Full Version: Michael's Plasticity rants

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This will be a recurring segment called "Your UX may not be as good as you think".

"If you make people type in angle values in radians instead of degrees, your UX may not be as good as you think."



- Michael

Image Attachments:
AngleInputRadians.png 

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If it takes 3 clicks to draw a line, your UX may not be as good as you think.

Fun fact - I still remember how annoying it was in solidThinking to need to click to set each endpoint and then the "pivot point" of the line.

- Michael

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Never bring a Radian to a UX fight.

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While indeed irritating, those seems like minor issue (to me at least). What bugs me way more is for example the lack of 4d view, I'm so used to that kind of display combined with a quick extend option to navigate around my scene.
In Moi, If I switch to top, the view is locked whatever what I do with my mouse ... But maybe a generation issue as recent 3D apps seems to favour single view port this days.

It's funny because I enjoy very easy to use software (Moi is the best in that regard), or very complex one (houdini), but I have such an hard time with software in between :P ... still using Modo 801 for poly modelling hehe (before they turn it into a UI mess).

Also I have such a complete trust in MoI mesher, so grateful to have that .FBX format, with surface ID's etc. Getting my model out with clean crisp ngones is more important than lot's of fancy features.

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“”””” Oh my god I've been holding in some of this for so long it seems.”””””

Hey Michael,
Next time you guys are in town, you are welcome to look me up. I can show you some neat places off the beaten path…. (If J likes salon pampering we got that covered too)

My gift to you….

Burr

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Thanks Burr!

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So what about drawing a circle, that should be hard to mess up, right? .... right ?

I’m like ok I want to draw a circle of radius 5.

So I put down the XY point and I think ok if I type 5 and push Enter it should do it, right?

NOPE, typing 5 does nothing and (in recent builds) the Enter finishes the circle at whatever random radius your mouse happened to be at.

After messing around a bit I managed to figure out to push Tab first.

So I think OK, I just learned that I should push Tab to do numeric inputs. I don’t really like it, I mean I’d rather just type 5 with no Tab but maybe it works in a bigger context with other tools involved.

So I draw a new circle and I want to input XY numeric coordinates for the center point this time so I push Tab.

NOPE, nothing happens with Tab there, as far as I can tell there is not any way to give the x,y center coordinates.

So I think, what about commands with a distance or radius value, they must use Tab to go to that field, right?

NOPE, run the Extrude command and type Tab, nothing happens, type 5 – it switches on all pick modes up here:



Type Enter and it exits the command.

- Michael

Image Attachments:
PlasticitySelectModes.png 

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Plasticity has some nice features....but drawing in 2d is not one of them.
It is faster for me to draw 2d in Moi and import in plasticity lol. when I work in there I feel lost :/

the other problem is its discord channel which to me is chaotic.

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Hello,

UX on Plasticity is rough. The most important metric in UX is time saved, no way around it. MoI takes the crown in usability in time saved. Lack of consistent expected behavior in Plasticity creates a wall of inefficiency for the user that will limit speed, it's just how the average human brain works.

People sadly form impressions over 30 second end result snippets or modeling sped up 10X. Real time process is a different story.

That said, like I bought Rhino (another example of rough UX) for the plugins (VSR, etc.), I bought Plasticity for the kernel and to a lesser extent xNurbs. I don't know of another application that has that for anything close to $300. For now there is functionality in Plasticity that doesn't exist in MoI. Copy/Paste functionality between MoI and Plasticity would be nice, adding Parasolid(?), more forgiving filleting, fine curve and surface creation and control extends MoIs lead.

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Message 11865.12 was deleted

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Make no mistake - we ain't here for Plasticity, ain't no way ain't no how...

// Rich

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Remind me to stay away from that piece of junk - I'll stick with my MoI.

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I'm trying to chamfer 2 edges on a cube in Plasticity and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I'm holding down shift when selecting the 2nd edge. With the 2 edges selected Fillet works ok but I get an error when trying to chamfer.

Geometry is just a boolean between 2 cubes created in Plasticity. ... ?

Attachments:
CubeChamfer.stp

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Work sfor me
but i have not taken same edges! :) So i must verify!

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Same as you so I take 3 edges make the chamfer
then Delete vertical face
Not sure that will be the result wished! :)

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Thanks Pilou, I'm just trying to understand why it isn't working on those 2 edges.

Like have I made a mistake in constructing the object, is it at some improper scale, is there some option for how the chamfers come together that should be set, or whether it's not supported or a bug.

Why does the fillet work ok on it but not chamfer?

- Michael

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Similar thing with these 4 edges selected:



- Michael

Image Attachments:
4Edges.png 

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Works in MOI 1.0 :




- Michael

Image Attachments:
moi_result1.png  moi_result2.png  moi_result3.png  moi_result4.png 

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It's just one cube booleaned from another cube:


Have I poked the wrong button in boolean or messed it up somehow?

Can someone build it from scratch does it do the same thing?

- Michael

Image Attachments:
2cubes.png 

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Some other real head scratchers

How do you make a cube freehand ? I mean just by drawing with the mouse instead of typing in sizes. I can get the bottom to be square but how do you get the height to be the same?

When picking the height of a box I can't seem to do any view navigation, what's up with that?

Are these things real or am I totally missing something?

- Michael

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