Show/Hide All Types vs Display Pane

There are things that make me realize that not all users use the software the same way. And then I start thinking “yeah, but …. why???” It’s SOOOOO obvious my way is better, why can’t they see that?

For example, I just can’t understand why people use the Show/Hide All Types tools from the Heads Up View toolbar instead of using the Display Pane.

The way I use it, I leave all of the icons turned ON in the Hide All Types drop down (shown to the right), and then just turn on or off individual features like specific planes, sketches, axes, etc. in the Display Pane (shown to the left).

There are only a few entity types that I turn on/off wholesale in the Hide All Types, like temporary axes, sketch relations, and maybe origins. Everything else I control individually. I never want to see or hide all sketches. Unused sketches are shown by default. Used sketches are hidden by default. So I leave HAT ON, and Display Pane toggles individual features. I almost never want to see temporary axes, but when I do, I use the HAT because you can’t hide or show individual temp axes (regular axes you can control individually in the DP.

Just out of sheer organization, I would never turn something ON in the DP and then OFF in the HAT. Would you ?

I get the feeling that the people who use the HAT don’t use the DP. I use them both, but definitely use the DP more than the HAT.

What do you do?

4 Replies to “Show/Hide All Types vs Display Pane”

  1. I do it like you describe. It’s always frustrating when a model comes in with “Hide All Types” enabled. That always seems like a kludge to me, where the previous user didn’t know how to properly control item visibility.

    It’s easy to use toggle ‘hide/show’ using the keyboard; Alt-V, H, [letter for the thing you want to toggle] This does not require any customization, though I find it’s always helpful to tell windows to underline shortcut keys (“Underline access keys when available”)

  2. Great point, please share more of these you do it one way and other the other but you know yours is better.

  3. This makes perfect sense to me. I don’t necessarily use the DP as I usually have it hidden for screen space, but I individually control a lot in the FeatureManager Tree. I have keyboard shortcuts to quickly show/hide temp axes and planes. Great for grabbing planes for mates. Can get messy quick with large assemblies though.

    1. Ivan, yes, I really like the hotkey approach. I’ve been doing all this writing, and I like to do it with a generic interface, so I tend to not put in the customizations that I like most. The stuff on the Heads Up menu I tend to put on hotkeys. But I do like the display pane because it’s just a click instead of a right click then a left click.

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