Modeling - Improve Accuracy of Circle Display

[John Scheffel]

One of the people I support recently discovered that the display of 2D circles in modeling workplanes is not as accurate as it is in ME10/Drafting. He also discovered that you cannot select an intersection with a circle if you zoom in beyond a certain level.

This is difficult to explain without pictures, so I have attached a MHT file which describes how to duplicate the problem. You should be able to view this attachment by just clicking on it, but I haven't tested with any browsers other than IE. If you have problems viewing it let me know and I can post a PDF which is not as sharp but good enough to convey the information.

If we duplicate the process described in this file in Drafting, we do not see any of the problems we encountered in Modeling.

I reported this to CoCreate support, but they would not acknowledge it as a defect, or even that it should work better than this and needs improvement. All I got was explanations of why it behaves the way it does. So I gave up and decided to post it here to see if others think this should be improved. Maybe if it gets enough votes and feedback they will reconsider.

[clausb]

2D geometry resolution is a balance between high accuracy (lots of circle segments) and performance (fast display, low memory consumption). You can influence the default 2D resolution by adjusting the "Accuracy for 2D Profiles" slider in Edit/Settings/Graphics Settings/2D.

Hope this helps,

Claus

[John Scheffel]

Originally posted by clausb
2D geometry resolution is a balance between high accuracy (lots of circle segments) and performance (fast display, low memory consumption). You can influence the default 2D resolution by adjusting the "Accuracy for 2D Profiles" slider in Edit/Settings/Graphics Settings/2D.

Thanks Claus. Actually that helps a lot. After I moved this slider to the "finest" setting, the display of the circle was much more accurate (see the attached GIF). The intersection point still doesn't appear to be on the circle if I zoom in far enough, but it is much closer. I reviewed all the replies I received from support to make sure I didn't miss something, but this adjustment was never mentioned.

The finest setting also allowed me to zoom in closer and still pick the intersection from the screen, but even at this setting there is a zoom level at which I can see both intersections but cannot pick the intersection of the circle and the horizontal line no matter where I click. I still get the error listed in the MHT file.

From a user standpoint this is just very confusing. I'm trying to pick an intersection, but the screen is displaying a point that is not quite on the curve. Am I really picking the intersection? Is my measurement accurate? The display error eliminates any confidence in the result. Then if I zoom in closer, I can't even pick the intersection which I can see on the screen, I keep getting an error message that doesn't provide any clue as to why I can't pick it.

So even though this adjustment improves the display accuracy, it doesn't really eliminate the problem. Plus, it is unlikely that most users will ever find this adjustment without investing the time to seek help. I've probably seen this in some class or demo, but did not remember that it was there. More likely they will just give up and have a lower opinion of the software as a result. Just one more reason for the "ME10 was better" mentalilty that many former ME10 users have.

I'm not really sure how this could be fixed, but as I said it works fine in Drafting. Maybe the curve accuracy could be dynamically increased with the zoom level. At the very least, it would help to provide some feedback to let the user know why the highlighted point might not appear right on the curve, and why they cannot pick the intersection if zoomed in too far.