Suggested Improvements in AS9

For what it's worth, (and to see if anyone else is in agreement with me) here's a few things I would like to see improved:

There are five pages of "options" and "settings" in AS9 - brilliant; loads of things to tweak. BUT they are spread out in multiple menues - you have know what's on each before looking for a specific thing to change. Wouldn't it be better to have them all in the one place? please?

That "print drawing/print what's seen" tic box on the print dialoge.

Being able to drag buttons when customising (as per MSO)

Customise /all/ keyboard shortcuts and commands; what's with only being able to use Ctrl+Shift+<an-other>? And the "already assigned to" text does not update either. It would also be a handy way to see what shortcuts are already assigned.
The list of command buttons would also be better if you had the option of listing by relativity as well as stright alphabetically.
And it would be nice to have _all_ the commands available, not just the command buttons.
Another idea would be to have the ability to make macros "tool aware" - if a certain tool is selected, then the tool-aware macros take precident over any global macros.

And the reverse of this; make the sub-command buttons available for custom tool bars and have them "parent-aware" so that entering values on them would activate the parent command before executing the sub-command.

I wish that there was some ability to write macros as well - would open up the program by soooo much. (especially if you could assign them to buttons or short-cut keys)

The ability to change the scale of the drawing, but lock/fix certain layers so they remain the scale drawin in initially. (eg title boxes drawn 1:1, but the drawing at 1:100)

(Someone /please/ tell me if this can already be done Being able to move/scale/duplicate/... by dragging and have the base/origin be a snap point rather than where the mouse clicked.

Be able to click once on the little "expand me" arrow on the buttons rather than (/as well as) holding down the mouse button.

Be able to drag guidelines to/from the ruler

Have the "enquire entity" dialogue automatically update with selection (if open) no matter which tool is being used; poss moved to a side toolbar like the "Content Librarian"?

What's with this having to refresh all the time? Can't there be an option to "auto-refresh" that will do it after every move/delete action?


I've only been playing with this for a week; I'll start using it properly now and find more stuff to add. Out of curiosity; do Autodesk actually listen to any of this?

 

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The ability to type in different unit suffixes and have it automatically converted (eg inches to mm, or pt. to mm in text)

If you use shortcut keys that activate a command under a sub-menu, the primary button changes to that command - I don't like this; I would prefer that it remained as last used. Perhaps another option to toggle this behaviour?

When you select an entity, the buttons for line width (/colour/style) do not change to be that of the entity; it makes you have to interegate an item to discover these simple properties.

 

Many of us have asked for this... For many years...across several releases.

 

What's with this having to refresh all the time? Can't there be an option
to "auto-refresh" that will do it after every move/delete action?



Before they sold out to Autodesk, the old Drafix of many years ago used to
do this and is (IMHO) sorely missed in AS

 

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Rotating text; the box defining where the text will be is wrong while performing the operation - text is placed fine, you just worry that it's not while holding the mouse button.

When using the trim commands (union, difference, intersection) it would be nice if there was the usual tic box to leave the original object.

The marquee extends to show what is/is not selected, but it would be really handy if the selected objects were highlighted in some way as well. Perhaps a coloured shadow? Would make adding/removing from a selection a lot easier.

If a control key and an arrow could be used to "nudge" selected elements (and poss another control key for squishing as per top/bottom and side handles) Nudge amount would be dictated by either the grid settings or a separate option

Clicking on the layer box moves a selection to the specific layer, but if there is no selection it would be nice to have it roll down the selection box.

While the "enter 2D coordinate" dialogue is open, it would be handy if clicking on the image behind inserted the coordinates into the fields. (with snaps active as well.)

Would be handy to have an option that would change the coordinates in the "enter 2D Coordinate" dialogue if the coordinate system was changed; ie that a relative value of x,y would change to reflect the same point on the absolute system.
Poss a tic box on this dialogue to 'fix' the point while method changed.

The "enter 2D coordinate" would be enhanced if the origin could be set from it (Poss sub "origin" menu under the 'system' menu to set page origin, drawing origin or set/clear a temp origin; which would lock the 'last' values - inc. clickable padlock?)

The "Lock" option in the "enter 2D coordinate" could be enhanced by putting a padlock next to the fields that were being locked (click to toggle on/off and grey-out field if the value was fixed by a lock)

 

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Obviously not :-(

Tip: If you want to drag or transform an object so that it snaps corner to corner, you will find that it either tries to scale the object or you grab a "nearest" point on the object. To get it to work, first R-click on the middle 'move' handle and select "Move About Point", then (with "End snap" on) click on the corner of the object. Now drag it from there.
(Nb - if you select something else, then that object again, the centre 'move' handle is restored to the center.)

Tip: To enter a 2D coordinate to a specific scale (relative to the scale of your drawing), you can use the built in calculation function:
If you want a point at 100,200 but at 1:25 simply enter 100/25,200/25 and the program will evaluate the coordinates to 4,8.



The communication center is a fairly good idea, but looks like it hasn't been implemented from Autodesk's side of things. The ability to submit articles/tips to the Communication Centre channels would be quite good, as would the inclusion of this forum.

It would be handy if you could select transformation tools (mirror, scale, stretch...) before you make a selection (as well as after)

When printing, it shouldn't matter which layers visibility are turned on/off: if they are marked to print, they should print.

Hitting a key to change the "lock" mode (U,X,Y,O,L) should toggle them if already selected to "Unlock" status - in fact the "unlock" status button should not be there since it's just the absence of any other locks being engaged.

Put some more information on the status bar: The lock status, the current object's layer, colour, line weight, line style, cycle icon to change the coordinates shown to polar/relative/World, printable icon that relates to the current selection's layer

The "hatch fill" would be so much better if it could translate directory structures into expandable menus; then you could simply put the most used at the top, then a folder for "stone works", one for "interiors", one for "ISO's", one for "Bitmaps"...etc.

Have the ability to order layers any way you want rather than just alphabetically. (putting a 01,02 in front of them is just not the same)

Shortcut keys to move between layers; Poss use <ctrl> plus keypad numbers to set a layer as the active one.

I'm being annoyed just now about trying to select an object: three lines parallel in the space of about half the size of my cursor and I can't select the middle one without zooming (and this de-selects the tool being used)! Any way to use a control key and click to cycle through objects under the mouse?

When trimming, you have no idea if the first line you selected to trim/join is the correct one until you click the second one and see what happens; some sort of highlighting is needed to get it right (this ties in with the above point.)
It would also be very useful to highlight where the current trim line/object is - poss with highlighted guidelines?

When trimming, some trim commands keep the line you click, others remove the line you click: a check box on the 'property' toolbar for cutting/keeping on all the trim tools would be immensely useful.

When "undoing" a trim, can't it just undo the last click rather than re-setting to the 'selection' tool?

The "trim Channel" is a cool tool, but I would like to be able to set the second line so that it's not parallel to the first (Poss Ctrl-click to set the second point of the second line?)

The "trim channel" also has the knack of removing the lines that lie immediately under the 'trim lines' - this I think is more a bug than an improvement.
Tip: When using the "trim channel", it does not matter if you click on the line to be trimmed inside the channel or outside - the bit inside will be removed.

When transforming an object, there is a check box to duplicate for the transformation; it would be really cool if you could click this box immediately after applying a transformation to erase/un-erase the original object (the amount of times I have forgotten to check or un-check...)
Or have one set of transformation tools that erases and another that duplicates; maybe the same button in half - top does one thing, bottom does the other?

Zooming "real time" zooms in/out of the current page by using the vertical axis and keeping the view centered. It would be nice to have a check box for a "floating centre point" that would use where you click as the centre point of the zoom.

 

You can already do a few of these in v9 (and for several versions back):

You can edit the Sketch.pat file with your favorite text editor to remove
hatches you don't want. Not exactly what you asked for, but it can make the
list manageable.

Use Alt-Click to cycle. While holding down the Alt key, different entities
will be highlighted each time you click. Release Alt when you have the one
you want.

TIP: You can hold the Ctrl key to temporarilly toggle the setting. If you
always leave the box unchecked and get used to using Ctrl to perform copies,
you'll be golden.

FWIW: Zooming via the mouse wheel occurs about the cursor. (v9 only)

Unless I misunderstand what you are requesting, you can already do this.
The default unit gets applied to unitless numbers, but you can always follow
the number by "mm" or "ft" or whatever.

You can use the dropper tool at the right of the Property toolbar to do
this. Select the entity, click on the dropper, then click on the property
you want to sync-up on the property bar. Of course, a dynamic Inquire/Edit
Entities would still be nice, but that's a different thing.


Hopefully some of these will make your life a little easier.

- Steve

 

Hopefully some of these will make your life a little easier.
Thank you Steve; I had worked out a few of these my self (as below... although not all; I like that <ctrl> copy trick

Here's some more...

Tip: Press & hold the shift key when in dynamic 'zoom' mode will change to 'pan' mode

Tip: Adding/removing from a selection can be done with a formula (eg add all from layer 1, remove all from layer 2) by hitting <Ctrl M>

Tip: You _can_ enter a unit of measurement and it will automatically update to the drawing's units

Tip: If you hold <alt> while clicking on nearby or overlapping entities it will cycle through them.

Although it's not evident which item you are actually 'on' untill you release the <alt> button. Some way to highlight the line you're on at the time would be very benificial. As would a way to see which if you are zoomed in so that the handles are outside of the screen.

On the "Edit Bar" for selected entities, it would be handy if there were x,y fields for the start and end points (it has polar coordinates, the start & end coordinates on the page space, but is lacking the x,y)

"Tip of the day" and the "communication center" (and "help") would be better if they could be 'docked' to the side somewhere so that what they refer to could be looked at at the same time as reading about it.

A cool function to add in would be a "pause" button; you have selected entities, added and removed from this selection, selected the transformation tool, selected the start point and then realise that you have not done some work to give you the right snap point to end it! If you could 'pause' the action (have the program remember the selection, command and 'clicks' to that point) then you could do the work and resume where you left off. (a tic box option to 'lock' the selection while it was on pause would be cool as well.)

If you have a single line, it is impossable to drag it without using the 'about point' - it keeps trying to draw a selection box instead. If you have multiple entities selected, it works as it should: this is a bug.
When you try to r-drag from 'about point', it will pop up the r-click menu: it would be usefull if this menu also contained "move" and "copy" commands that would stick the entity to the mouse until clicked to release. Or work like the "move" in any application window

Some way to adjust the birghtness, contrast, hue and saturation of a bitmap fill would mean you could get almost infinite variety and fake lighting effects.

The "scale" of any hatch fill is fairly pointless: what it looks like when you set the scale is dependant on your zoom factor- zoom out and the same object with the fill appears smaller, but the fill remains the same scale as seen when it was set (ie now it will look too big for the object)

Selecting the "Fill Hatch" tool and clicking on a bit of "white space" fills it up to any enclosing lines of any layer; this, I like. However if you then change the fill type and click on the same area again, you get another fill (of the new type) on top of the old one. Could the program not be smart enough to just change the fill (perhaps another of these "apply to duplicate" check boxes?)

Tip: If selecting an area of "White space", you must ensure that the bounding lines are not on a locked layer - anything locked is effectivly "invisible" to the fill and so fills may bleed further than you expect assuming they work) if you have certain layers locked.

Having the order of the layers as seen in the layer dialogue actually be the order they are put down in! This is especially important for fills where you would want them under certain elements. It would also be nice to re-arrange this order; dragging? shift arrows?

You can order elements in a layer by moving them to the front or back, but stepping them one up or down has to be done by thinking ahead and organising which to put to the back and which to call to the front in what order. A simple "move down/up" in the Arrange menu would help a lot.

(* perhaps the root of the above points are that the refresh/redraw does not do the fills very well)

The "Enter 2D Point" dialogue automatically comes up if it has been opened and 'calceled' before; Normally the first point of any action being performed is a 'clicked on' point - this dialogue gets in the way. However if the action requires a second (third...) point to be specified, THEN it would be handy to pop up the dialogue if it had been canceled before.

Double clicking on an entity allows you to move the points in it ("edit verticies"), it would be nice to be able to double click it again to revert to the standard 'edit' mode. (a button on the standard mode to enter the "edit verticies" mode would also be handy)

It would also be nice to be able to select another entity in this mode with a single click rather than double clicking them.

 

The next installment...

When using the layer drop down and locking the current layer, the currently active layer should jump to the next un-locked layer. Or/And if you select a locked layer as the working layer it should un-lock it's self.

Having an option to auto-lock layers would be nice: just change layers for the previous one to become locked and the selected one to un-lock.

Arrays allow you to duplicate an item spaced at increments which are specified over a variable distance/area. Works brilliantly. However I would like to see the duplication of items spaced at a variable increment (all the same) over a specified distance/area.
This would mean I could specify an array of 4 x 4 objects covering <click> to <click> and it would work out the spacing.

When entering the default selection tool, if nothing is currently selected, it would be handy if the last object created/worked on defaulted to the current selection. (clicking on a blank space or would remove the selection)

The selection modifier (Ctrl+M) is a good start to a tool, but it could be brilliant if:
- you could use the pipette to grab the properties from an on-screen object
- this would either grab everything (if no prior selection of qualifier or "All" was selected)
- or if you had selected a qualifier, get that property from the grabbed object
- you could select based on the fill type and fill colour/pattern
- you could specify geometric properties of the object (Number of points, Extent x>999, Extent y<999, Dist=999... as per the fields "querying" an object brings up)
- you could use the query box like a text editor
- you could save/load selection criteria (text files)

While "snap" is on, you have to position your cursor over the centre of a line for the snap to register. If you are zoomed in enough, or have a thick enough line that your cursor appears smaller than the line, it would be handy to increase the cursor's sensitivity to that layer's line's thickness. (So that moving over the "edge" of a line would activate it's snap to node)

The "end caps" of lines are currently round (a circle of the pen width placed at the end point of a line); if they had the ability to be "angular", it could produce a crisper image; less "cartoon like" (a square of the pen width placed at the end pint). Poss a toggle box, or separate dialogue.

"Undo" while using the offset command should be able to undo the last click, rather than having to de-select the tool and then undo

Trim commands should be able to "undo" the last action rather than removing the trim selection and forcing you to re-select the trim commands and line(s).

It would be useful if there was a simple way you could find out what layer an object is on, even if that object is locked (you can't select it - therefore you have to unlock or hide various layers it could be on until you find it)

When you move the "about point" of an object, it would be really good if that about point remained where you put it for the next time you clicked on the object - the about point can be re-set by the existing "centre about point" option. (especially useful after an undo/cancel command)

Tip: To enter arithmetic expressions into the x & y fields in the "relative/absolute" point entry system, insert an "=" before the expression (eg "=1500-800" would be the same as typing in "700")

Once you have a fill of a shape, if you squish or re-shape it, the fill remains constant (It is as if the fill is over the whole page and the shape is just a mask) I would like to be able to squish the fill with the shape: example an elevation showing bricks straight on is fine, but if a facet of the brickwork wall is angled away at 45º, the fill should be half that on the X axis as the straight on brickwork. If I could draw a filled box of the right (flat) size, then squish it with the fill, it would look right. (Floating Bitmap objects do this.)

An ability to convert fills into grouped objects (bitmap fills into a single floating bitmap). This would allow the above to work, and allow for better control of layering the fills.

A plug-in or edit option to add/edit the PS fills.

Setting the pen thickness for a PS fill should set the pen thickness for the lines within the fill - currently they remain "hairline", and the thickness can only be changed by specifying what thickness "hairline" relates to when printing.

Trimming would be really useful if you could draw a marquee to select multiple objects to trim. (it has to be one at a time just now)

When re-sizing/stretching a dimension line, it would be much more useful if the tics or marks used to indicate the end points* were not included for the selection and re-generated once the object has been re-sized. (Just now, if you grab a handle to stretch a dimension line, it will snap to the extents of the selection rather than the extents of the line.)
* Text as well: if the actual dimension text could be considered as attached, but not part of the dimension line it would enable much more accurate positioning.

Tip: If you double click on a dimension line, you can move the end points and float the text anywhere; This does what the above suggestion would do.

I would also like to see snap points for dimension lines - perhaps only available when working with dimension lines; it would mean you could line up dimensions and move them with accuracy rather than by eye.

Some of the tabbed dialogues would be made more user friendly if they remembered the tab you were on for the next time they opened (eg the "Format Dimension" dialogue)
They would also be very handy if they were "dockable" and updated with the selection.

 

Brilliant - most of these improvements would be very useful - how about it
AutoDesk?

 

If your lucky, you might get one or two in version 10.

People have been complaining about light printing since version 5. It
was finally fixed in version 9.

 

Brilliant - most of these improvements would be very useful - how

Don't be silly; if they did that then they would have a product that was even further ahead of AutoCadLT for a fraction of the price!
It would probably be miles better than it's closest competitors in the market and have the backing of a huge corporation behind it for support and development. People would begin using it in there droves, colaborative file sharing and drawing projects would be developed for it, the interface would become more intuative, the help system interactive...

'pop'

Back to reality: V9 has just been released. V9.1 would only be released (in 6 months time) if there were any major bugs or issues with it crashing systems. There dosn't seem to be, so I guess we wait a couple of years before they merge the good ideas into Acad/LT and then trim that down to nothing to release as a 'super LT' package. Either that or the ignore it for a few years while competitors take the ideas and release better CAD software, then it fades into abandon-ware.

I hope I'm being cynical; I would really like to see some of the sugestions implemented - but from what I've seen of Autodesk's interest in Sketch, I'm not holding my breath.

 

What I would really like to see is multiple "worksheets" in one project
file. This way you can have one project file with many different
drawings. Kind of like how Excel has multiple worksheets in one excel
file. Currently I have to manage my complex projects with multiple
files. And of course, if while I am wishing, each of these sheets
should have their own settings (grid, units, scale, etc).

 

In ADT/AutoCAD/AutoCAD LT, that is commonly referred to as "Paper Space".

Highly unlikely AutoSketch will EVER see such a logical concept....!!!

Ric Norris.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/cavedrawings

 

What I would really like to see is multiple "worksheets" in one project

Just save all the files in the one directory and name them sensibly; Sketch can open multiple files in the one application (rather than having to run the application multiple times) The "Window" menu allows switching between them and objects can be cut/coppied/pasted between files. If you have enough screen real-estate, you can drag between open panes.

The only thing "lacking" really is a common file that would contain the drawing information (Title, project, draughtsman...) but that's only a few feilds under the "file" tab in "drawing options.

Another thing that would be handy would be if one drawing could use the database fields from another one (Like Excel can use "!Workbook1.Sheet1.A5")
Or even better if the database information was stored in another file that could be accessed by standard OLE or ODBC methods - or even Excel.

You don't need viewports: the only advantage they give is that you can change one entity that is common between files (views) and it will change them all. But the time and effort spent setting up the viewport in the first place could be used to simply copy and paste any changes.*

(* If you are working in Sketch, then it's 2D - viewports are excelent for 3D work.)

 

It's obvious you know VERY LITTLE about the AutoCAD Paper Space
concept.....it has nothing to do to with changing entities between common
files/views (whatever that means).

It's all to do with scaling your drawing within whatever page size you are
printing to, regardless whether the drawing is 2D or 3D.

A simple viewport takes 5 seconds to set up.

Ric Norris.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/cavedrawings

 

It's obvious you know VERY LITTLE about the AutoCAD Paper

True - only a limited amount of playing about with AC (and I was getting confused with other features) - but the concept does not seem that hard to reproduce in AS: you are just fixed to the one paper size/scale at a time - you can change it in a couple of clicks.

 

Paper space allows you to draw a drawing free form in model space at
full scale without worrying about how it will look or fit on a piece of
paper.

When you decide you want to output something, then you have separate
area where you pull in views of your model and scale it to fit the page.

This feature is not available or reproducible in AS. AS requires you to
think about scale and how your drawing will look before you start drawing.

 

Paper space allows you to draw a drawing free form in model

?? I draw 1:1 with "show paper" turned off. Then change the scale to 1:50 or 1:100, turn the paper on and move the drawing over the paper.

You just have to move the drawing rather than the paper - that's all: want another scale or another area - simply change it. As said, easily reproduced.

 

This feature seems like a no brainer. Why not autorefresh all the
time? This seems like a feature that was implemented for a 486 PC or
something. Back when it may have taken awhile to draw the screen. In
todays computers, even complex drawings can be smacked down on the
screen in very quick time.