Alan Cooper Posted January 1, 2016 Share Posted January 1, 2016 FormZ is weak in this area, imho especially for something like a cylinder where snaps do not work to it's 'rectangular view' extents. No joy here with independent scale or transform, and the end of the cylinder is obstructed by the wardrobe side, and hiding the side isn't much help to do a reshape because after I unhide it, reshape becomes inactive. The best I can manage is to reshape the rail through the side, then section cut the rail with the face of the side as a cutting plane and delete the excess. It works but could be simpler. We really need a better, more tangible selection rectangle which could assist here. [The selection rectangle ideally could be adjusted so that its 'catch' can be fine-tuned.] When selection is complete I would like the selection rectangle to be able to be scaled, like in so many other softwares, so its extents can snap to something. I also wish we could snap to the top or bottom of a cylinder edge when in orthogonal view instead of to a segment which is unlikely to be at its precise X or Y limits. I am finding adjusting the lengths and position of wardrobe hanging rails to fit their spaces which should be a very simple operation from a front view in wire frame is a lot more time consuming than it should be. Scaling of a selection in Turbocad works well, hopefully FZ can soon improve in this area. I wish I could roll all the good features of several programs into one, this feature needs looking into unless I am missing something obvious, as in Turbocad I could adjust these hanging rails very quickly indeed without resorting to a boolean operation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 2, 2016 Share Posted January 2, 2016 Hi Alan, We am not sure if we understand what problem you are having, and what you are requesting. Can you please post a very simple (.FMZ.zip) file that shows your starting point, and a copy of this data that shows how you want to "transform this" so we can suggest the easiest method, or improve things if necessary? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 2, 2016 Author Share Posted January 2, 2016 Hi Tech, please see this short video of the operation being done to 3d parts in a front elevation in Turbocad. http://screencast.com/t/mbpTGdyq Notice that when the 2 cylindrical hanging rails have been selected, an extents selection rectangle automatically appears which can easily be scaled, snapping the contents accurately to another entity. I have used a keyboard shortcut in this particular case to complete with a snap to 'nearest'. I could also snap from the top or bottom corner of a cylindrical hanging rail, moving from one place to another using snaps. I could not with FormZ because it would snap to something other than the top or bottom corner of a cylinder in this front elevation view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 2, 2016 Author Share Posted January 2, 2016 For the scaling, it is possible in FormZ to draw an extra rectangle to produce vertices to snap to while moving the ends of the cylinders, but this is nowhere near as sweet as scaling the automatic selection rectangle as shown in the TC example. This done with FZ, moving the ends of the cylinders. Care would need to be taken not to accidentally select other entities which could be another snag with this method. http://screencast.com/t/5riSV3vXK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Atkinson Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 If i may say so, from a perspective accustomed to physical fabricating, the v6 ability to snap between grids and objects was so helpful, (along with quick edits of the Ref Plane increments). Currently, this behavior change from v6 is altered drastically. I couldn't understand the first video snap-pings. I would agree that new snap environment always has me adding point objects, to assure surface move, just so. Like move selected surface from point A to point B. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 3, 2016 Author Share Posted January 3, 2016 Hi Bo, here is a replacement for video 1 done with turbocad. http://screencast.com/t/bGEMVass3 Hopefully that is a bit clearer. The snappings work like this: having selected the edge of the selection window, move the cursor close to something to be snapped to, press the relevant shortcut key which completes the operation. (The hotkey use itself is another topic, another nice feature in that program, though FormZ visual snapping is good too), but the issue here is the stretching of the cylinders together by a stretch of the selection rectangle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Hi Alan, We are still not sure if we understand. The second video you post moving faces of the cylinder looks like exactly what you want, no? And there is no need to draw the rectangular object first, right? With Guide and Segment Snap on, start moving the faces and with your cursor over the horizontal guide, hold down the shift key and move to the desired segment on the left object. Does that do what you want? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 4, 2016 Author Share Posted January 4, 2016 Thank you Tech, Yes, I had forgotten all about that particular use of the shift key, which solves my issue, nearly as nice as the selection rectangle stretch I have been used to in TC, which does not require the faces of the objects to be selected first, but just the objects which is still easier in some situations. Many thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Great, glad to help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etroxel Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 One thing that's always bugged me about the shift key constraint for these kinds of transformations is that I have to move beyond local geometry (usually over blank background) before it starts working. It would be great if it started working as soon as I held down the shift key over an axis. This might not sound like a big deal, but when working inside a space or on very large projects often there is no blank background available. But maybe I'm missing something. Is this possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 4, 2016 Author Share Posted January 4, 2016 So maybe there is some hope for a future option to scale a selection rectangle yet? A cool addition for the preferences list? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Hi Evan, We tried the shift key to snap to guides in dense files, like this "generic" one for example: And did not have any problems. Can you send a file where you are having trouble so we can better understand what you are describing? Alan, Are you aware of the Scale options in the Transform tool? True, you do need to have the Object Axes / Controller in the desired location, but that will allow you to scale objects based on their bounding volume... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
setz Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Re Method's issue above: There is one situation where guide snapping and shift-snapping to a guide needs to be modified: Select the highlighted segment Set Snaps to Point Select the Move Tool Snap to the highlighted point at the top of the selected segment and then move to the right or left along the segment at the upper close edge. While the cursor is coincident with this segment (and the guide), snapping to the guide and Shift-Snapping to the guide are unavailable. For example: in the image, say you want to slide the edge over to be aligned with the corner of the cube sitting on top. It's only possible to snap or shift-snap once the cursor goes past the existing geometry and is no longer coincident. The only way to shift-snap is to zoom out to where you can see past the end of the segment. This is problematic because then zooming back in is not possible while shift is being held down. This makes snapping to the target difficult in complex models where the target (point) is hard to differentiate from other points while zoomed way out. Untitled.fmz.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Cooper Posted January 4, 2016 Author Share Posted January 4, 2016 Alan, Are you aware of the Scale options in the Transform tool? True, you do need to have the Object Axes / Controller in the desired location, but that will allow you to scale objects based on their bounding volume... Thank you Tech. I struggled with the Transform tool in the past, and the video available from the transform tools doesn't cover it, maybe somewhere else, but at last I have grasped the crucial options 'transform controller' and 'transform selection' which actually mean 'transform the controller' and transform the selection'. So a useful tool indeed. Thanks for encouraging me to persevere with the transform tool, can see it has great uses. For the purposes of this thread and topic, I still think a manouverable automatically generated visible faint scaleable rectangle around a selection is quicker. In Turbocad, the origin of the selection rectangle is the centre of the selection, illustrated by a dot, but can be moved to anywhere else by pressing the D key, great for quick accurate copying or moving, as well as scaling and rotating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Hi Robert, Thanks for posting the file, we understand what you are saying and we will see what we can do to improve this. However, we don't have to zoom out -- just move the cursor to the guide to the left of the objects, hold down shift, and snap to the desired point. Of course that may be easier in this file than in others. Thanks again for clarifying... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etroxel Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Setz, this is exactly the issue. The constraint doesn't begin to be active until you move off of an existing edge. There are many cases where this is a problem. I think it should be active immediately as the user holds the shift key and is over a temporary guide. constraint.mp4.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 Hi Evan, We just needed the FMZ file that Robert sent (not a video). But thanks for bringing this issue to our attention, we will see if this can be adjusted for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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