I make puzzles and the tabs/bridges is one of the most crucial options. Too few tabs and I end up picking up the pieces one by one; too many tabs and I end up with many splinters or breaking the pieces.
I have very long shapes in my puzzles but also very short shapes.
Automatic tab generation is great, but I would like to combine the ‘even spacing’ and ‘tabs per shape’ as the ideal even spacing is larger than the shortest shape, which means the shortest shapes get no tabs.
I would like to be able to set a minimum number of tabs per shape, in combination with a spacing. That will make sure long shapes always have enough tabs, and short shapes always have a minimum number of tabs.
With the current options, I have either not enough tabs for the long shapes, or too many tabs for the short shapes.
A minimum number of tabs per shape when using even spacing is a great idea. I will add that to our feature development list. I can certainly see how that would be helpful.
Another option for you is also just to use more cut layers. The intent of those automatic tab settings is for a lot of shapes that are similar such that the tab spacing or count works well for the shapes in question. It was never really intended to be used across a wide variety of shapes.
Lastly, you can always use the automatic generation, but then select the “Add Tabs” tool from the tool bar and modify the tabs that were generated. Honestly that’s how we intended automatic tab placement to be used - it’s a starting point from which you can tweak things to get it just right. The automatic placement is “dumb” in the sense that it just marches along the path placing a tab at a fixed spacing - this is even true for tabs per shape, as it just calculates the total path length then divides by the number of tabs and places them at that spacing. However, it isn’t smart enough to know not to place tabs on corners, or small features, etc. It’s assumed that the user would tweak things to make sure it works for their design.
Great! Being able to set minimum number of tabs per shape would be perfect. you wouldn’t even have to change the UI much: just remove the radio buttons, enable both “tabs per shape” and “even spacing” and change the desciption a bit.
The same results as you have now could be achieved by setting “min tabs per shape” to zero or “even spacin” to a very large number.
Automatic tab placement is pretty much the only solution for me, the puzzles I make have a large variety in path lengths. Selecting different lengths and moving them to different layers would be a lot of work.
