Option to change MouseClick-Up and MouseClick-Down behavior in vector editor tools.

677
1
01-18-2013 09:39 AM
Status: Open
KyleSimmons
New Contributor II
As an artist, it is more intuitive for me to work with a pen tablet when digitizing roads and rivers from satellite imagery.  Several ArcMap tools are very convenient for this purpose such as the bezier tool.  The freehand tool would be ideal.  Unfortunately, in its current configuration, the freehand vector creation tool is unusable because it requires a counter-intuitive workflow.  To do freehand with a pen tablet, the GIS specialist must touch the tablet to start a sketch, then lift the pen to draw the sketch, and touch the tablet again to end the sketch. This makes it very difficult to create clean ends in a freehand sketch.

Freehand Tool 
It would be much more intuitive to give an option in the editor tools to allow a user to apply tablet workflow:  (1) touch pen to tablet to start a sketch, (2) drag the pen across the tablet, and then (3) finish the sketch by lifting the pen.  This would be analogous to (1) clicking a mouse to start, (2) dragging the mouse to draw, and (3) releasing the mouse button to end the sketch.

A feature like this would make the Freehand vector creation tool not only useful, but very intuitive and efficient, since most artists are already skilled at drawing vectors freehand in other tools, such as Adobe and Autodesk products. 

Bezier tool
Similarly, it would be very advantageous if a GIS user could click-and-drag to create a bezier curve point.  The workflow would be (1) Click and hold to create the point (2) drag to extend the bezier handle (3) release to set the bezier point and handle.  This is how bezier curves are created in Adobe products and is a much more efficient workflow, especially when working with a pen tablet.
1 Comment
by Anonymous User

This is implemented for the freehand and auto complete freehand tools at 10.1.

keyboard shortcut M

Draw a freehand line by holding down the left mouse button while dragging. This is most useful for tablet computing since it allows you to digitize when the pen is pressed down and stop when you lift up the pen.