As someone who works on up to 5 concurrent variations of my ship drawings and who creates common and divergent geometry and layers that need streamlining, and whose files now are as big as 326 MB saved even after compression (and I'm glad to read that Tim and Team are reporting up to 12 or 16x the speed of saving, opening, or rendering file contents — an amazing thing to have on the horizon) i6 wish to share the following:
I truly deeply hope that the unprecedented development activity includes a massive overhaul of the layer features, such as unfettered ability to not simply clone/duplicate layers, but to also auto name the resulting layer to:
— be optionally named after its parent;
— to inherit associativity with the option to remain linked to the parent, or to gain new but distinct associativity beginning at the target layer;
— the accidental act of manual creation of a duplicate layer name in the same branch not unceremoniously and stressfully dumping the user out of the layer creation with the chance to simply amend/append the name;
— the aboluty to hit F2 on a layer mame and rename it as a typist, not as a widget hunter, and to be able to use the arrow keys to ascend/descend;
— a smoother less randomly-ballistic way to promote/demote/drag layers, and do so without need for accelerator keys or two-handed operation (perhaps make it one-handed mouse or cursor operation to move the layers around, BUT, make it two-handed operation if the user wants to drag a layer on top of another with the intent to move content into another layer, with the option to choose what the resulting layer's name will be, and the option to leave the now-emptied layer name intact for later use, or to just delete it upon completion of operation);
— ability to (legally/license-wise permissively) concurrently open two or more instances of SharkCAD (on the same machine where the license/activation is valid, reinforced by way of an encrypted local, offline mini-server or embed of some kind (to preserve the ability of users to not be forced online and risk being manipulated, especially in light of some multiple billions of passwords having been stolen and put into the dark webs and elsewhere), not necessarily in a network or cheating context, but an efficiency and design forking/cleanup/overhaul context) and drag and drop any layier to any position (except if such might cause a circular reference that can't be resolved with warnings and chances to deal with it).
The drawings are effectively DATA, and a CAD interface should be a sophisticated data access, retrieval, manipulation, and conversion tool, not a runes and magic key, and "no can do, boss" aid to moving those 1s and 0s to anywhere from anywhere in the file and between files owned by the user/operator.
Hopefully, something akin to the FreeCAD spreadsheet facilities will be in the next release. Hopefully, it will be a feature that moves the raw data as CSV or txt, without any extortive large spreadsheet company/hidden representatives saying otherwise.
Hopefully, the Concept Explorer and Layer Manager and Inspector will gain on-pallet regex or even a basic key word search so that each panel can be independently searched and made to down-filter by letters or numbers or symbols, then the user/operator be able to launch a "super pallet" within which the user can instruct the app to generate a new layer, new part, a join/slice/split/merge/mass props comparison/etc operation of some kind.
Perhaps a metaphor of this is to visualize how joining database tables usually can be handled graphically by drag handles producing a pipe with intelligent actions options allowing the uni-or bi-directional movement, validation, inclusion/exclusion, handling of duplicates, creation of or resetting of indexes, enforcing constraints, and so on of data. Apps like Lotus Approach, MS Foxpro, MS Access, Claris FileMaker, Borland Approach, and myriad others back in the early amd mid 90s had such.
AI and Privacy and Security...
Hopefully, any AI that might be native/embedded/compulsorily persistent is one that is optionally or permanently local, won't hallucinate, and won't call home or have any embedded access points not under control of the app licensee.
Anyway, I am asking for a lot, but, I feel its all technically doable, and, prior to the onslaught of billionaires-foisted LLMs and post 2021 AI-tools, AI landing all over the planet, ms secretly spending the better part of the first half of 2025 unscrewing its own "copilot" and its backdoors and such, and its ongoing, relentless efforts to compel users to be online and have an account, I feel that security and privacy and IP ownership nightmares are only just beginning anew. (Lamentably, In 2022 or 2023, I bought at Best Buy a gaming Chromebook (for the graphicls and planned massive spreadsheet activity, mot for gaming) which I still have not used or gotten past the initial loginand updating all because Google just insists that I can't do any offline initial creation of spreadsheets and local saving, because it, as a data vampire, wants to know everything I might create, and say it won't unlawful use what I create... Took it to Beat Buy in late 2024 or early 2025 to see if it would buy it back, unused. The store maages to find and releint my receipt, for that purchase, which was based on my ID being my lassport, which was used for obtaining a credit card AT the local Beat Buy, but, for a buyback, BB wanted my fingerprints. The store couldn't figure out what the Chromebook was, for buyback purposes, despite my having and lroviding everything associated with the lurchase, and since I never updated or used the Chromebook, the associate pluged it into the store Wi-Fi. Once it took over 20-30 minutes, I told them to unplug it and I'll leave, especially since I was aghast that they'd want my fingerprints. All the information, all the purchases I made, all the debt I'm in because of that card, and their ability to reprint the receipt, yet their database was archived such that their own inventory system couldn't figure out my Chromebook they sold me, to set the buyback price. I'm only keeping it because it LOOKS nice. Per one sales rep, it has more power graphically that the same base model on sale that day I was waiting on the buyback inspection server to update the Chromebook before BB could evaluate it for pricing. Convoluted and stupid process?)
Probably too late for v 16. Perhaps v17, 18, or 19 will have the above?
Thanks for reading all of this.
