wsteffe wrote: ↑Fri Feb 26, 2021 4:00 pm
In my opinion it is OK that you have added the option "New Solid", but it is not enough.
Let consider that you have already created a couple of Solids (S1 and S2) and then you want to add a pad to S1.
It is not sufficient to disable the option "New Solid". A selector is needed to chose the base solid (S1) to which
you want to add (or eventually remove) the new pad. This is the way ZW3D works which I consider very clean.
Besides 'New solid' option, the other two basic tools for managing solids is 'Split' for splitting and 'Boolean' for fork and merge. See the short video below for a demo. It split the star shape into half, use Boolean with 'New solid' to make the bottom half as a separate solid (i.e. fork), then do a fillet on it, and finally use another boolean to merge back the top half of the star shape. You can choose whether to merge the top half to the fillet solid, or the other way round by setting the tip feature (ALT + click the tag icon of the feature). Most new features are inserted after the tip feature. Split can be used without a face/datum, which simply split a compound of multiple solids, like the compound filter tool in Part WB.
When there are more closed wires in the sketch, a single Pad generates more Solids. The selector of the base solid should be able to select one of these solids. To make it possible in ZW3D there is a separate folder (displayed just above the feature tree) which contains all the shapes generated by the CAD operations (features). I like to have such a separation between a feature (in example a Pad) and the shapes generated by it. When I need to change the name of a shape (typically a Solid) I may do it in the Shape folder. I do not have to rename the Feature as in other CAD.
I am not sure this is same as you mentioned here, there is an option to auto group features in a body. Right click the body, and choose 'Toggle solid group'. This will auto group all related feature that forms a model history under the latest feature of that history. There is also the 'Toggle aux group' action to group non-solid features, like sketch, datum, and shape binders.