me, deleting sketches without their associated bodies feels antithetical to parametric modeling software.
At most, maybe throw currently-irrelevant sketches into an “Archive” folder in the project?
What I would very much like to see is improved sketch management. For example, an easier way to clean up sketches, such as by merging/splitting sketches, moving components between them, and seeing which sketches are contributing to a given body.
I agree, deleting sketches doesn’t make sense with parametric modeling.
Archiving was discussed and I’m not sure that’s a good option. I think they should remain “first class” and maybe have a dedicated panel apart from the Items panel.
What’s needed for sure is bi-directional dependency views and warnings when deleting something that has dependents.
You can see the dependencies of an item in the “Related to Selection” view in History but you can’t see dependents of a sketch and I would really like to as I would consult that view before deleting a sketch. In fact there should be a warning with a display of dependents when attempting to delete a sketch.
That to me is what’s causing the confusion. It makes it seem like items magically disappear when deleting a sketch.
In the beginning years ago, this was an IOS based CAD solution. Worked well with the Apple Pencil and was a joy to use.
I now get a huge feeling that windows and windows users are now the mainstay of their product development. IOS now seems to be the bastard child that you really wish would disappear.
Things that are bothering me.
Things like the inbuilt calculator have gone
That select menu pop up, but the menu doesn’t really infer which item you are selecting
The item listing in one pop out thing.
In some instances, parametric modeling.
These others, but that’s what I found in the last 10 minutes.
It all seems to me that it’s becoming more cumbersome to use. This is an expensive product for a hobbiest but there is no real alternative for the iPad. The current state of the program now verses even just last year is having me rethink a windows only competitor product.
And they have a hobby version.
For shapr3D and their reluctance for a hobby edition, what if they run the pre-parametric modeling version and only perform bug fixes. This would fix a lot of the current angst I feel.
I would so love to go back to that version.
I got to know Shapr3D about 5 years ago – and I was absolutely amazed by its simplicity and ease of use. It took me only a few days to opt for the paid subscription (which I’m still on). A few months before that, I took a course for SolidEdge - with a much (!!!) flatter learning curve.
If you imagine a diagram with the Y-axis as popularity and the Y-axis as time (5 years) then the image to be drawn would be an X lying on its side: top left Shapr3D, bottom left SoldidEdge. At the end of the 5 years it is the other way around. Everything that Shapr3D scored points with at the beginning, that made it fascinating, has disappeared. It is on the contrary, cumbersome, illogical - in some places it is actually almost impossible to use. The intention behind all the changes is clear: to make Shapr3D appealing to a “professional” user group. Understood, yes - understandable rather not. After all, which of the large companies that have previously used SolidEdge & Co. would place their well-being and success in such hands? In the vast majority of cases, the project handling alone would probably speak against it. But also - quite profanely - the frequency and the way in which changes are implemented. Who wants to have to explain to their employees once a month that another feature works completely differently …
The latest reincarnation of this change craze is the edge selection dialog. Selecting an edge has always been a bit “tricky”. Now it’s basically impossible. Presenting a dialog in which you can choose between “Edge 1” and “Edge 2” and “Edge 3” (… etc.) is so incredibly pointless - and is being sold as “the new highlight” yet again.
In the meantime, I’m sitting at my PC again and using SolidEdge (which is certainly not free of “rough edges” either!) - even for the simplest home improvement projects. Unfortunately … an era is coming to an end for me.
100% agree. I’ve been a paid user for 5+ years and use shapr3d daily. It honestly feels like it gets worse and worse by the month. It used to be incredibly stable, I get frequent crashes. I design to eventually be exported as an STL and printed, the amount of times my objects have missing faces which cause a failure to export(and then I have to go track down the invisible face and rebuild that part of the model. The weird “pic an edge or face” pop up literally drives me insane. The lack of being able to turn this off is a huge slap in the face. It’s a horribly frustrating feature and makes using the app feel like a chore.
To be honest I use the free version more as an 3d prototyping tool. To get the idea down fast on the iPad and recreate in another industry standard tool. So I really appreciate Shapr3d giving us a free version to practice on.
If I need to I can always sign up for a month, in that case Shapr3d is very cost effective, no long term commitment and fully functional except for export which I fully understand.
i hear ya on the “huge lag fest” unfortunately that is becoming more prevalent. i have a less than 2 year old mac pro M1 as well, and i have files i made a year ago that i absolutely dread having to open lately.
Totally agree, I also started 4 years ago on my iPad and found Shapr to be the first 3D CAD program which I could handle from day one on. What a wonderful UI with that pencil!
But lately it’s driving me crazy, just right now I’m struggling with fine positioning of bodies: Suddenly the smallest steps for moving is 10mm, without any reason. Zooming in and out doesn’t matter, fixing to 1mm steps: no change. It is driving me mad!!! Then, after fiddling around, moving forth and back, suddenly it works. Other issues with snapping to grid in sketches: It damn snaps to a farther point than the next grid…and so on.
Another thing: There is no library handling or copy & paste from one file to another. One cannot even import a shapr file directly. One has to export the object to a file and import it then into your working project. Terrible! A program for which I paid over 1000€ !
It’s part of the reason I stopped subscribing and rarely use it anymore. Loved the app so much for the first couple of years, it was so refreshing having a 3D modelling app that ran amazing on iPad and utilised the pencil. I felt like I could do anything with it. Sadly this has slowly deteriorated as they continue to update it with convoluted and often bloated features that make the app chug, and also makes simple things (like deleting sketches) something of a nightmare.
I would much prefer they had a ‘Lite’ version that was cheaper p/m, got rid of all the bloat they added, and just gave me the zippy app it was 2-3 years ago
I never deleted sketches even when it was possible. I alway trying to make maximum usable sketches so deleting it is bad idea.