Michael,

Thank you for quick reply!

I do not use beta - v1.1 trial, but i have read all your posts concerning and explaining the new obj management interface.

In SketchUp the layers palette is much of a redundant tool and used very occasionally. For obj management needs we employ outliner exclusively... Not only because it is more convenient but because layers have some nasty issues if you try to use them as obj management.. I think the layers palette only exists there for imports from CAD..

As a note I actually used to design application interfaces in the past so I usually pay attention to how they are implemented. MoI, so far as, I said, has a superior interface.. Although there's always room for improvement ))

Also I'm impressed with the convenient API implementation.. javascript comes in very handy (no need to learn ruby, actionscript lisp or any other stuff BUT have searched and couldn't find any sort of help on it? (just commands but they do not provide any systematic description..)

Another major point is that the interface also exposed to a user (not everything but enough to play with!!! less work hopefully for you in the future.. very good decision.. thank you!

re interface:

It might be useful to be able to hide some of the tabs as in sketchup (styles or types or objects - especially styles for me)) as they will eat up space if I use inline mode (i have 1200 px ver resolution and am going to use this mode most of the time) but it is not urgent - in v04 shall be OK.

What also may confuse new users (and confuse me a lot) is that there's a little inconsistency in highlighting tabs and buttons (eg Grid snap, Object snap) - these ones have orange highlight - which clearly indicates they are ON but the tabs on the right have a different highlight to show they are ON (actually every time I click I stumble over those which is ON? white or light blue? )) I'd stick with orange - same as office and Max (although I know I can tweak it myself, hopefully).

Other interface improvement I'd suggest is making clear which numbers stand for X, Y, Z coord. as they are in the same box.. (I know it was designed to serve as a command line as well - so maybe just sort of a prefix for a number?

re obj management:

There's definitely some reasons for the current layout I admit, so my comments here are from a mesh modeler viewpoint (I haven't been modeling too much nurbs) but what I would first have implemented is just two tabs - objects (as in sketchup - show grouped items and components), and types (types are modeling aids like those in max if understood correctly?) not sure if it is the best solution - Max people kept complaining that it makes them click too much (rhino as I understand was trying to reduce clicks with pop-ups) but nevertheless I highly welcome all this improvements..

And thank you for taking time to read all this, hopefully all this can help make MoI more productive..

regards,
I