Grouping

Having Issues with groups select objects functionality.

Invert select does not deselect the currently selected group!
Can I isolate selections to items of a current group ?
Can I "select all" from just within a group ?
Can I invert a selection just from within a group ?
Can I iteratively expand or collapse entries listed in a group ?
Can I array a group of objects and have that original group and all the resulting groups wind up in the same parents group?

What is the layers' relationship between groups and their constituent objects ?

Thank you for all your good work !
MindSet

Hi Mindset, yes groups are still a work in progress. Hopefully most loose ends should be tuned
up in the next beta.


> Invert select does not deselect the currently selected group!

It does if you have selection just on the top level group. For example if you draw 2 rectangles,
then group them, you will now have a selected group. If you now do an invert that currently
selected group will get deselected.

The part that needs tuning up is the behavior when there is a sub object selection inside the group
instead of just top level selection. Both invert selection and select all still need to be tuned up for
that case.


> Can I isolate selections to items of a current group ?

I'm not sure of the answer to this because there isn't a concept of a "current group".

But you can isolate a selection to a specific sub item in a group using the scene browser. You
do that by right-clicking on the selection dot. A right click on the selection dot in the scene
browser will isolate the selection to just that item, deselecting other things. Left click toggles
just that item's selection state without altering other items.


> Can I "select all" from just within a group ?

The easiest way to select an entire group is to have no sub object selection in it and then just
click on it inside the viewport. The first click on an entirely unselected group will select the
entire group.

If you have a sub object selection then I do want to make "select all" (and invert) to limit
selection changes to other siblings like it does currently for an edge or face sub object
selection on a solid.


> Can I invert a selection just from within a group ?

Not yet but I'll be working on that shortly.


> Can I iteratively expand or collapse entries listed in a group ?

You mean other than by clicking on the +/- expander box? Like using left and right
arrow keys? Currently that's not possible because it would need the concept of a
scene browser item having keyboard focus.


> Can I array a group of objects and have that original group and all the resulting
> groups wind up in the same parents group?

No, I had it behaving like that at one point earlier on and it seemed weird. I think because
it's out of sync with how sub object selection already works on solids.

If you have an edge or face sub object of a solid selected and do an array on that, the
copies that are generated are independent objects and not connected to the the solid
that had sub object selection in it.

Since MoI already has a type of sub object selection mechanism in it for edges and faces
inside of a parent solid, it's good to make sub object selection in groups behave in
a similar fashion.


> What is the layers' relationship between groups and their constituent objects ?

You mean the style assignment of the parent group object? It's intended for the style
of the parent group to be just disregarded and instead have effectively be an
amalgamation of the styles of the child objects same as the behavior for solids. That's
not working correctly in the current beta but I have got it fixed up for the next one.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Ref V5 beta:
This model is exported with an OBJ format. Then imported with the Sub-d. The orientation is off by 90 degrees on the X axis. OBJ Import orientation is set at Z-top. Is there a setting on Moi that requires adjusting on my system?

Update: Changed the OBJ setting to Y-Top and it is working okay. Z-Top makes more sense.


Thank you,
Wayne

Hi Michael

Might Groups be thought of as "Saved Selection Sets"?
Can objects exist in more than one Group?
Might we sort & index objects by their relative position?
Might it have a method (or some means) to iterate the selection of individual constituent objects?

My concept of a "current group" is that everything else would be locked.

Thanks ,
MindSet

Hi MindSet,

re:
> Might Groups be thought of as "Saved Selection Sets"?

No, that's not the intent for them. They are intended to function as an "Object that contains child
objects inside of it" and they are trying to have the same behavior as in a 2D vector editing program
like Affinity Designer or Adobe Illustrator.

Something that functions more with a "Saved Selection Sets" type goal will need to be a separate
function from Groups. My current thought is that might happen with "Folders" in the Scene Browser.


> Can objects exist in more than one Group?

No that's not allowed, same as how it's not allowed in a 2D vector drawing program.


> Might we sort & index objects by their relative position?

Sorry I don't know what this means, I need more details.


> Might it have a method (or some means) to iterate the selection of individual
> constituent objects?

You can in script code, groups have an .objects property that is a list of the
child objects that it owns.


> My concept of a "current group" is that everything else would be locked.

You can lock everything else if you want but there is not anything set up that then gives the
unlocked remaining group any special significance.

Thanks,
- Michael

A cool thing!
Format svg from Moi V5 works fine with Affinity, Inkscape(free) and the fabulous free TinkerCad! :)
https://www.tinkercad.com

Import svg works fine also!

Thanks Michael.

Is there a command to open/close a group?

Groups are handy, however I am looking forward to having components (instances).

Best
Massimo

Hi Massimo,

re:
> Is there a command to open/close a group?

There are currently 3 commands for groups: Group Ungroup and UngroupAll. You can
access them by the menu button in the Objects section of the Scene Browser:





The Ungroup is not working correctly at the moment.

- Michael

Hi Michael.
In the attached file, I want to export to PDF and subsequently print out various views. However, I'm finding that everything is being biased towards the bottom of the page. This had me puzzled for a while, until I realised MoI was including the centre point of the arc shown as R259.50 as being part of the output.
Is there any way to work around this, because it seems that when they are dimensioned, large arcs will always affect PDF output in this way?


Thanks.
Martin.

Hey Martin,
Surely you will get an informed answer for Michael, but if you are in a crunch to produce something, you probably could run a quick "rebuild" that would turn that arc to a regular curve, and eliminate the centerpoint data... (I didn't test it)

I'll be watching for the answer here also...

Hi Martin, yes the Radial dimension by default displays a cross marking
the center of the dimensioned arc or circle.

You can see it in your PDF output if you zoom in:





You can turn it off by selecting that one radial dimension for R259.50 and then click the "Details..."
button in the upper right properties panel. Then on the detailed object properties dialog set the
property for Radial dimension > "Cross size" to be 0 and the cross mark will be disabled for
just that one particular radial dim:



- Michael

Hi Burr.
Thanks for your suggestion. I tried it but without success - I think because that centre point relates to the actual dimension graphic itself.
Thanks for trying for me.


Hi Michael.
As I expected, your advice worked a treat, so thanks to you for putting me back on track.

I'm left with one other thing though. ;-) After setting the cross size to zero, a slightly confusing situation seems to be that when selecting all visible geometry using a left to right selection window, the R259.50 dimension remains unselected. However, if the selection window is increased in size to include the now invisible centre point cross, then R259.50 selects ok. One additional thing is that the edit frame doesn't increase in size to include the centre point, despite its inclusion being necessary for a successful selection.


Thanks again.
Martin.

Hi Martin, thanks for reporting those new issues, I'll see about fixing those in the next v5 beta which is almost ready.

- Michael

Thanks, Michael. Looking forward to the next beta.

Martin.

Today I noticed a peculiarity in Dark theme, with Y axis color set to Red (255,0,0).
The positive Y axis is now Red, but It seems to be about 2 times extra wide, with a "white" border.
This does not happen with a test Red X axis. (The X axis is set to Blue, normally).

If the Y axis color is set to darker Red (170, 0, 0), the positive Y axis has regular thickness.

Do not know if it has something to do with my display, or ?

- Brian

Hi Brian, I think that's just how things look when a polygon being drawn on screen is not quite exactly aligned with screen pixels. I may be able to tune it slightly, I'll try.

- Michael

Thanks for having a look, Michael.

For now, I'll use the dark red instead.

- Brian

Hi Brian, I think the white border you're seeing is a type of optical effect known as "Mach banding":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_bands

Probably the best adjustment to reduce it is using a darker red color like you've already done.

I've experimented with a few other ideas but have not really come up with anything better than that.

You can set that color to come from the current theme so it can be set differently for a dark background theme versus a light background theme.

- Michael

Thank you Michael.

So I did some experiments.
When I take off my glasses, the effect goes away.
When I look through the reader portion of the glasses, the effect tends to go away.
And maybe there is some of that mach banding going on, for that white effect.
So I'll blame most of the effect on the age of this user :-)
And I'll keep using the dark red for y-axis, rather than red.

- Brian