What is up with the Align tool?

[residentdj]

Am i missing something or the Alight tool is complicated for no reason?

I and on an iPad pro and its a major pain getting bodies to snap together and they don’t snap to greed to i have to do the constant song and dance of zooming it reeeeealy close and try to get them to snap together. But they dont. It either does not go far enough and snaps to who knows what or overshoots the edge of the other body and now they are intersected. And this is not a rare occasion It happens all the time. Like all the time all the time. And now my models have random lines on them where bodies do bot align. I am not an advanced user but I’ve been using other software for years here and there to make plans for projects, so i kind of expect things to just align.

So, now the Align tool. Why can’t i just select a body and drag its corner to the corner of another body and have them snap together? I don’t want that flipping one body sideways and attaching it to the other body.

I really like Shapr3D, but these unconventional ways of doing things just get me frustrated because something i was able to do in 30 minutes before now takes me an hour and a half, because I have to search for solution and watch endless youtube ads just to figure out something. simple. Sometimes I just walk away because I have other things to do.

STL support is another one. Why can’t i just split a body in a half and attach another body. Or have 2 bodies unite? It’s almost 2023. Everyone and their mother has 3D printers. I have 3. I would like to be able to use CAD software that has 3D in its name to be able to easily handle things that 3D printers, or slicers rather, made to understand. And i don’t print complex designs.
Brakets, mounts, adapters and other geometrically simply-ish things are what i print. I just want to be able to make modifications to them. Extrude them, add some holes, split in 2 and connect with a simple corner bracket.

This software is not cheap by any mean, so for a hobbyist its not really feasible to go buy another software that does do those things, but costs as much or even more and does not run on an iPad? And what are you supposed to do with designs that you’ve made in Shapr3D already? Transferring them to another software is possible on paper, but you know that something will definitely go wrong when you import into another software. And the more complex your design is the more problems it will have on import/export,. Before, users were able to buy an expensive piece of software and use it for years and years, because it worked, and they did not need anything else. But now with literally everything adopting a subscription model, paying this much money annually changes customer’s expectations.

Apologies for the rant. I just spent an hour trying to move half circle making a spiral, because it would keep resizing instead of moving.

[Istvan]

@residentdj

So, now the Align tool. Why can’t i just select a body and drag its corner to the corner of another body and have them snap together? I don’t want that flipping one body sideways and attaching it to the other body.

You can do that with the Translate tool.

@residentdj

STL support is another one. Why can’t i just split a body in a half and attach another body. Or have 2 bodies unite? It’s almost 2023. Everyone and their mother has 3D printers. I have 3. I would like to be able to use CAD software that has 3D in its name to be able to easily handle things that 3D printers, or slicers rather, made to understand. And i don’t print complex designs.

This has been discussed a lot of times before on this forum. STL is not a CAD format. We support importing STL files primarily for reverse engineering purposes, but it’s not an editable format by any means.

While Shapr3D is definitely the easiest MCAD, it’s not really a hobbyist tool. Every pro grade software takes some time to learn. We have hundreds of hours of tutorials available for free on our youtube channel.

[residentdj]

@Istvan

You can do that with the Translate tool.

That’s an interesting name for a tool that we are supposed to use to move bodies….

@Istvan

This has been discussed a lot of times before on this forum. STL is not a CAD format. We support importing STL files primarily for reverse engineering purposes, but it’s not an editable format by any means.

In that case you should probably warn users that STL it’s not a supported format, instead of throwing meaningless error every time user attempts to do something.

If STL is not editable format by any means, why does Fusion 360 allows just that. Is it not a CAD software or they use some kind of sorcery?

Imagine Adobe Photoshop, for example, while being able to export fully compliant PDF files was only able to import PDF as an uneditable image. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, it does not make any sense to me either.

If you have no plans to add STL editing capabilities, it’s fine, but it would probably be a good idea to make that known to a user before they spend money.

@Istvan

While Shapr3D is definitely the easiest MCAD, it’s not really a hobbyist tool. Every pro grade software takes some time to learn. We have hundreds of hours of tutorials available for free on our youtube channel.

I guess you should inform your sales team about that, because when i subscribed to the trial, i was a contacted by one of your Success Managers to see if i had any issues with the trial. I told him that I am a hobbyist, he acknowledged that, but in no point during our communication i was told that “it’s not really a hobbyist tool”.

I know and operate plenty of “pro grade” software from network sniffers to bank ACH and manufacturing automation, and yes takes time to learn. However, I am not a native English speaker, so I must have missed something, but I see no correlation between the need to move an object and the word “translate”. Just like I said, I was able to easily move objects and have them snap together without being misaligned by 0.3mm in other software which is no less “pro grade” than yours. Simple operations like that should not depend on deep knowledge nor should it require you to watch tutorials on Youtube infested with endless ads, especially when you are already familiar with other software.

Also, i’ve been in IT for many years. When a company positions their product as “pro grade” there are no free tutorials on YouTube. All of their training materials and documentation are paywalled on their website, and require registration with an active support contract. Everything else is general use.

Edit: And now my posts need to be approved. Awesome.

[Istvan]

@residentdj

That’s an interesting name for a tool that we are supposed to use to move bodies….

This is the industry standard name for this tool. It’s not a general move tool, but it translates a geometry along a 3D vector, defined by two points.

@residentdj

In that case you should probably warn users that STL it’s not a supported format, instead of throwing meaningless error every time user attempts to do something.

It’s a fully supported format for reverse engineering, just like images. Also, you can perform boolean operations.

@residentdj

If STL is not editable format by any means, why does Fusion 360 allows just that. Is it not a CAD software or they use some kind of sorcery?

Fusion is a great tool, and it has the most advanced mesh editing capabilities on the market. I’m not in a position to say anything about their strategy, but I assume that’s because they are focusing on the hobby 3D printing market more than other vendors.

@residentdj

If you have no plans to add STL editing capabilities, it’s fine, but it would probably be a good idea to make that known to a user before they spend money.

We don’t claim anywhere that we do have STL editing capabilities.

@residentdj

I guess you should inform your sales team about that, because when i subscribed to the trial, i was a contacted by one of your Success Managers to see if i had any issues with the trial. I told him that I am a hobbyist, he acknowledged that, but in no point during our communication i was told that “it’s not really a hobbyist tool”.

We love hobbyists! And we don’t send them away, we have many hobbyists successfully using Shapr3D, for many different use cases. We just don’t make our product decisions based what the 3D printing hobbyist market need.

@residentdj

I see no correlation between the need to move an object and the word “translate”

Translate in the world of geometry means to move so that all its parts travel in the same direction, without rotation or change of shape.

@residentdj

Also, i’ve been in IT for many years. When a company positions their product as “pro grade” there are no free tutorials on YouTube. All of their training materials and documentation are paywalled on their website, and require registration with an active support contract. Everything else is general use.

We try to do more than other companies to make our customers successful! Why would we punish our customers with paywalled tutorials? That’s not good for them.