I've still got quite a bit of work left to finish it up, but I think I've got a pretty coherent plan forming up for how the object properties stuff can work.

The current concept is to have a panel that shows up in the upper-right corner of the window when you are in selection mode before running a command. This is the same area that is used for command options while you are inside of a command, previously this area was just blank when you are in selection mode.

The panel will appear when you select objects, it will show you and allow you to edit properties of that object.

Here's what I have arrived at so far:




And with labels so I can refer to some different parts:




#1 is the name assigned to the current object, or "Unnamed" if there is no name assigned.

If you move your mouse over that top row, it will sort of highlight:



And if you click on it, a small dialog box will pop up that will allow you to set the name:




If the name gets pretty long it will wrap to multiple lines in the properties panel:




#2 to the right of the name on the same line, is the object type readout. This will give a very short description of what type of object is currently selected, something like one of: "Curve", "Closed Crv", "Edge", "Surface", "Joined Srf", or "Solid".

The good part of this is that you can just glance over here to find out some things, like if you have a curve selected or an edge, whether your selected curve is closed or not, and whether your model is a fully closed solid or not.


#3 & #4 - this line shows the current style assigned to the object. #3 is the name of the style, and #4 is a swatch to show the style visually. When you move your mouse over this line, it will highlight same as the name above, and then when you click you will get a dropdown or dialog that will allow you to choose between some predefined styles, and have a menu item to go to a "style manager" to edit styles or set up new styles.

A style will be a bundled set of properties such as color, line style, render attributes, etc... probably this will start out just with color for now. I was previously going to put in a bunch of individual controls for different properties all directly on the properties panel, but I think it will be better overall to focus more on the concept of setting a style that is a bundle of things since that will map more easily to a material library kind of thing.


Then #5 Tools will drop out a big menu, probably with just lines of text on it instead of icons and it will have a whole bunch of somewhat more "advanced" tools on it that can be applied to the selected object. I think this menu will be where I'll be able to add many commands such as Rebuild, Simplify lines & arcs, etc... This one probably won't be ready for a while longer.


#6 Details will open up a big dialog box that has a much more detailed information about the selected object, and also incorporate some editing tools as well. For example with a circle it would list the center of the circle and its radius and let you change those values. I'm also thinking of possibly putting things like Mass properties / length / area / volume, on this dialog instead of as individual commands.


Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions!

This is still all a work in progress, but it seems like it is coming together well, the next big part is drilling into getting the styles stuff more clearly planned.

- Michael

It looks great, I am happy not to read the word "layer"!

>>>>>>>>>
#2 to the right of the name on the same line, is the object type readout. This will give a very short description of what type of object is currently selected, something like one of: "Curve", "Closed Crv", "Edge", "Surface", "Joined Srf", or "Solid".
The good part of this is that you can just glance over here to find out some things, like if you have a curve selected or an edge, whether your selected curve is closed or not, and whether your model is a fully closed solid or not.
<<<<<<<<<

Very useful...>>>>>>>>>>>>>
#3 & #4 - this line shows the current style assigned to the object. #3 is the name of the style, and #4 is a swatch to show the style visually. When you move your mouse over this line, it will highlight same as the name above, and then when you click you will get a dropdown or dialog that will allow you to choose between some predefined styles, and have a menu item to go to a "style manager" to edit styles or set up new styles.
A style will be a bundled set of properties such as color, line style, render attributes, etc... probably this will start out just with color for now. I was previously going to put in a bunch of individual controls for different properties all directly on the properties panel, but I think it will be better overall to focus more on the concept of setting a style that is a bundle of things since that will map more easily to a material library kind of thing.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Maybe yes, I will have to see this working to fully understand if it is better this way.... Generally it is a very nice idea.
Style is mostly grouping by appearance (for example color, linetype etc) so maybe you're right.>>>>>>>>>
Then #5 Tools will drop out a big menu, probably with just lines of text on it instead of icons and it will have a whole bunch of somewhat more "advanced" tools on it that can be applied to the selected object. I think this menu will be where I'll be able to add many commands such as Rebuild, Simplify lines & arcs, etc... This one probably won't be ready for a while longer.
#6 Details will open up a big dialog box that has a much more detailed information about the selected object, and also incorporate some editing tools as well. For example with a circle it would list the center of the circle and its radius and let you change those values. I'm also thinking of possibly putting things like Mass properties / length / area / volume, on this dialog instead of as individual commands.
<<<<<<<<<<
THIS is the interesting part!
Changing radius of a circle will be useful but not if I use the circle for something, since this "something" will not be updated... So, this is where the equivalent to modifiers stack (3dsmax) comes as the solution, or Moi's history update if you prefer...
Moi is a 3d modeler so a circle will be just a way to make a sweep or loft, so it is not the final object you need to have. Changing the size of the circle means you want to change the loft, even if you created it 3 days ago! That is the meaning of having these commands.... So, I am anxious to see the progress on this!!!!

Great work as always Michael, Congratulations.

Hi, Michael

really interesting

When the new beta?

Marco (marcorhino)

Hi Marco,

> When the new beta?

I'm not really sure. If it looks like this object properties work will take more than few days to finish up (which it very well may), I will probably release a new beta without it and then continue working on it for the next one.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Why rush out another beta. I would prefer you take a few more weeks to add some of the "objects properties" to the next beta release. (the current beta is active/usable for about 7 more weeks)

Just a personal thought.


Regards,

- Steve

Hi Steve, I was originally planning on waiting until this part was finished, because it is pretty much the major new feature that has been planned for this release.

But on the other hand I've got quite a lot of bug fixes for this release already finished up, and there are a few big ones like this sphere trimming thing that are popping up in several bug reports pretty frequently now.

So I kind of want to get those fixes distributed...

- Michael

quoto steve !!!

MArco

Hi JTB, thanks for the feedback!


> It looks great, I am happy not to read the word "layer"!

Yeah, I don't really want to have a "layer" to be set as a property of an object, because that causes a pretty major restriction of only having an object belong to one layer. That doesn't allow for very flexible grouping or organizing.

I should mention though that this stuff for object properties is one piece - in addition to this I want to have a kind of "scene browser" panel that will provide some stuff for grouping and more "layer-ish" type stuff, this was discussed last month here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1944.1


> Maybe yes, I will have to see this working to fully understand if
> it is better this way.... Generally it is a very nice idea.
> Style is mostly grouping by appearance (for example color,
> linetype etc) so maybe you're right.

We'll see pretty soon! :)

One thing that is nice about focusing on setting a "style" that is a group of properties is that the top level interface there can stay nice and streamlined no matter how many individual properties are added later on. If I tried to provide controls for each individual property in that one spot, it is going to get complicated pretty fast when more are added. I was struggling with this part for quite a while.

I don't mind if there is complexity included in some kind of optional thing (like adding a new style for instance), I just don't want it to kind of bubble up and take over the main UI.

I think there will still be a way to edit individual properties as well, the idea for this is that there will be one style in the drop-down that says "custom", if you choose that you will get a dialog that will allow you to edit individual properties to be applied to just one object. So individual property setting may not need to be totally absent.

But by mainly focusing the primary UI on picking a style, I think it should help to keep the top level more simple over time.


Re: changing the radius of a circle - the plan is for this to work the same way with history as a transform would. If there are objects that have history connecting them to that circle they will update when the circle radius is changed. But there is still work to be done to improve the history mechanism so that the history chain does not get broken so easily, that will be a kind of separate chunk of work from this though.


Thanks!

- Michael

Sounds great so far Michael, no doubt MoI is on its way in becoming a house hold name in the 3d world alongside and maybe surpassing the others like 3ds max, Rhino, Lightwave, Cinema 4D just to name a few, and it's great to be one of the many here to see MoI evolve into a 'can't design without' type package.

Anyway back to business, I have just a couple of questions for now, until I get my head around this new object organisation system a bit more.

What will the new panel show on multiple selections and will you have a filter selection system for each object type, like if I want to select all curves and filter out all other objects from selection ?

P.S. I think someone should update this Wikipedia entry to include MoI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics_software

~Danny~

""What will the new panel show on multiple selections?""

Yes, I would be also interested in how this will work.

Will the panel Extend to fit them all?
Would it display for example "3 curves, 4 solids" or "4 objects in group 1 & 2" ?


Keep up the excellent work!!

Marc

Interesting ideas Michael.
I´m an adopting kind of guy, so I don´t have any suggestions. Looking forward to this update.

Keep up the good work.

Hi Michael:
Any questions (sorry if those questions has been answered yet)
1.- If there aren´t layer, what happens if someone is working with Rhino and MoI?
2.- Then, will be there linetypes soon?
3.- As well as Danny says, it would be very interesting if the Select area offers a filter for colour, linetype...or much better, if the filter let to select with combined properties (like "red dash", "green curves" or any other combination). I think that could be a small floating panel where you can choose puting ticks in a small squares close to the properties.

Anyway, I think that it´s the next big step for MoI and I´m waiting for that! :-)

Hi Michael,

Keep up the good work.

FRESH

Hi Danny, thanks for the feedback!

> What will the new panel show on multiple selections

What I think will happen is if all the objects have the same name, it will show that name there, or otherwise say: (multi) or (varies) in there.

For the type label, if all the selected objects have the same type it will show that type, or otherwise if they are of different types I think it will just say x objects, like: 5 objects.

For the style if all objects have the same style it will show that style, or otherwise say Multiple styles, or (varies) in there too, something like that.


> and will you have a filter selection system for each object type,
> like if I want to select all curves and filter out all other
> objects from selection ?

I do want to have this, but I'm considering that to be a selection helper tool, I'd like to categorize it under the Select tab in the UI. It will be a pretty separate piece of work from the grouping and properties stuff. It is kind of doubtful that this will fit into the v2 timeframe at this point.

There are some existing tools you can use for that though - Petr wrote a custom command for selecting all objects of a particular type which you can get here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#SelectByType

You can also set up a script on a keyboard shortcut to select or deselect a particular type of object, like for example this one will select all curves:

script:moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getCurves().setProperty( 'selected', true );

And various other similar ones (like select closed curves, select solids, etc...) are listed here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#SelectNaked


Let me know if you have a particular kind of selection task involving object types that you need to do frequently and I probably can cook up a script for a keyboard shortcut that will do it in the current version.

- Michael

Hi Marc,

> Will the panel Extend to fit them all?
> Would it display for example "3 curves, 4 solids" or
> "4 objects in group 1 & 2" ?

It's kind of disruptive to the overall UI to have that panel expand to be too big, so I was thinking it would not do this.

If all the objects were of the same type, then I was thinking I can include that type label there, like "5 curves". Otherwise if they are different, I think I'll just put the number there with a generic label like "5 objects".

But then if you push the Details button I can put up a bigger report listing all the different types inside of the dialog box that pops up for that.

How does that sound?

- Michael

Hi David!

> 1.- If there aren´t layer, what happens if someone is
> working with Rhino and MoI?

Currently this is what I'm thinking - there will be another mechanism for setting up batches or groupings of objects, it was discussed some previously here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1944.1

That is going to be another chunk of work for that, which will happen after this object properties stuff is finished.

I think the way it will work is if you set up your tags/groups in such a way that they are compatible with layers, which means that you have placed each object only to belong underneath one tag instead of multiple tags, then the tags will translate directly to layers when you export. If you have an object belong to multiple tags (which is what I'm hoping to give more flexibility with than traditional layers allows for), then it will just pick one of those groups that it belongs to, to be the "layer" for that object.

So basically if you restrict yourself to only set things up in the same way that layers allows for, then it should be able to translate directly.


> 2.- Then, will be there linetypes soon?

I'm not quite sure, I do have some support in my display engine for linetypes currently, which you can see if you go to Options / Grid:



Increase the grid line width to something like 5 and set the color to black to see what those different styles look like. (After you have finished, push Restore defaults / Current section only to go back to standard grid settings).

However, it may take some extra work to finish up this area for being applied to objects in general. I'm not quite sure yet how long that will take.

re: #3 Selection filter, please see my reply to Danny here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2127.15


Thanks for the feedback!

- Michael

Complicated

Hi George,

> Complicated

Is there any particular part that seems complicated? Or just the whole thing?

I definitely want to keep it simple to do basic things quickly. But there may be several subtle details for how it behaves with multiple selection, etc... - probably once it is actually in front of you and running it will not be as complex as some of my extended and detailed explanations make it seem. But we'll see! :)

- Michael

Hi Michael:

Thanks for your prompt reply!

I had made a sketch of my idea.
Obviously you have the ideas more clear than me, but the sketch was made yet... :-)