Change layer during routing?

Hi Lix,

I do think you raise some valid points, but there are a lot of things EAGLE does differently that work better than in other packages too. Just because they are different and unexpected doesn't mean they should change them if they work better.

I've just done some experimenting on applications I have installed and many have a right mouse button context menu that doesn't require you to select something first. Web browsers are a prime example of this. More in line with EAGLE type apps I looked at Autodesk's Fusion 360 and this too has right click context menus that don't require you to select something with a selection tool first. I'm not sure how a separate selection tool would speed up the process of selecting the correct object for a context menu, it would still have the same limitations of the number of objects within the tools selection catchment area and you'd have to scroll through all the matching objects just the same.

Adding in a step of having to choose the selection tool first and then having to choose the tool you want to use after selecting things seems counter productive to me as you have more mouse clicks per thing you actually want to do. Maybe I have misunderstood what you intended here.

With regards to objects being glued to the cursor on move, yes I can see your point on that, it would be nice to be able to group select object and then just click and drag around without having to go "right-click->move group" for every adjustment. This does make it harder to just tweak a position slightly as it moves to your current cursor position when you select the menu option. The up side to this is you can't accidentally drop a block you are moving in the middle of somewhere else which can be really annoying with other tools, especially if there is a lot of scrolling involved as part of the move. I'm sure there are ways CADSoft can tweak this use case without having to rewrite the whole UI paradigm though.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Hi Lix,

I do think you raise some valid points, but there are a lot of things EAGLE does differently that work better than in other packages too. Just because they are different and unexpected doesn't mean they should change them if they work better.

I've just done some experimenting on applications I have installed and many have a right mouse button context menu that doesn't require you to select something first. Web browsers are a prime example of this. More in line with EAGLE type apps I looked at Autodesk's Fusion 360 and this too has right click context menus that don't require you to select something with a selection tool first. I'm not sure how a separate selection tool would speed up the process of selecting the correct object for a context menu, it would still have the same limitations of the number of objects within the tools selection catchment area and you'd have to scroll through all the matching objects just the same.

Adding in a step of having to choose the selection tool first and then having to choose the tool you want to use after selecting things seems counter productive to me as you have more mouse clicks per thing you actually want to do. Maybe I have misunderstood what you intended here.

With regards to objects being glued to the cursor on move, yes I can see your point on that, it would be nice to be able to group select object and then just click and drag around without having to go "right-click->move group" for every adjustment. This does make it harder to just tweak a position slightly as it moves to your current cursor position when you select the menu option. The up side to this is you can't accidentally drop a block you are moving in the middle of somewhere else which can be really annoying with other tools, especially if there is a lot of scrolling involved as part of the move. I'm sure there are ways CADSoft can tweak this use case without having to rewrite the whole UI paradigm though.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Lix Paulian wrote:

 

I am not sure I can follow this idea of Eagle is doing certain operations better by not using a standard interface.

Damn you are good at mis-quoting people aren't you?

rpeterson wrote:

 

I do think you raise some valid points, but there are a lot of things EAGLE does differently that work better than in other packages too.

I said better than other packages, and by implication this would be other comparable packages. I've used a lot of ECAD packages and they all have their own UI quirks.

Yes ideally a GUI expert would come along and help streamline the UI (btw, I did actually study interaction design as part of a course I did a few years back, it should be intuitive but the most important goal is to reduce the number of operations you need to take to perform an action to a minimum, for technical apps like CAD you can assume a certain level of user competence / ability to learn) but it's not as cut and dried as forcing it to confirm to a set of UI conventions (which UI conventions btw? Windows style conventions? If so that wouldn't be consistent on my Mac or on my Linux machines...) which were likely specified with typical office applications in mind and which have very different use case requirements to ECAD. With ECAD (or any other type of CAD) you are always going to have to learn the some of the UI paradigms otherwise operations are going to take longer to do with a lot more clicks.

To be blunt, you're not doing yourself any favours here. I'm happy to help people who have genuine technical issues but if you continue whinging and complaining about everything you hate about the EAGLE's UI then people will soon get bored of listening to you and be less than willing to go out of their way to answer your questions.

I am not sure I can follow this idea of Eagle is doing certain operations better by not using a standard interface. In my view this is a legend which seems to be quite common in the Eagle community. I can't imagine anything that currently Eagle does, that can't be done at least as efficiently (if not easier) by using standard UI concepts. I am working for large company that does professional cine & video cameras and accessories (those used for filming most of the Hollywood blockbusters) and of course we do have GUIs on our products. But: we have a professional especially hired to design GUIs through the whole product line, so that we remain consistent. And believe me, one of the factors our customers prise, is the ease of use of our products. I doubt CadSoft has such a professional...