Idea

All of the objects' properties are available in the Properties pane on the side when you click on an object:

The pop-up window that appears when you double-click on an object is a shortcut way of editing an object's properties without dragging your mouse across the screen. This is similar to the Quick Library pop-up that appears when you double-click on empty space in a 3D, Process Flow, or Dashboard view:

The primary purpose of the properties change is for consistency and usability. Our overarching goal with these changes was to bring consistency between how you edit objects in the software. Previously, different objects were modified differently. For example, a Processor, an AGV path, and a Delay activity all had their properties in different windows that you accessed differently. Now, you edit each of those objects the same way as any other object in FlexSim, and their windows all have a similar look and feel.

"When object properties have to be discussed with a client, in teaching contexts, or to provide support remotely." All of these use cases can be done with the Properties pane on the side. None require you to use the Quick Properties popup.

The Statistics and Labels panels are the output windows that are available to pop out into their own dockable windows for viewing multiple at the same time. The other panels are input parameters for the object.

Also, we added Property Tables that can be used for comparing and editing multiple objects at the same time in a nice tabular view.

Not being able to permanently keep open a top-level properties window also prevents bugs that often happened with the old Properties windows when they were left open and the objects were modified elsewhere, such as moving them in the 3D view, renaming them in the tree, or using Edit Selected Objects. Disallowing the properties window from being open all the time helps prevent bugs caused by having multiple places to edit the same variables at the same time.

When we designed the new property system, we specifically decided not to include the ability to have popouts for panes that are inputs into the model. Allowing popouts creates bugs because users can have two input windows for the same object open at the same time (the popout input window, plus the double-click window or the properties window panel). When two input windows for the same properties of the same object are open, it creates synchronization bugs where one input changes it but the other input doesn't properly update, and can therefore potentially undo what the user changed. Other issues arise when running the model with the windows open. If the property somehow dynamically changes, again you have a window that's not updated properly, and can undo what was changed.

We specifically made exceptions to this rule for windows that are providing live state information, like the statistics pane, and labels. Statistics does not have any input controls, so it does not have the synchronization issues, and labels updates immediately with the table view repaint, so it also doesn't have those issues. As for the visuals panel, the only overlap with those windows is in the color and the shape path (and maybe we should take those out).

In reviewing other standard software, it is very hard to find a precedent for such loosely managed input windows. In office applications like word, you define properties through a single input control on the ribbon. In some cases you can define properties through a popout dialog, but those windows are almost always modal dialogs, meaning you must close the dialog before interacting with anything else. I'm also pretty sure that 3D applications like Unity don't even provide the quick near-cursor property access that FlexSim provides.

The current properties system brings the interface more inline with the way the UI has worked in process flow from the beginning. Yet we have heard few complaints, if any, about doing the same types of things for process flow activities.

We also specifically created property tables so that users can view and compare properties across multiple objects. This is, in my opinion, a much better interface for comparing, and updating, object properties, than the previous method of opening a million windows and placing them side-by-side. With property tables, you can have a persistently open window where you can see object properties of not just one, but multiple objects.

I'm using 2 monitors and when I open an object property window it goes over to the second monitor (to the right in this case) and I can't access the window on the right or bottom to resize. If I open and close the sections of the property window (hit + and -), eventually the window scoots to the left where I can finally access the bottom right corner of the window.

Honestly, this change has cause a lot of lost time and frustration, this kind of stuff needs to be worked out prior to release. Now I have models updated to 20.2 and I'm spending a lot of time trying to just get the property window correctly resized so I can see things like the list of triggers at the bottom. Before I could move the window and pull it where I wanted to see all the triggers, for example, now it's just a mess.

V20.1.3 vs. V20.2.zip