3D dragger oversight is killing me

[Kaare Baekgaard]

Am I missing something - or did I just find a fatal flaw in the design of the 3D dragger?

 

Something that used to be the easiest thing in the world turns out to be virtually impossible due to an oversight by the designers of the new 3D dragger.

 

Is there some sort of fix for this that I am missing – or do I actually have to reinstall an earlier version of VW just to move some vertices?

 

Unless I am much mistaken, there used to be a central blue ball in the subdivision 3D dragger, that would just snap onto anything. Turns out that ball is a rather important feature.

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2023 by Kaare Baekgaard

[Stephan Moenninghoff]

Hey @Kaare Baekgaard I just tried and I cannot quite reproduce this. It seems to snap where it should. Can you attach your test file?

[Kaare Baekgaard]

Unless you operate in a strictly planar context, you cannot avoid to reproduce it because the toolset is missing a component. I have attached an example file.

Example file.vwx

Edited October 27, 2023 by Kaare Baekgaard

[line-weight]

For some reason I see something different to you @Kaare Baekgaard. I do get the central node, which highlights yellow when I use it. It is quite small though, and almost hidden by the blue square handle before I start using it.

 

Are you mac or windows?

 

 

 

[line-weight]

I have noticed some other odd things trying to reshape NURBS curves. Here there are two NURBS curves with 3 vertices and one with just two vertices.

 

When I try and reshape the one with two vertices, I don't get any blue square handles at all. This is different from VW2023, I think. This behaviour applies to the curves that you are trying to snap to in your example file, as well.

 

Also, you can see that my attempts to reshape one of the 3-vertex curves are unsuccessful. It will let me grab the central sphere of the dragger on the end vertices but not on the middle one.

 

 

 

[Kaare Baekgaard]

1 hour ago, line-weight said:

For some reason I see something different to you @Kaare Baekgaard. I do get the central node, which highlights yellow when I use it. It is quite small though, and almost hidden by the blue square handle before I start using it.

 

Are you mac or windows?

 

 

Screen Recording 2023-10-27 at 10.01.19.mov 3.05 MB · 0 downloads  

 

I am on an iMac M1, Ventura 13.5.2

[Tobias Kern]

Hi Kaare,

 

your Nurbs-Kurve is degree: 3 and the Nurbs-Surface is degree: 2,

I don't know, but I think a mixture of degrees can't match perfect.

 

But in the center of the Dragger is a "ball" you can also pick

that ball to move the object/part of the object.

 

Maybe this helps you?

 

Greetings

Tobi

Edited October 27, 2023 by Tobias Kern

[line-weight]

16 minutes ago, Tobias Kern said:

But in the center of the Dragger is a "ball" you can also pick

that ball to move the object/part of the object.

 

I think @Kaare Baekgaard's point is that this ball is no longer available to him. You can see this in his video.

 

Also, I think the curve degree is not relevant, he is not necessarily trying to snap to a vertex or to match the curves exactly. He wants to snap to the midpoint of the curve, not a vertex.

Edited October 27, 2023 by line-weight

[line-weight]

...and what is strange is that it seems it is possible for me to access that centre "ball" even if it is a bit fiddly.

 

Then I am able to snap to the midpoint of the curve (I think)

 

 

 

[Senthil Prabu]

@Kaare Baekgaard blue grip and orange selection highlight frame blocks the major portion of the center sphere.  Looks like in Top/plan view it is completely hidden.  But it is there able to pick and snap where you want.  It is working fine. 

Use re-location mode and slightly move the dragger away from point, if you are still not able to see the center sphere, pl. file a bug with your mac details.

 

[Kaare Baekgaard]

8 hours ago, Tobias Kern said:

Hi Kaare,

 

your Nurbs-Kurve is degree: 3 and the Nurbs-Surface is degree: 2,

I don't know, but I think a mixture of degrees can't match perfect.

 

But in the center of the Dragger is a "ball" you can also pick

that ball to move the object/part of the object.

 

Maybe this helps you?

 

Greetings

Tobi

Thanks Tobi

Edited October 27, 2023 by Kaare Baekgaard

[Kaare Baekgaard]

8 hours ago, line-weight said:

...and what is strange is that it seems it is possible for me to access that centre "ball" even if it is a bit fiddly.

 

Then I am able to snap to the midpoint of the curve (I think)

 

 

Screen Recording 2023-10-27 at 12.42.29.mov 7.35 MB · 1 download  

 

Thank you. Inspired by your video, I restarted everything - and there was the centre ball. Fantastic. Then I worked for a while, and it was gone again, so there appears to be some sort of bug. Also sometimes the entire 3D dragger disappears and has to be coaxed into re-existance.

[line-weight]

4 hours ago, Senthil Prabu said:

@Kaare Baekgaard blue grip and orange selection highlight frame blocks the major portion of the center sphere.  Looks like in Top/plan view it is completely hidden.  But it is there able to pick and snap where you want.  It is working fine. 

Use re-location mode and slightly move the dragger away from point, if you are still not able to see the center sphere, pl. file a bug with your mac details.

 

 

I think the center sphere needs to be made bigger. And I don't see that you need to wait for a user to file a bug.

 

Using the relocation mode to reposition the dragger every time you want to use it is not a workable solution.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, Kaare Baekgaard said:

Thank you. Inspired by your video, I restarted everything - and there was the centre ball. Fantastic. Then I worked for a while, and it was gone again, so there appears to be some sort of bug. Also sometimes the entire 3D dragger disappears and has to be coaxed into re-existance.

Yes I noticed some things like that too. Also, on some nurbs curves, there was no blue handle at one end. Then sorted on restart.

[rDesign]

5 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I think the center sphere needs to be made bigger. And I don't see that you need to wait for a user to file a bug.

I agree. It seems like poor UI / UX design that an important part — the ‘yellow ball’ — is mostly or completely hidden by the other selection highlights.
 

@Senthil Prabu How are users to know about the 3D dragger’s enhanced functionality in Vw2024 if part of it is completely hidden?

[line-weight]

Yes - in principle the 3d dragger is great - and I'd like to see it added to all 3d reshaping tools ASAP.

 

It would be a shame for its usability to be hampered by something that can be fixed with a UI tweak.

[Tobias Kern]

Hi,

for my opinion the snapping dots are to close to the mid-ball.

I think it can happen to click to the wrong part (snapping dot or ball).

 

I would prefer to have snapping always on as standard,

and with ALT-key you can temporary turn it off.

What do you think? Do you need more snapping on, than no snapping?

 

The Dragger is great as tool and i would like to see it everywhere possible,

e.g. moving a whole window in wall in 3d space.

[bjoerka]

Helpfull might be an option in the preferences to scale the dragger to my own size.