Hi,

There is an option to hide (view) line/edges, but snapping is still made to these.

I am not sure what you are adding to version 2, maybe layers which would allow better control, so at the moment, more of a question rather than a request/wish.

I know I can hide other objects, but I find the behavior of that a little confusing at times, as sometimes the object I select will hide, and other times the object I select stays with other objects becoming hidden. If say I select object~hide, and the object hides, then I press hide again, then there is a reverse~ objects shown will hide/ objects hidden will show, but if I select to draw a line, then the hidden/shown objects reverse again.

Regards,

Hi Steve,

> There is an option to hide (view) line/edges, but snapping is still made to these.

There's kind of 2 different methods - there's the Options / View / Display hidden-line curves/edges (which I think you're talking about here), and then there is Edit / hide.

The first one disables the faint dashed hidden-line display. When that is disabled, some snaps like "On" snap will also be disabled, but ones that target individual points like end or mid will still be active.

If you use Edit/Hide to hide an object, then there should be no kind of snapping on to it in any way.

So if you really want to get it out of the way and not snap on to it, I'd recommend using Edit/Hide for that purpose. The other one is mainly for people who feel that the faint dashed hidden lines are visually cluttering their display.

re: Hide - basically the confusing part there is that when you go to show objects, it will temporarily display all the hidden objects so that you can select just a subset of them to display instead of displaying them all.

Try these 2 posts and see if they clarify things:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1319.2
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1319.4


> but if I select to draw a line, then the hidden/shown objects reverse again.

What was happening here, is that you still had not finalized the last step of "show", which is to select what you want to show. Or at that point instead of clicking on objects, you can also right-click or press the Hide button a second time to target all objects.

If you fire up a command before finishing the current sequence, that will be the same as if you pushed "Cancel" to bail out of the show action.

This is similar to if you draw a circle, but then push "Line" before clicking the final point of the circle, the circle command will cancel in that case.


Does that make sense? Please let me know if this is still not clear.


The reason why Hide works in this confusing manner is to make the show part more powerful and flexible and allow for bringing back just one hidden object instead of all.

- Michael

Hi Michael.

>>>The first one disables the faint dashed hidden-line display. When that is disabled, some snaps like "On" snap will also be disabled, but ones that target individual points like end or mid will still be active.

Yes, I understand that, but from what I would class as a simple model, I do have problems with selection: With the views off, as simple example:






With the Hide/show.
This I see as only works if a selection is made first. So do not fully understand your explanation.

> Yes, I understand that, but from what I would class as a
> simple model, I do have problems with selection: With the
> views off, as simple example:

When you have a lot of points bunched up like that, it usually helps a lot to zoom in on that area, that will tend to make it a lot easier to pick the point you are trying to reach.

Also if there are certain kinds of snaps getting in your way, you can disable some of them by going to the Object Snap button on the bottom toolbar, and using the arrow that appears above it to pop up the menu.

If you've got a bunch of stuff getting in your way, hiding that stuff is generally your best bet.


> With the Hide/show.
> This I see as only works if a selection is made first.
> So do not fully understand your explanation.

If you make a selection first, then pushing hide after that will hide whatever is selected.

If you have nothing selected, then pressing Hide will trigger the "show" operation instead.

The "show" operation has an additional stage to it - it does not immediately exit after it is invoked. Instead it waits for you to specify which hidden object you want to show - you do this by selecting the object and then pushing Done or right-click. At that point only that particular object will be shown and the rest of the hidden objects (which were being temporarily displayed) will go back to being hidden.

As a shortcut for showing all objects you can click the "Hide" button a second time, rather than going to the viewport and actually selecting every single object there.

- Michael

I may be able to tune this up to a certain extent in v2, but trying to snap to only visible endpoints has some difficult parts to it.

Probably some situations will cause points to be left out where you might not want them left out, like a big line overlapping on top of a shorter line. If the bigger line covers up the smaller line, then you wouldn't get a chance to snap to the endpoints of the small line.

There are quite a few places during normal modeling where things overlap for a while, so it could be problematic to have these kinds of missing points in overlaps, that's why it does not attempt to do it currently.

A quick test of a couple of different CAD programs yields the same behavior as MoI, presumably for similar reasons.


I have added this to the wiki wishlist to keep track of.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>>When you have a lot of points bunched up like that, it usually helps a lot to zoom in on that area, that will tend to make it a lot easier to pick the point you are trying to reach.

Yes, but it does kill the flow having to zoom in to every point to confirm correct snapping.

>>>Also if there are certain kinds of snaps getting in your way, you can disable some of them by going to the Object Snap button on the bottom toolbar, and using the arrow that appears above it to pop up the menu.

I have also followed that route, but still have to zoom in, or I get similar as shown,



>>>If you've got a bunch of stuff getting in your way, hiding that stuff is generally your best bet.

That is what I have been doing, but I was thinking that after you select an object, then "hide", that on the second press of hide that the selection would reverse, what I would of thought as an easy option to "hide all not selected".

Is there a way to inverse selection? So I can select a few objects, inverse selection, then hide.

>>>A quick test of a couple of different CAD programs yields the same behavior as MoI, presumably for similar reasons.

In other CAD programs, I have better management of objects such as "Layers"

Regards,
Steve

The best way for 3d snapping IMHO is the use of working planes instead of layers.
If I can snap only on selected faces it will be more simple to snap correctly, simulating the use of planes.
Snappin in the 'volume' is quite difficult and may be better to snap using the ortho views and passing from one to another (with LMB on).

Gianrico

Hi Steve,

> That is what I have been doing, but I was thinking that after
> you select an object, then "hide", that on the second press of
> hide that the selection would reverse, what I would of thought
> as an easy option to "hide all not selected".

I can see how that would look like that.

But what actually happens here is after the object is hidden, then nothing is selected.

When nothing is selected and you push the "Hide" button again you trigger the regular show mode, same as if you pushed it at any time when there are no objects selected.


To do a "Hide all not selected" (sometimes called "Isolate selection", etc... ) is a different thing, you can do that by setting up a shortcut key with this script on it:

script:moi.geometryDatabase.invertSelection(); moi.geometryDatabase.hide(true);

> Is there a way to inverse selection? So I can select a few objects,
> inverse selection, then hide.

Yup, there is a button for this Select menu on the right-side pane. If you want to set it up on a keyboard shortcut, use this:

script:moi.geometryDatabase.invertSelection();

But if you want to do this frequently you may want to use the other script above which bundles the invert and the hide all together.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>>To do a "Hide all not selected" (sometimes called "Isolate selection", etc... ) is a different thing, you can do that by setting up a shortcut key with this script on it:

Many thanks, that was just what I was looking for.

Regards,
Steve

Hi Michael,

>>>I have added this to the wiki wishlist to keep track of.

After the options you have now shown (via scripts) I actually see no need for this. I would therefore ask you to remove this request (unless other have/do ask) I would prefer you to spend time on what is actually needed.


Regards,
Steve

edit:
PS
Layers would be nice.

Hi Steve, I have already thought about it a little bit, and I think I may have a way to make it work while avoiding the overlapping type problem that I was talking about.

It turns out that the new method that I have planned is not too terribly difficult to achieve, I think I should be able to give it a try in v2 without really disrupting other work.

I'm not 100% sure if it will work out or not but I would like to give it a try and see...

So there is a good chance that this may come along anyway.


Layers / organization type tools are definitely going to be a big focus of V2 though. But that's going to involve a significant new piece of UI and will take a fair amount of time to complete. I will probably chew on it pretty early in the v2 cycle though.

- Michael