Some V2.3 gripes

[jim]

I updated to 2.3 awhile ago, and generally like it except for a few minor things. I've been using wings since V0.8, and I really appreciate the Wings community for providing this fine tool.

OK, here is my feedback on V2.3 so far.

1 - When I am doing a manual move, rotate, or other function that takes numerical input, the new dialog box pops with auto-populated with 0.0, or whatever I did with the mouse when I hit the tab key. Old versions did this too, but in the new version, the dialog box value is not preselected. This means that I need to mouse-drag, click then backspace, or hit del a bunch of times to get rid of the unwanted value before I type in what I want. Real pain in the anatomy. In previous versions, tab popped up the dialog with the value preselected. You can just hit tab, and start typing the number you want without mousing around or hitting bs/del. This has probably tripled the work needed to do simple tasks like xyz move, rotate, etc. I doubt this was the intended behavior. I am trying to train myself, but I am so used to just hitting my hotkey-tab-value like in the previous versions. This makes it really hard to use.

2 - When I right click to get context menus, the GUI builds the menu from where the right click happened on the screen. If I r-click when in the lower portion of the screen, the dialog builds downward right off the screen, offscreen and invisible. Sub menus sometimes are completely below the bottom of the screen and unreachable. I am training myself to do r-clicks in the upper part of the screen only, but its hard to break old habits.

3 - I love the test booleans. They usually work quite well, except when they don't < save file before using>. Anyway, I keep a copy of manifold lab around when I find something that won't work with the test booleans. I just export obj, do booleans in mlab, the import it back in. Also, do we need to completely triangulate the affected area? I generally try to maintain face and edge loops in my model, and the auto-tesselation after booleans can be messy to undo. I think most modelers prefer to tesselate last. Finally, the problem with coplanar faces makes booleans hard to use. Manifold lab usually gives a decent result with minimal tesselation, and is not bothered by coplanar faces, it just crashes sometimes, but I can deal with that. 

Is there a good reason we need to reinvent what was working pretty well in mlab? Wings is really incomplete without fully functional booleans. It would be really nice if it was all in one place.

Tnx,
Jim

[dgud]

He never opensourse mlab so I couldn't take his (or look at) code :-( He used some other code to do that.
And solving co-planar is hard, too much math for me.

Triangulation is needed because 4-goons don't need to be flat, so hard to calculate on.

2 is bug but which I think Micheus have solved that, at least he worked on it.

[micheus]

Old versions did this too, but in the new version, the dialog box value is not preselected.

I can take a look at this.

2 - When I right click to get context menus, the GUI builds the menu from where the right click happened on the screen. If I r-click when in the lower portion of the screen, the dialog builds downward right off the screen, offscreen and invisible. Sub menus sometimes are completely below the bottom of the screen and unreachable.

Take a look at [fixed] Popup menu out of screen.

3 - I love the test booleans. They usually work quite well, except when they don't < save file before using>. (...)
(...) Also, do we need to completely triangulate the affected area?

I don't think so (although it probably can give us better results).
Coplanar issues are present in other 3D apps too. The user tkbd had shared an article with tips that can help us to better understand the problem and try to prepare better our mesh for boolean operations: Troubleshoot_boolean_operations (Rhinoceros3D Help)
Usually, add more edges to the area being affected use to improve the result. You can try to select these faces and apply Smooth [RMB] option for that and then make a cleanup after the operation.

[jim]

Tnx. I loaded the bugfix for the popup menu and it works fine now.