I’m loving the new viewer, and the comments in the Discussions tool in the web viewer are great, but I have ran into a couple of speed bumps.
1- If I misspell something in my comments, I can’t seem to edit them. Is there a way to do that?
2- If I want to delete a comment in a discussion bubble, I can’t seem to do that either. Is there a button I’m missing?
3 - When I mark a discussion as resolved, I can’t find it anywhere after I’ve resolved it. Under “Discussion visibility options” there is an option that says “Show Resolved (0)” even though there is one resolved discussion. It also doesn’t allow me to click the circle to show the resolve, turning my cursor into a red cancel circle.
4 - Is there a way to programmatically send viewpoints as comments to the Speckle Viewer using the API? I’m thinking coordination issues from other platforms would be awesome to visualize here (Navisworks, Newforma, ACC, Revit, Procore, etc).
Here is my model in question, I am working on my Master’s Thesis here at BYU on how to use BIM 3D models to teach construction sciences. We are hoping to use Speckle in the classroom to teach basic mechanical, plumbing, electrical, framing and safety principles in a 3D environment. https://app.speckle.systems/projects/1a16ab0896/models/bf9476b25b@0570f99f00
Other feedback:
There is another option that says “Exclude threads from other versions” that lets me see the comments from previous versions. This is gold. Thank you for including this.
I just found out that if I uncheck “Exclude threads from other versions”, that lets me show resolved comments. Now it lets me have both options, but it gave me a bit of grief at the start.
Also, are these settings something that could be set up at the model level so that people invited to view the model could have all the discussions visible or invisible to whatever the preferences of the administrator are?
On a similar vein, is there a way to make it so that the comments box doesn’t appear right on top of what I’m trying to highlight in my comments every time? I was flying through the model for a client and every time I wanted to show them an issue, I had to move the comments box.
Hi @bowen_utahbim. Thanks a lot for the thorough feedback and video! Improving the commenting feature is on our roadmap so this is all golden.
To answer your questions:
No way to edit a comment (yet?).
No way to delete individual comments in a discussion thread (yet?).
Good that you found out why the unresolved comment didn’t show up.
I’ve made a note that these discussion settings – and the interplay between them – could be better explained.
Can you elaborate on the workflows you think we’d unlock if we enabled programmatically sending viewpoints as comments using the API?
It’s not possible for admins to control how the discussion settings apply to everyone loading the model in the viewer. Do you have a specific settings combination in mind that you’d like to always apply?
Moving comments: To be honest I just learned from your video that comments can be moved I never noticed this – so thanks for teaching me that. Sadly, another no: At the moment comments always appear in the place they were created. We’ve received similar feedback in the past that comments can sometimes be in the way, so this is something I’d like to explore. Either we 1) make it easier to move them, 2) change it so that comments always appear next to the canvas, 3) make sure comments always appear next to the highlighted object instead of on top, 4) a combination of these or something I haven’t thought of yet. We’ll keep this problem in mind as we improve the feature!
Is there anything else you’re missing from the commenting feature that would make it easier for you to give good feedback?
These is an awesome possibility of being able to send coordination issues or saved viewpoints from different software. For example, if I’ve created saved viewpoints in Navisworks, I could send those viewpoints as comments in Speckle with the section boxes applied and everything. This could help with a number of different applications. For me (selfishly), this would allow for easy view creation for my teaching modules. For others, this could be a very fast way of creating section boxes around rooms for easy navigation for project members, 3D section views for callout details to better explain, etc.
If we could take the name of the viewpoint from Navisworks and have that be a comment, that would be excellent. Or if we wanted to extract the comment data directly from Navis, that would be another option.
This would be a great way to take your coordination issues from ACC, Procore, Newforma, etc and share them with other people in an open environment so that people can instantly view the issues at hand without having to jump through all the hoops the other software presents (signing up/cost).
I love your “Rendered + Edges” view mode, as I think it provides incredible clarity. I would like for that to be what people saw when they opened up my model. I would also like to be able to show all the comments from previous versions as a default so that project members who are less familiar with Speckle can see all the open comments without having to look for the Discussion Visibility Options menu and play with that.
I like option 2 for the comments, as this would allow people to always know where the comment ends up. Option 3 is another great option, but would be a little trickier to always get right.
I never noticed this – so thanks for teaching me that. Sadly, another no: At the moment comments always appear in the place they were created. We’ve received similar feedback in the past that comments can sometimes be in the way, so this is something I’d like to explore. Either we 1) make it easier to move them, 2) change it so that comments always appear next to the canvas, 3) make sure comments always appear next to the highlighted object instead of on top, 4) a combination of these or something I haven’t thought of yet. We’ll keep this problem in mind as we improve the feature!