[Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

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paddle
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[Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by paddle »

Hey guys,
Regarding the following icons:
- Polyline : Current icon shows only lines. Because of that I think many people miss the power of polyline. So this new icon adds an arc, making it clear that the tool can do more than lines.

-Toggle construction : Current icon's white square doesn't have the same style as other geometry tools. Also the blue square is in dashes. Also it looks very very similar to carbon copy which is confusing. The new icon is using the style from the original 'toggle Active Constraint'.

- Toggle Constraint : Current icon use red and blue squares, in order to match toggle construction I guess. Though the use of square doesn't make much sens. The new icon use red/blue constraints using the style of original 'toggle Active Constraint'.

- Toggle active constraint : Same as previous, it uses squares which is not very intuitive. So the idea is to use the same as the new toggle construction but with grey color.

Overall the 3 icons now use the same style with the red line, giving 'toggle' concept a clear visual element. Though the color of the line can be discussed as constraints are red on one side. Should it be something else? I used red to match the geometries colors. Blue would give the same issue as red. Then we could use a grey gradient, a deeper red, or yellow or orange. What do you think?

- External geometry : The new icon just make the line in the same style as other geometries lines, and is a bit bigger, making it a little bit clearer.
icons.png
icons.png (105.02 KiB) Viewed 6714 times
PR is opened here : https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/6454
Attachments
Sketcher_ToggleActiveConstraint.svg
(21.69 KiB) Downloaded 129 times
Sketcher_ToggleConstruction.svg
(22.64 KiB) Downloaded 117 times
Sketcher_CreatePolyline_Constr.svg
(13.81 KiB) Downloaded 104 times
Sketcher_CreatePolyline.svg
(14.63 KiB) Downloaded 104 times
Last edited by paddle on Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by Kunda1 »

Moved to UI/UX subforum
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paddle
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by paddle »

A few ideas for the bar colors (on the right the red used before):
icons2.png
icons2.png (299.58 KiB) Viewed 6712 times
Any preferences or ideas?

Beside the PR has a problem apparently : Labeler / label (pull_request_target) Failing after 2s — label
Someone knows what it means? I have only changed a few icons on this PR so I don't think this can be related to build issues..?
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by Shalmeneser »

I don't like the slash bar.

PolyLine : +1
Attachments
Capture d’écran 2022-02-26 114622.png
Capture d’écran 2022-02-26 114622.png (15.72 KiB) Viewed 6655 times
Construction.svg
(3.29 KiB) Downloaded 98 times
Reference.svg
(4.68 KiB) Downloaded 98 times
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nm2107
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by nm2107 »

+1 for polyline and external geometries import, many thanks ! :D Also, the new toolbar grouping is nice :)

For the toggle icons, I'm not a big fan of the slash, as this "diagonal" sign is also present in other geometries. The other color exemples would help to make it different (and help to differentiate it from constraints), but IMHO it is still too close to geometries we can find in constraint icons.

What about to have some inspiration from common toggle or swap ions, such as this one for the toggle/swap buttons ? Maybe these circular arrows could point to each compounds of the toggling ?

An other idea would be to avoid to represent both compounds of the toggling, but instead represent what would be show if the button is clicked (would require a icon change on toggle tho, as long as the helping text while hovering the button).
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by chrisb »

I like the PolyLine icon (although it shows a geometry that cannot be created with a single polyline).

The others don't say more to me than the old icons, which was near to nothing. So I can learn them as well, but I don't think they are are intuitive for newbees.
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paddle
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by paddle »

Regarding the 3 toggle icons, the idea is to harmonize the toggle icons so they look all similar.
This way the user can identify more easily that they are toggle icons.

Regarding the slash bar, I used it because the toggle active constraint was using this style and I thought it was pretty clear for a toggle concept. And using it reused the current icon concept.

The idea to use arrows is interesting, the only issue I has with it is that while it looks good in big here, when it will be a small icon it will probably look very small and not very clear because you have 4 elements (2 arrows and 2 elements) so each element in itself is fairly small.
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by chrisb »

Something reduced could be clearer at small sizes. Here some ideas derived from the old icon. The sizes shown here in the screenshot are perhaps not correct, I guess the screenshot utility does some fancy things when trying to be smart.
Attachments
Sketcher_ToggleConstruction_cb.svg
(7.52 KiB) Downloaded 90 times
Sketcher_ToggleConstruction_cb2.svg
(7.57 KiB) Downloaded 91 times
Sketcher_ToggleConstruction_cb3.svg
(7.32 KiB) Downloaded 91 times
Bildschirmfoto 2022-03-02 um 09.28.34.png
Bildschirmfoto 2022-03-02 um 09.28.34.png (15.79 KiB) Viewed 6290 times
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Re: [Sketcher] Clearer icons for : Polyline, toggle construction, toggle constraints, toggle active constraints, ext geo

Post by adrianinsaval »

paddle wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 7:20 am The idea to use arrows is interesting, the only issue I has with it is that while it looks good in big here, when it will be a small icon it will probably look very small and not very clear because you have 4 elements (2 arrows and 2 elements) so each element in itself is fairly small.
Perhaps, but I have to say the same applies for the constraint toggle icons you made, even big they seem to loaded to me, at first I thought it was a hexagon and didn't understand what it meant. IMO it would be better to just show a dimension constrain (maybe placed diagonally?) in representation of all the rest. Also please follow the Artwork Guidelines, I noticed the slash bar doesn't have a double outline. I don't have a problem with using a slash though, I think it's clear enough specially if all the toggle icons use that concept. I would appreciate if the toggle construction and toggle enabled constraint icons where geometrically different and not just use a different color, to make it easier to differentiate at a quick glance. Here a muckup of my idea:
Sin título.png
Sin título.png (2.03 KiB) Viewed 6225 times
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