We’ve finally adopted Speckle into our production workflow (following the recent Connector updates), where we are making significant use of the Viewer. In this workflow, we are using iPads to view fabrication documents on the floor.
I’ve run into what seems to be a bug with Measure Mode in the viewer when open on my iPad. I am using an 10th Gen iPad running iPadOS 18.4.1. I’ve tested this in Safari and Chrome with the same issue. This is not present on my Android phone where the expected tapping behavior seems to work the same as it would on desktop.
Objective: Use the measure tool on iPad in the same intuitive manner as on other platforms. A tap on an object while using the Viewer in measure mode on an iPad registers a point the same way as a tap on Android or a click on desktop.
Issue: Placing a measure point requires a drag to locate the point and a tap, to “lock it in”, rather than the single tap that one might expect. This dragging simultaneously manipulates the view, making the measure tool much less pleasant to use on iPad.
Example: I open the link on the iPad, select measure mode, and tap on the desired object. No point is registered. I then drag on the object slightly, resulting in a cursor to appear on the object and the view to orbit. A subsequent drag on the object moves this cursor but a drag elsewhere in the viewport only manipulates the view. Tapping anywhere with the cursor visible “accepts” the current point. Further taps on the object do nothing until another drag initiates the second point, which behaves the same as the first. The same process applies to the perpendicular measuring mode.
Are there any updates on this? We’ve been using Speckle in our production workflow for a few months now with some success, but we continue to run into issues with the UX of the Viewer when used on an iPad, particularly with manipulating the view and using the measure tool.
We’ve looked into your issue, and have made some updates which will hopefully improve using measurements on all mobile devices. Currently it’s running in our staging environment where we’d like to test it out some more before we release it in production, which is going to be soon! We’ll keep you posted
I just took a look at one of our production models on an iPad and this update has made a huge difference. The view seems to manipulate much more smoothly, and I was able to take measurements without any issues. It worked exactly how I expected it to, based on my experience with the desktop viewer.
@alex Thank you for taking a look at this, it has made Speckle substantially more useful for our company.
I spoke with some of my coworkers this morning about the update and despite the crucial issues being resolved, it looks like there is still some amount of hesitance about how gestures relate to manipulating the view and performing actions.
For example, one of my coworkers didn’t seem confident about whether a 1-finger drag related to a rotation or a pan. I also saw some attempts to rotate the view with a 2-finger twisting gesture, I suppose because zooming and panning are both done with 2 fingers. Also, other apps, like Google Maps or even a photo viewer, have a 1-finger pan and 2-finger rotation & zoom which might be a more familiar paradigm to my coworkers. This led to a clunky and frustrating experience where their takeaway was that it “still doesn’t quite work.”
Which gestures are “correct” is obviously entirely subjective, but you might be able to resolve this by adding the 2-finger twist as an alternate rotation gesture so that either option works.
I found this interesting, because the way it is now feels very intuitive and reasonable to me–but I’ve been working in CAD for years and I’m used to adapting my behavior to the 3D software in front of me. This is a much more nebulous discussion than a bug report, but I am interested in how Speckle could enable users who aren’t used to “thinking in CAD” to more intuitively engage with a touch interface like this, even more so than you’ve already managed.
We haven’t prioritised mobile or iPad optimisation until now, but it’s something we’ll be actively looking at soon, so your observations (and your coworkers’ reactions) are very timely.
Currently, the viewer treats finger input as a direct analogue to mouse input: 1-finger acts like a left click/drag (orbit), 2-fingers like a right click/drag (pan), and pinch to zoom. That approach works well for users coming from a CAD background, where adapting to a tool’s control logic is second nature. But as you pointed out, your colleagues are rightly bringing expectations shaped by more mainstream mobile interactions: 1-finger to pan, 2-finger to zoom and rotate, like in Google Maps or photo viewers.
That mobile-first paradigm has become the state of the art for good reason. We’ll explore supporting it, or at least offering alternate gestures (like a 2-finger twist for rotation) to make the experience more intuitive for non-CAD users.
We appreciate you taking the time to surface this; it’s precisely the kind of insight that helps us make Speckle more accessible and usable across the board.