v23 - Realtime previews don't allow some edges to be selected
- Thread starter simonb65
- Start date
I'd say it was a serious limitation of Realtime Previews. Unless I'm missing something, you can't set the default for Previews. If you switch 3D Previews on in the System Options, it defaults to 3D Previews on the Preview toggle button. Surely, what's needed is an option to set the default for the toggle button? This allows users to choose the 3D Preview after they've finished selecting, rather than the selection process stalling because of the way 3D Preview works.......
Simon, with respect, the person who implemented this only has about 20 years of experience with ACIS. I imagine that's about 20 years more experience in ACIS than you have. The many meetings we had on the pros and cons of this feature, the limitations of the feature, the possible UI / UX modifications we could make to do various things to address those issues...I guess none of that matters.
There is nothing to suggest we haven't done this. You're literally just making things up. Then you're saying the developer wouldn't be truthful about how complicated or possible something is.
I'm just tired of this conversation. I strongly suggest you drop it.
You reported an issue. I gave you the reasoning for the behavior, exhaustively. You then start arguing with me about how we don't know what we're talking about, how our developers are either lazy or lying, and about how you know this limitation is addressable. We have moved well past listening to a concern. Our expertise is not enough for you. Tons of meetings we've had on this very subject aren't enough for you. The developer with 20 years of ACIS experience who has been with Alibre since it was formed in the 90s is not enough. You are disrespectful and accusatory, and you frankly don't know what you're talking about. I'm tired of entertaining this endless back and forth.
This is what is in the Help File:
This covers everything pretty well. Here's the Dialog for File Properties:
- The Show Previews option globally enables or disables real-time 3D previews for certain 3D feature creation tools. This option can be overridden in a part's File Properties.
Effect
Enabling the Show Previews option will show fully evaluated previews while a feature dialog is open for most features. This is useful to get an exact idea of what a feature and its options will result in prior to finalizing the feature.
Global Option vs. Feature-Level Option
This global Show Previews option will enable the ability to use previews. As a result, features that support real-time 3D previews will use them automatically if the option is also set in a part's File Properties.
Features that support real-time 3D previews have an override button that allows you to disable real-time previews temporarily or permanently for a specific feature. For example, if you have a complex fillet that takes 10 seconds to evaluate, you would not want it to evaluate every time you click the increment spinner for the radius. In this case, you can disable 3D previews for this feature. In other cases, disabling real-time previews may make selection easier. When you finalize the feature, the status of the feature-level option is saved. When you edit that particular feature again, its previous real-time preview status will be used.
Enabling or disabling real-time previews at the feature level works for named features (example: Fillet<32> or Extrude Boss <2>) but not for feature classes (example: all fillets or all sweeps).
Affected Workspaces
This option affects part workspaces. It does not currently affect sheet metal workspaces.
This covers everything pretty well. Here's the Dialog for File Properties:
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I think allowing a user to select the default state of the toggle button is perfectly reasonable. I also think a faster way to toggle, e.g. by pressing spacebar, is probably needed.
simonb65
Alibre Super User
@Max, I'm all for keeping this discussion adult. My comments are based on your contradictory comments in that an earlier post you said ..
... and in the next statement you said it was a known limitation, to which you must have seen it happen in testing and general use! ...
... and yet you decided to not highlight this to the user in any way, instead you let them think its a problem! So, you must have seen it at some point but decided to just let it pass and hope the user would just accept it. I see it as a shortfall. I see this as an issue and so do other users who have commented on here.
I also have over 36 years in this business (high reliability banking software, UI and graphical editors, game engines, safety critical embedded firmware, electronic design) with 25 of them customer and supplier facing. This is the only company I have provided constructive informative feedback to that is perceived by that company as negative. Every other bit of feedback I have presented has enabled the product in question become better. If you want to ignore feedback and interpret it as a personal dig at yourself or employees, then that is you choice. That is not what is intended here. When people of vast experience give me feedback on my products, I listen, I improve my product. I like to reciprocate that.
As a customer I like to feel valued and listened to. I don't take kindly to a supplier telling me 'I strongly suggest you drop it.'. That will quickly loose you custom. If you would like to take the conversation off line I'm more than happy to discuss. If you would like to speak via a call, I'll be happy to take that call.
</end of conversation from this side of the pond>
... and in the next statement you said it was a known limitation, to which you must have seen it happen in testing and general use! ...
... and yet you decided to not highlight this to the user in any way, instead you let them think its a problem! So, you must have seen it at some point but decided to just let it pass and hope the user would just accept it. I see it as a shortfall. I see this as an issue and so do other users who have commented on here.
I also have over 36 years in this business (high reliability banking software, UI and graphical editors, game engines, safety critical embedded firmware, electronic design) with 25 of them customer and supplier facing. This is the only company I have provided constructive informative feedback to that is perceived by that company as negative. Every other bit of feedback I have presented has enabled the product in question become better. If you want to ignore feedback and interpret it as a personal dig at yourself or employees, then that is you choice. That is not what is intended here. When people of vast experience give me feedback on my products, I listen, I improve my product. I like to reciprocate that.
As a customer I like to feel valued and listened to. I don't take kindly to a supplier telling me 'I strongly suggest you drop it.'. That will quickly loose you custom. If you would like to take the conversation off line I'm more than happy to discuss. If you would like to speak via a call, I'll be happy to take that call.
</end of conversation from this side of the pond>
bigseb
Alibre Super User
Been following this thread closely. I have also had the unselectable edges problem and I honestly can't see why that should be. But even if that problem didn't exist there are other issues too:
1) You can't unselect an edge by clicking on it
2) The computing time is ridiculously long to the point of making previews unusable in a work situation.
Overall I feel the preview thing needs to completely overhauled.
1) You can't unselect an edge by clicking on it
2) The computing time is ridiculously long to the point of making previews unusable in a work situation.
Overall I feel the preview thing needs to completely overhauled.
Is this constructive:
You repeatedly insinuate that we have not done our due diligence on this with no evidence other than your theory that "it should work". The first and only thing you go to is that I, and our developers, must surely be wrong and the problem is just our attitude. We just haven't tried hard enough, or asked the right people, right? It's not constructive, it's argumentative. You insinuate multiple times we just need to "talk to ACIS" without, for example, asking if we've done that already. You say I shouldn't ask my own developers because they might just lie. You base all of this on nothing. Every shortcoming can be overcome with enough resources. This is not a problem that is worth the amount of resources it would take to address.
IF you are actually intending this to be constructive, then I suggest you:
a) reread your posts
b) think critically about how you communicate and what you insinuate, intentionally or not
I do not tolerate people insinuating a developer is a liar or would misrepresent facts or is lazy or is incompetent. This is not the first or even second time you've done that. I will, to a point, tolerate people speaking endlessly and publicly about things they do not know about. You have a lot of experience, but you have no experience with this. You are talking as if you did, and arguing with me about a very technical, domain-specific problem as if you did. This is not the first or second time you've done that either. I listen to everyone's feedback, including yours. It's the arguments and trying to "win threads" that is tiresome and unproductive. No one else in this thread is arguing. It's just you.
This is something I think we have a few options to reasonably address. It's a UX / UI issue. And I hear you - we'll look into this.
What types of features do you find this to be for? Realtime previews are as performant as the feature would be if you pressed apply. That being said, progressive selection (e.g. for many fillets) will "cost" the amount of time as a feature would take to make multiplied by the number of selections, roughly speaking. The more selections, the longer the next incremental selection may take.
For most modeling operations, it's quite fast if not instantaneous. But certainly for complex fillets or perhaps other very complex features that take a long time to compute generally, you will feel it. For this reason, on a feature-by-feature basis, you can disable realtime previews. So if you have a 20 edge fillet that you know takes a while, just turn off realtime previews and it will stay off for that fillet. The speed of realtime previews is bound by the speed of evaluating the features which is bound by ACIS, and is not something we can do anything about unfortunately if the goal is to have it show an actual preview. I think the best we can do here is make toggling easier.
bigseb
Alibre Super User
Cheers. That would be a big help.
Yeah this was a pretty complex model. In the end I had to scrap the Alibre version and do it entirely in Moi (for reasons other than just fillets) so I don't have that model any more, only the Moi (3dm) one. Toggling previews would be way forward.
bigseb
Alibre Super User
I'm not sure if this has come up before but the edges that get selected can have a colour assigned to them so they stand out. A nice touch touch would be to increase the size of the edge i.e. make it look fatter. Sometimes when the model is really large the edges get lost amongst all the others because the they are too thin. Hoping that makes sense.
I know it seems like that should be the case, but unfortunately it's not. Again this is a result of progressive selection/evaluation. Let me illustrate graphically what's going on:
When we're in the chamfer tool, and we select the first edge (to get the right picture), the feature is immediately evaluated. All the consequences of the evaluation now exist. One consequence of this particular geometry change (the first of several progressive selections of the chamfer tool) is that another edge we want to select has gotten a new identifier. The edge's new identifier is predicated on the model change (the first chamfer, which is being previewed).
We cannot allow you to select the edge with a new ID as part of the same feature that caused the new ID to exist. That's the circular reference problem. As a result, we prevent you from picking geometry in that circumstance.
Fundamentally, ACIS evaluates things simultaneously. Realtime preview forces it to evaluate things progressively. This is fundamentally where the issue is. To do what you want, you need to make ACIS evaluate the selection simultaneously, which means you must give it both inputs simultaneously. This cannot be done with realtime previews on.
For many geometry cases, it turns out there is no difference in the result of a simultaneous or progressive evaluation, since geometry IDs that are important to you are not changing. But in some cases, there is a difference. In those cases, this is what you will see happen.
For color, are you thinking about something different than the above post, right image (selection of edge shown in blue color)? I do like the idea of making edge thickness more prominent.