Looking at the old Triforma Form manipulation tools, it is amazing how inconsistent they are and how badly they support dealing with multiple or 'many' elements. Forcing the user to manually click and feed the tools one element at a time. This is really a big productivity drain.
Some tools recognize a selection set when the tool is called. Bravo. A lot of tools just deselect the selection set forcing a single element input mode.
Some tools force the user to click / datapoint on each subsequent element manually. Not great.
Some tools will only accept a 'single shot' mode where the user will have to start over by clicking on both the element or line to extend to and the element to be manipulated on a tedious one-to-one basis. Really bad.
Link to previous discussion
| How frequently will feature be used? | Several times a day |
| How much time will you save? | Lots. Given OBD's nonparametric direct modeling heavy history, users have to be able to deal with large numbers of elements, largely managed by parametric control elsewhere. |
Hi Dominic,
Thank you for your feedback. We understand the multi-edit limitations of the forms. We have a lot of other tools in OBD that offer this functionality.
Back to our original question "Could you please provide us with more information on what is missing with other tools so that you prefer placing forms?"
Thank you!
Hi Johannes,
Many thanks for the consideration. The tools that are not fully enabled to take multiple inputs are listed in the the .png which was attached previously.
I think that there here are two parts to the 'problem'.
Initiatial inputs: Most of the tools are designed to take a single input. This is usually done in a 'Verb-Noun' sequence where the user is prompted to click-select on multiple elements followed by reset before selecting or entering the next input. This is good extension of the initial 'single shot' functionality but not very productive beyond 3-4 elements. 'Noun-verb' this sequence is where the user provides a selection set by using the manual selection or SelectBy tool or Fence to provide a selection set then chooses the tool to use. As illustrated in the attached .png list a lot of the Triforma Forms tools are missing this functionality.
Secondary Inputs: Again the same limitation applies. Some tools don't accept 'further' inputs (as mentioned above OK for limited number of elements) or selection sets, fences.
It would be great to provide some kind of 'wrapper' that manages or queues the multiple elements, inputs which would feed the existing Form tool? Hopefully reduces the coding, testing requirements.
Hi Dominic, thank you for filing this idea.
Could you please provide us with more information on what is missing with other tools so that you prefer placing forms?