I don't know whether there is a Transform corresponding to GeomLinearize. If there is, I can't find it. What category would it be in?? (I have just wasted 15 minutes looking.) Frankly I hate searching through the Transform subcategories for what I need. Hate it.
"Use The Force, Luke." Don't search manually. Here's what you could do: 1. Open a drawing. 2. In the Transform pane, choose the Geom field to get a list of templates that work on geometry. 3. In the filter box, enter the word "curve" (it's a reasonable bet something that changes curves into lines might have something to do with the "curve" word.) 4. That reduces the templates list to just two templates: Clean, and Copy. 5. Hovering over the Clean template you get a tool tip with "Normalize / remove or convert curves / ..." 6. Picking the Clean template, there's an Operation to "convert curves to lines." When I read your post I did it quicker than the above, to find the right template. I first picked the Geom field and then I moved the mouse over the list of templates to see what the tooltips said about the various templates. It took just a few seconds to zero in on Clean as the right template. It's true that people who have learned the Transform and Select panes will find them much easier than people who haven't learned them. For example, I generally go straight to the transform I want, because almost always I know the one I want. But I often use the filter button as well to find rarely-used templates. It works great for that. I think that's true of any system that has very many geoprocessing tools or whatever in some hierarchy of commands. They pretty much all have some sort of filter box or search box to narrow down the hunt to just one item. There would be the same need for a filter box if it was just a hierarchical list of SQL functions. You might be able to find your way around such a list, because you know the functions and maybe the hierarchy very well, but most people don't have in memory a list of functions that tells them GeomLinearize is what they want, so they'd be using a filter box or search tool to find a specific function. For example, when I need to find a particular SQL function, I usually just visit the appropriate SQL Functions user manual page and then do a Ctrl-F to call up the browser's search box, to find what I need. I then copy the name (or part of it) and paste it into the Query Builder's filter box in the Command Window so I can use it with a double-click. I think we were better off with (yes, really long) lists of transforms that directly mirrored their underlying SQL functions. And FFS, why change names??? Everything that matches in usage and logic, should also match in name.
That assumes Transform templates all are powered by one underlying SQL function, which they can mirror in the name of the Transform template. But that's not true. Transform templates often involve multiple underlying functions, with a lot of other SQL in addition. It's not a 1 to 1 association between Transform templates and low level SQL functions. Transform templates are bundled to reduce the number of clicks in higher level workflow, and to make it easier to re-cycle as much of an existing choice as possible in repetitive use of transforms. That dramatically increases the speed and convenience of applying transforms in real life work, because real life work often involves a sequence of similar operations. Not having to set up each of those similar operations from scratch is a real time saver. You can get a hint of that in examples like this one, where repeated use of a transform builds a JSON string.
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