Requesting more intuative UI

[Horseguy44]

(Warning Rant ahead.) Seems like every time I try and use Simlab again, as apposed to the trials of Keyshot, Bunkspeed or even Thea Render, I find myself mystified as to how to use it! (And believe me I've read the help files etc.) The feedback on the interface and curser isn't helpful at all! I'd just added a directional light and wanted to move it around but no matter which of the move tools I picked when I placed the cursor over the widget the scene moved instead...then I noticed I still had the "camera pan" chosen and needed to unchoose it. CAN'T THE CURSOR REFLECT WHAT MODE YOU ARE IN, I.E. A "HAND" CURSOR WHEN WE'RE IN CAMERA PAN MODE? At the very least the widget should show if it is active to use or not, or perhaps it should be possible to use a widget while in camera pan mode is on as long as the widget is shown on screen. OR... instead of making us go about switching things off, perhaps the tool you choose should supersede the one that WAS on and turn it off.

Also, why don't the materials show up with their own names in the manager? My Solidworks assembly comes in with a whole rafter of color materials I plan on reassigning, all with meaningless names. No big deal, but after I drag some materials from the library onto my parts I would expect to go into the manager and be able to find them, but instead I'm comfronted by the same huge number of materials with the same meaningless names. Why don't the library material names overwrite the imported meaningless names? Removing the "unused" materials doesn't help, as I only plan on using 4 or 5 materials at most and would MUCH rather assign each one to one part, then go to the material manager and assign the newly loaded material to the rest of the parts...if I could only FIND them! Dragging materials from the library to every individual part before deleting the unused is extremely inefficient and tedious in a large assembly.

Lastly, in frustration I simply forced the program to remove ALL materials (which it didn't seem to want to do, and why not do that and give them all a generic base material?) but somehow assigned the entire assembly to one material. At first I though this a good place to start but then I couldn't seem to assign materials to individual parts anymore. What's that about? So I gave up.

Why is it so much easier to do all of the above in other programs and so difficult (or at least unintuative) to do them in Simlab?

(Okay, rant is over, must get back to being productive and give up on Simlab for a while again.)

Seriously guys, I keep coming back because I think you've got something great here, and you could blow those other mentioned absurdly expensive programs out of the water if you could only make Simlab as intuatively useful as they are...

[SimLab]

Hello,

First I am really thankful for your feedback, I want you to be sure that we work really hard on picking the right tool, and on presenting them in an easy to understand way.

Sometimes we do not get things right, but we always do our best to make things as easy to use as we can.

I will divide your note to parts and I will answer them

(Warning Rant ahead.) Seems like every time I try and use Simlab again, as apposed to the trials of Keyshot, Bunkspeed or even Thea Render, I find myself mystified as to how to use it! (And believe me I've read the help files etc.) The feedback on the interface and curser isn't helpful at all! I'd just added a directional light and wanted to move it around but no matter which of the move tools I picked when I placed the cursor over the widget the scene moved instead...then I noticed I still had the "camera pan" chosen and needed to unchoose it. CAN'T THE CURSOR REFLECT WHAT MODE YOU ARE IN, I.E. A "HAND" CURSOR WHEN WE'RE IN CAMERA PAN MODE? At the very least the widget should show if it is active to use or not, or perhaps it should be possible to use a widget while in camera pan mode is on as long as the widget is shown on screen. OR... instead of making us go about switching things off, perhaps the tool you choose should supersede the one that WAS on and turn it off.

A directional light is different from a spot light. a directional light only has a direction, it represents a light coming from a very far distance, like the light of the sun.
That is why the user can only change its direction but not its location. Whenever the user selects a directional light in the screen we make sure the direction of the light appears in front of the user.

For zooming and panning, we assume that most users use the mouse (left mouse for rotation, right or scrolling for zooming and middle for panning)

When using the toolbar to change the default action (for left button) it becomes confusing without the cursor change, I agree with you 100% and I will make sure this will be fixed in the next release (coming soon)

[SimLab]

Also, why don't the materials show up with their own names in the manager? My Solidworks assembly comes in with a whole rafter of color materials I plan on reassigning, all with meaningless names. No big deal, but after I drag some materials from the library onto my parts I would expect to go into the manager and be able to find them, but instead I'm comfronted by the same huge number of materials with the same meaningless names. Why don't the library material names overwrite the imported meaningless names? Removing the "unused" materials doesn't help, as I only plan on using 4 or 5 materials at most and would MUCH rather assign each one to one part, then go to the material manager and assign the newly loaded material to the rest of the parts...if I could only FIND them! Dragging materials from the library to every individual part before deleting the unused is extremely inefficient and tedious in a large assembly.

We get the material names from the SolidWorks file, some of the materials assigned in SolidWorks are colors that do not have names, so they get auto generated names.

Keeping those names is important for a functionality like retain material to work.
For example you import a solidworks assembly, change material to materials from the material library.
Then you save the material as a material library (from the bottom of the scene materials)
After that you may change the SolidWorks model, add some holes, or change some parameters, reimport the model and automatically retain the material assignments you did.

Material management in SimLab Composer gives you great tools for achieving scenarios from basic to very advanced. Please let us know what you are looking to achieve (hopefully with an example), and I will tell you how you can achieve it in the easiest way. If you have a suggestion that will improve your work flow, please let us know and we will be glad to support it

[SimLab]

I think the following will achieve what you are trying to do.
Assign the materials you want in SolidWorks (object with same materials should have some color)
Import to SimLab Composer
From scene materials click the top left button merge identical materials (if you did good assignment in SolidWorks you will not even need to do that)

Then drag and drop from the material library and you should be able to assign materials in a very short time.

If there is any application capable of doing things in an easier way please let me know, we will be glad to provide our users with the best.

Unlike the other tools SimLab Composer will allow you to assign materials even if you received the SolidWorks file and you do not have access to SolidWorks. You can add new materials, or merge materials.

[Horseguy44]

Thank you for getting back to me on my rant.

It would be good not to use the word "assume" when dealing with User Interface issues. If you assume people aren't going to use the camera pan button, using hidden mouse controls instead, then why have it there to interfere with other operations? The makers of Keyshot (the folks supplying your rendering engine) chose to leave camera pan controls off completely and force all user to use a middle mouse button. (They decided all users would perfer keyboard shortcuts, which is very very hard on new users who haven't memorized all the shortcuts when they first start out.) Don't have a middle mouse button? Tough luck! They didn't even include pan in their camera controls, so you REALLY ARE out of luck! This strikes me as pretty arrogant of them to force everyone to buy new hardware to suit their very expensive software. (Personally I use a trackball for my right hand and a (rather antique) Cadman 3D mouse for my left, which works great unless I'm forced to use UI buttons.) My point is, help us use your software, don't assume we just KNOW how to use it or have specific hardware.

I'm afraid you also rather missed the point about my rant that included the directional light. The issue wasn't how it works but how, when any object is activated and shows rotation or positioning widgets, those widgets can't be used if you have the bad luck of leaving the navigation (camera pan for instance) buttons active. Seems more than odd that the widget would not (at least while you were hovering over it) cancel out the navigation option.

As for stepping carefully through a solidworks assembly assigning just the right colors and names to each and every part in my assembly just so I can do a "quick" render...is kind of like asking me to go out and by a 3 button mouse just to use your software. I REALLY like the fact that a fully set up render can have it's materials attached to a reimported assembly of the same parts, but there has GOT to be a way to show which parts are assigned which library materials and which are default (imported) materials. Perhaps the imported designator could have the library name in parenthesis after it? As in M10 (Pearl White Paint). In the object hierarchy of Cinema 4D a small color sphere, representing the attached material, shows up next to the part name. Currently your hierachical display (object manager) seems underutilized, good for picking parts and arranging groups but little else.

The UI for Thea Render, while a bit flashy, manages to cram a heck of a lot of stuff into a very small space, allowing them to emphasize the view port and (in my oppinion the second most important feature) the material manager/editor. If the emphasis is on creating beautiful (and realistic) renderings, then scene set up and getting lights and materials just right are absolutely critical. Currently, Simlab's material manager and editor are on opposite sides of the view port (working with them is a bit like watching a ping pong match) and, in the case of the editor, very technical rather than visual. Reminds me of old command line programs, and that isn't a happy memory.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what has been done with the latest (soon to appear?) rev and good luck.

-Greg

[BurrMan]

As an add-on to this discussion, please simlab, dont start to make changes to the UI to facilitate "Rather antique" hardware, or odd, outdated methods of working a computer.

Any computer I have purchased in the last 5 years has come with a 3 button mouse and MOST of the softwares viewport interfaces i use utilize these features.

Simlab is one of the FEW softwares I installed and created renders AND animations with, without even opening up the help file! Everything was right there. Nothing hidden or needing "special selection modes" to operate.

I just went in and "dug in and looked" to find a special "pan only mode" Which then made it necessary to manually enter and exit special viewport navigation modes, but it was odd that after using the software for a few years now, I had to actually dig in to discover how to create this.. It just wasnt needed.

Note to self: If you open a software, and cant perform the simplist of the 3 navigation functions with whats in your hands, research something modern and invest in the future, for whats in your hands, is grossly insufficient. Owner of various kensington trackballs, 3dconnexion devices, wacom tablet, "3 button mouse" and of course a keyboard!

[dantas]

Here's my small rant......Simlab DO NOT go backwards adding unnecessary clutter for antiquated hardware, Simlab Composer has one of the easiest UI's to navigate and like Burr, felt comfortable with it immediately , great renders out in a few minutes and animations within the hour and again like Burr, without looking at any help files, 99% of the 3d community would navigate Simlab composer without a problem, don't get me wrong there's always room for improvement, which you guy's always do with each release, but as it stands right now it's pretty darn sweet.......end of rant

Cheers

[Horseguy44]

Fellow Simlab users, I also appreciate your concern that the UI not get cluttered or changed to accomodate 1% of the users. And I've no interntion of rebutting the points made to that affect. I would like to point out that I've been trying to advocate for this software in an 8 person Industrial Design office in which only two use the standard 3 button mice. That advocacy is made difficult by my having to explain work arounds which they have not delt with in other packages.

In general our jobs as product designers are to be oversensative to the eventual users of the products we design (our clients hold our virtual feet to the fire on this at every turn) and judge the success of an item on how intuative it's use is. Often, this is also based on what the user is already exposed to in the market place. Often truly inovative ideas are scrapped when the client expresses concerns for new user confusion.

One of the great things about software as apposed to hard products, is that the UI can be flexible and even adapted to the level of capability of the users. Many packages include a simplified and advanced UI so that the new user isn't overwhelmed and the experience user isn't frustrated by limitations. My rants channel the beginner user who doesn't already know about short-cuts, work arounds and best practices. Experienced, or calibarated users are valuable, so it's best not to ignore them by totally revamping a UI, but a company can't grow if within the first few attempts to use a package, the beginner user gets confused or frustrated, ignorant of the antiquated hardware they are using, or turning off tools that interfere with the use of other tools. First impressions make the sale, good support and williness to improve creates loyalty.

I'm happy to have this opportunity to rant and suggest ways to improve the product and hope my fellow (and very polite, thank you) users can contribute in kind.