It will save our time.

Edit : Just to make this more clear.\

Hi Steve, good catch! Yes that definitely makes sense and should be easy to set up for the next beta.

- Michael

There doesn't seem to be any object or construction snapping either, grid snapping looks ok.

Hi Tony yeah you can only grab on to a part of the wheel for that mode currently, which places the starting reference point at a kind of semi-arbitrary location.

Object snaps are intentionally turned off in that case so that you don't think you're getting an accurate result by snapping the ending point on to something, since the start point was rather arbitrary.

I have an idea of improving this though, I think in the ortho views I can allow clicking on a snapped point and then dragging from there to do the rotate. I've been planning on giving that a try. If it works out it should be a nice way to do a quick "accurate from a reference point" type rotation.

I can't really do that for the 3D view though since the rotation is also controlled by which particular wheel out of the 3 that you clicked on for the drag.

- Michael

I do most of my rotating in the ortho views anyway - so that sounds good.

Hi Michael,

>should be easy to set up for the next beta.


Thank you.


- Steve

Ok, the update for the Edit frame "Wheel mode" is looking good. Instead of only being able to grab on to the wheel itself, in the next beta in the Top/Front/Right views, you will be able to grab on to a snap reference point as the starting point of the rotation drag.

This allows for some precision rotation operations that you would have previously needed to do with the Rotate command, like this:





Another example using a reference point and also Ctrl to make copies:





So that should help to cover some more kinds of rotation cases with the "in viewport" tools without needing to go over and fire up the Transform/Rotate command.

- Michael

Looking good Michael. Though I've always loved the rotate command itself. Very versatile.

Very innovative Michael!
Don't know of another cad package that has so much freedom.
Thanks for this.

Cheers

Thanks Danny and Tony! This whole edit frame system seems to have turned out even better than I had originally hoped for...

- Michael

It's a Beautiful, Lovely thing! :-)

-Will

Wow! That is some turbo rotate widget!!

Would it be a good if the dotted "rotate" circle would scale at the point where the user specify the reference point?

I was thinking it would be easier to understand for someone who doesn't know the inside mechanic, but then again it might overcomplicate a simple effective tool.

Marc

Practical for the watchmaker! ;)

Hi Michael,

Looking good.

When as example I have a rect, I enable "Wheel mode" and rotate the rectangle, if I then want to change the cplane I am unable to snap to the object selected (I have to leave "wheel mode")

When in "wheel mode" I would like to be able to snap to the wheel center (center of rotation) with the cplane origin, as when leaving "wheel mode" the center of rotation is placed back to center.



- Steve

Hi Marc,

> Would it be a good if the dotted "rotate" circle would scale
> at the point where the user specify the reference point?

Interesting idea! I went ahead and gave it a try, but it kind of had a jumpy feel to it that seemed a bit distracting.

When it stays fixed in size it kind of feels a bit more like a dial control sort of.

- Michael

Hi Steve,

> When as example I have a rect, I enable "Wheel mode" and
> rotate the rectangle, if I then want to change the cplane I
> am unable to snap to the object selected (I have to leave
> "wheel mode")

That will also work now with these new changes. The changes to enable snapping on to an object's points during wheel mode also enable the object to be snapped on to in the cplane placer if you call that up while still within wheel mode.

I think it solves the issue that you're talking about here, please let me know if it doesn't when you get a chance to try it.

Another thing that is slightly different than before is that when you rotate an object with wheel mode, the original object position will be visible with the dashed wireframe type display same as the Rotate command, so that you can target snap points on the original object for the final rotation point. If you do the cplane edit, the cplane points can be snapped on to either object - the original wireframe one or the one in the new position.

- Michael

""but it kind of had a jumpy feel to it that seemed a bit distracting.""

Maybe a fixed sized (non interactive) that would only change if the user inputs a point?

Marc

Hi Michael,

Just an idea that could further enhance this rotation widget if it is possible.
When activating the rotation widget sometimes a particular angle is required, so I was thinking when the wheel is activated a little tab, like the cline tab, will appear and and as the cline tab works you have an option to place an exact angle and maybe number of copies.

---------

Hi Marc,

> Maybe a fixed sized (non interactive) that would only
> change if the user inputs a point?

Actually that's the one that I tried that had a kind of jumpy feel since the circle kind of changed suddenly.

I did end up doing the circle changing on every mouse move too kind of accidentally while trying this, that was not quite as jumpy but felt more like you were drawing a circle rather than rotating. That also did not work very well in the "open areas" where there was not a snap point, where if you click down there it will end the wheel mode.

- Michael

Hi Danny,

re: particular angle

Actually there is something already for that in the current release - if you type in an angle in the angle constraint box down in the bottom command bar.



For example if you click there and enter "22" then when you rotate it will go in 22 degree increments from the start point of your drag.

It's also possible to enter in an angle by typing without clicking anywhere, by typing <22 - like this:




When you type the first < character, it will put focus into the x,y,z coordinate box where you would normally be able to type in the x,y,z coordinates for something like the endpoint of a line, but if you enter in a value preceded by < that is a shortcut for putting the value in the angle constraint.

So either of those methods will work currently for controlling the rotation angle.


Re: Number of copies - I think for that it would be best to stick with the Transform/Array/Polar tool which can handle that and also a lot of other possible parameters as well. It's great to be able to place a few copies with this tool but trying to make a full pattern with it will pretty quickly just replicate all the UI from that other command I think.

- Michael