Hello! I hope to be helpful bringing some ideas about Sketcher interface design. Some of this improvements can be obtained just changing settings, I did this, but personally I think the workbench would be better and smoother changing these by default.
The grid should be disabled by default. Since FreeCAD is a parametric cad system, normally you don’t need a grid to care about dimensions, there are parametric dimension tools for this task.
The dimension lines should be thiner than the drawing lines to not overload the drawing, for the same reason the font size should be lower than now (I think 10 px are enough). It is very annoying when there are lot and lot of dimension lines if they are too thick and the fonts too big.
I think these modification can be very “cheap” in programming but very very useful for the final user, and can give a very good impression for first time Freecad users.
Disable grid: +1
Thin lines: +1
Smaller font: don’t care
I have another suggestion: When we want two lines colinear we use the tangent function. I would ask that if two lines are selected and use coincident that both become colinear too. Yes it is a duplication of functionallity but it works more natural te me.
Also was never crazy about the dark blue for construction lines myself. A dashed grey might be more appropriate, considering the role of a construction line…
+1, but there is more. I actually found this in OnShape: applying coincident between two instances of same geometry makes one extension of another. For example, if you apply “Coincident” between two arcs, that makes the arcs be on the same circle. It can be tricky to constrain, especially for more complex geometric stuff like ellipses. Yet it’s needed reasonably often.
I might have missed something, but that’s what the tangent constraint does. Why use the coincident? It seems to be of the same quality as creating coincidence when applying the parallel constraint to two points or creating a length constraint when applying a radius to a line. Currently it is a clear concept which is not too difficult to explain. I would like to leave it as it is.
The grid is one click, and the choice remains as long as wanted. Other than complete newbies, who cares? I have turned it off and on many times for various reasons.
I would be careful about adding too much automation to making things coincident. For example, there are times when two similar arcs should not be on the same circle. There needs to user choice available.
I know it’s a matter of a click, as we said, but my actual suggestion is changing those defaults. The reason is that those “newbies”, who can also be experienced CAD users, are the new potential users of this software and the first impression can make the difference with their actual choice of giving it a try (and possibly even support it) or judging it as inadequate.
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