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Tinkercad's Extrusion Shape Generator Needs Fixing

Bob Krause

July 16, 2015 21:53

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* The Profile should be presented as an on-canvas control, or at least be enlargeable beyond the current postage stamp size in the Inspector pane.

* A Profile control in the Inspector pane should display a grid that includes evenly spaced accent lines.

* An on canvas Profile control should allow the viewing and manipulation of points via a UX similar to the controls users currently use for resizing or rotating shapes.

* The on-canvas Profile control should include a gesture for adding points where a user clicks. The angle of a newly added point should be consistent with the profile of the shape before the point was added.

* The Snap setting in the Profile should persist on a per-shape, per-canvas or per-user basis.

* The Profile control should support the ability to replace the current profile with one matching a shape that is dragged & dropped onto the Profile control.

• Bob

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8 comments

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  Glenn Reimche July 17, 2015 02:02

  The functionality sounds a lot like the Sketch tool in 123D Design, which would be a veritable leap in TC capabilities.

  If that could be implemented in a Shape or Shape Generator, it would not negatively impact TC's basic ease-of-use.

   

  It seems to me like something that should be worth considering.

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  Guillermo Melantoni July 17, 2015 05:14

  What Bob suggests is very close to what we think about the next version of the Estrusion shape generator. We still believe that getting a shape in place from scratch is better than forcing to sketch in a blank canvas and then extrude, which requires a certain degree of abstraction.

   

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  Bob Krause July 17, 2015 08:11

  Guillermo, I'm not sure of the meaning of the last sentence of your comment. Could you please reword it for clarity.

  There are UX trade offs in what I'm suggesting that need to carefully considered. To suddenly present a different set of controls around a shape could be confusing if not properly designed. Yet there is some reason to believe it could be done properly. Though different in many respects, I view the UX to select an object within a group as a similarly challenging UX extension that was successfully added. Perhap the full set of UX extensions called for in the functional requirements is extensive enough that a wholly new addition to the app's "design language" is called for. One that informs how this and other features are to be consistently expressed. Perhaps it's the double-click gesture, or maybe something else.

  • Bob
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  Guillermo Melantoni July 17, 2015 13:26

  Of course. Let's say we do this change, we need to make sure that UX stays consistent. A click on a body should expose the expected grips we expose today on everything. We need to find a way to allow users to see the controls for extrusion in the canvas. Double click is already taken for drilling down on a group, so we should need something else. Maybe the sketch is still shown in the inspector, with an option to 'show in canvas'. We'll figure it out and test it accordingly.

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  Bob Krause July 17, 2015 13:46

  But a generated shape is not a group. So maybe a double-click means something more general. Maybe it means "go inside". When going inside a group you select a member shape. When going inside a generated shape it means something specific to that generator.

  • Bob
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  Guillermo Melantoni July 20, 2015 21:50

  Maybe. The one thing that concerns me there is consistency. What happens if you double click a box? Or a shape generator without a profile? It can get confusing pretty fast.

  We'll do some research and then try alternatives.

   

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  Bob Krause July 20, 2015 22:59

  Consistency is important.

  The new language I've suggested provides consistency in the same form and to the same extent that there is in today's product. Every time a user selects a generated shape they're left to interact with a unique set of Inspector value controls. Some are sliders, others popups or buttons, others a mini-canvas. That experience is approachable because users have either had experience interacting with these types of controls, or the new control (like the mini canvas) has been designed to offer an intuitive (or at least intuitively learnable) experience. 

  Intuitiveness. Simplicity. Reuse. Together, these create the necessarily consistent UX. These same 3 design axioms can be applied when creating additional "go inside" controls too.

  You ask what happens when a shape generator doesn't have a profile. What happens today when a user double-clicks on a single, ungrouped shape? The answer is: nothing. That's the right behavior, the expected behavior, and that's the same behavior that might happen when double-clicking a generated shape without a "go inside" handler.

  Research and alternatives are called for. But what's most called for is advancing the product and making the right decisions along the way. Ignore the new identity and the hardly used Tinkerplay and you find a Tinkercad that has been fairly stagnant for years. Of the few changes to the UX that have made it out, there are questions about whether better solutions were overlooked. (I refer the reader to the rotation controls added this time last year.) The product needs a strong hand (or set of hands) to move it boldly forward.

  • Bob
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  ıʍıʞ p ʍǝɹpuɐ October 12, 2015 02:53

  I can sort of get the argument for keeping editing in the current properties dialog. Adding a 'how many control points' slider to the current extrude tools would help out a lot, even better an 'add nodes' mode where I can add them where I want.