I saw this UI in Mozilla Labs for Firefox. It's still a concept and prototype for Bookmark and History/Time tracking... but I think it may be applicable (as an UI) to other apps including CAD/MoI.

What I find interesting is, if applied to Layers: it scrolls left and right across the top; it can contained nested layers/objects (pulled down/vertically), it can be zoomed in/out... To better understand what I'm taking about, please refer to it here:
http://www.vimeo.com/1466664

Cheers,

- Diego -

Hi Diego, it's very interesting! But also a huge amount of work to make something like that.

It looks like that bookmark concept is someone's research project, they may have spent something like the last year working on nothing but that.

I probably just cannot afford to spend an entire year's worth of time just on this one feature area of MoI, so I probably won't be able to do something as cool as that, but there are some concepts in there that would be good to keep in mind.

- Michael

Yeah, very interesting and I do totally get you/that... In sharing, I was simply hoping exactly what you said, you'd find and determine some of those more implementable concepts to keep in mind/possibly/maybe trickle into MoI ;) Call it a sort of 'inspirational tech-trickling' ;)

Cheers,

- d -

very cool thanks for sharing

Very interesting Michael, but i like the idea, even it if would be only 8 at least it would a start and that would made a good test run for people using it and give the feedback like they do on the forum.

But that would be for me a nice addition. something would fit with what i said in my car tire posts.

Cold

Hi Cold - it is a good idea, but I've had a lot of people request the ability to have more than just 8 categories.

So my main focus initially for that area will actually be on having a fuller set of capabilities than that. Then later on it could be good to have some kind of shortcut method available for people who only want to have quick access to a small number of groups.

- Michael

Hey Michael - That would be good because on some work having too much layer could be confusing. Can't wait to see that in future version.

Thanks

Cold

Michael

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with Layers.
Will you also be implementing the ability of setting the objects color by layer as well ?

Hi Kevin - actually right now I'm not planning on setting color by layer and instead focusing on assigning color as an object property instead.

The main reason for this is that it enables me to get rid of some limitations of the traditional layer structure such as having an object only belong to just a single layer. I'd like to enable some more flexible types of groupings like making it possible to set up layers/groups and have an object belong to more than one of these layer/group type labels.

If an object's color was set by its layer, it creates problems with that kind of multiple membership, because what if an object was on 2 layers and one layer was colored red, and the other layer was colored blue, what color should the object be then?

By having colors assigned to an object instead of to a layer it can prevent this kind of ambiguity from happening.

I do want to incorporate some of the feel of a "by layer" type system as well though, like if all the objects on a particular group are all of the same color I think I'll try to have a swatch of that color show up for that group's entry in the list of stuff. And I also want to have some way to easily select all objects that are on a particular group so that it will be easy to set them all to the same color.

So I'm thinking of a bit of a hybrid in the way things work, but fundamentally not having the color set at a "by layer" level though.

- Michael

Michael

Thanks for the reply. I'm sure you'll work out the best way of implementing it but it is good to hear your looking at giving the user the ability to color objects in some way which like layers will help a lot when organising the objects that make up the model.

Hi Kevin, yeah definitely some form of colorization option will be in there.

Probably the way you assign it will just be more like click on the "layer" to select all the objects on that layer, then an object properties panel will show up and you can click the color property in there to set it.

But we'll see - that is not all finalized yet, in fact I'm just ready to really dig into this area now.

- Michael

IMO layers could complicate the whole thing, they have an analogue in two-d work but for three-d its a forced analogy. In pro/e and sketchUP layers are a real mess. They end up interfering with groups or assemblies unless you are super rigorous in their use (rigorous is not the word I like to think of with using MoI).

In my work flow I export groups to new .3dm and .skp files each time I have something I think I'd like to capture. The is a bit tedious but I suspect somebody smarter than me could speed this up with a script.

Could color perhaps be applied when you name a set of objects? (dropdown like the Size control in V2) I'd even like auto differentiated shades of grey. Of course a "select by name" would then be pretty swell at that point.

thanks
-dale

I am well aware that I am only one user and that anything I say here is purely selfish ...
but ... I really need MoI to have a layering system that is fully compatible with Rhino.

I really like modeling with MoI but its use is restricted for me as once a model gets a little complicated with numerous parts I can't really make if function without layers. My working tools not only include Rhino but rendering programs that work within Rhino and depend on the layering system.

I know, I know ... there are rendering programs perfectly compatible with MoI that I could switch to.

Now I use MoI for parts that I can transfer to Rhino and then assign them to the appropriate layers there. Once that is done any editing had best be done in Rhino ... if the editing is done in MoI the layering properties are lost.

So, again very selfishly ... I hope that Michael is able to find a way to assign properties to MoI objects that will transfer easily to our other favorite programs ... maybe not possible but that is my wish!

cheers,
eric

Hi Dale, hi Eric - this whole area is still not all set in stone, but I think that there will probably be 2 kind of separate pieces to it.

One will be that you will be able to assign a "style" to an object (or selection of multiple objects) which will control the visual appearance of the object, probably starting initially with just setting a simple color for it.

Since that will be a property of an object (an object will have only 1 style assigned to it I think), that should probably map pretty well to a "layer" in Rhino, since an object in Rhino can similarly only be assigned to a single layer also.

I think it will be possible to use just the styles as a kind of grouping mechanism if you want, like there should be some way to select objects by style, etc...

But then in addition to that for more flexibility I also want to have a "scene tree browser" type panel which would allow for more arbitrary grouping which will show object names.

You can also see these threads for some previous discussions:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1944.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2127.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2150.5


- Michael

Also, I've made some good progress on the "styles" part of this whole thing, that will be the first area to get finished I think.

- Michael

Thanks Michael ...

It sounds good ... I'm just hoping maximum flexibility to work back and forth as needed.

You're working on your holiday ... go have a cold beer! :)

eric