Hello everyone,

As I said in my first post I've been having a lot of fun changing the UI. I have a large monitor (1600 x 1200) and wanted to have more on the screen. I also kept going to the top left for file operations. So I reworked the top and bottom bars. Added a delete points icon next to the standard delete. I've also created icons for and added as many commands/scripts as I could, hard to keep up with Michael :-). Though this is not really necessary with the new plugin window, I like having them on the palettes.

I'm pretty pleased with the results and I've attached a zip file of the files should anyone else like it too.
This is really designed for large monitors but I've included two versions of the side pane. The smaller one (this is the one in the ui folder in the zip file)should hopefully work on a 1280x1024 screen as well.

Screen grab showing larger side pane, smaller one combines the tools and transform palettes.


Extra commands in lock and special



Regards
Tony

Nice job, that looks pretty neat.

really great job, but I don't know about this design.

honestly, the only thing I want to see different from the current user interface is the ability to pull out tabs, I have to keep switching between tabs in order to get to the tools and that gets confusing, so please let this be a feature in V2.

Looks like youve spent pretty much time on this UI ...
What I dont understand is why the scale array is not where the
other array tool is....?
Have you asked Michael to work on the V2...... ?
I realy would love to see all the plugins and some more in
a future beta !
There is already quite an amount of new things in this forum already(scripts).
What I realy would want is as few buttons to as much functionality..... pretty much
the way Moi3d is intended to be like !
Peter

Nice work Tony, Commands look really Cool I love the extra Select Option, I always import iges with contraction lines in case parts need to be recreated, Very helpful.

In terms of layout I personally will agree with Val (Gat) {honestly, the only thing I want to see different from the current user interface is the ability to pull out tabs, I have to keep switching between tabs in order to get to the tools and that gets confusing, so please let this be a feature in V2.}

To add, taking into consideration More Commands,Tools to Come, Michael sublayer system will come in handy. For example Select tab with additional commands from Tony could be under one button, like Boolean etc.

Something else to Suggest is a Context sensitive Menu, Were Tools would be available in context to what you working on...

I would also like to be able to customize UI and Import independent Commands, Tools in a more Dummies friendly way.

Hi Tony, I'm glad you are having fun with the UI toolkit!

A lot of nice little details in there, I like the eye icon and the [ ] grouping brackets in the view control areas.

It looks like you have really gotten the hang of all the mechanisms that make up the UI.

- Michael

Hi Val,

> honestly, the only thing I want to see different from the
> current user interface is the ability to pull out tabs, <...>

You mean like drag on a tab to kind of "undock" it and then drop it somewhere else?

Unfortunately accomplishing that it a really big area of work. I think it would be great to have it, but it is hard to schedule the time to do it very soon since it is so time consuming. Right now I am doubtful that it will fit into the v2 schedule.

There was an older discussion here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=844.1
about editing the UI just to separate out those toolboxes, I think there is another alternate UI in that thread that has that set up.


But for future scalability it is pretty important to have a system where it doesn't have every single toolbox displayed all at once by default. In the future I will be adding a bunch of additional tabs over there, and if it was just all single expanded toolboxes all the time, it would run out of space pretty quickly and not really scale up to have many more toolboxes.

So that's one big reason for the current system - it is much more "future proof".


However, I have made an attempt to try and put some different kinds of tabs on each row to try and minimize the amount of switching that is necessary. That's why for example Draw curve and edit are not on the same row.

Are there a few specific tools that you find yourself needing to switch between more frequently than anything else? If so, please let me know about that, there are other things that I can do to help out in certain circumstances. Like for example I do want to add a kind of quick editing frame to handle scaling and rotation right inside the viewport without needing to go to the transform tab all the time for that. If I knew about other frequent "switchers", it would help me to think about other possibilities to bring some of their functionality out in other ways as well.

I also want to have a method that lets you drag out a particular command that you might use frequently and place that on the bottom toolbar in a kind of custom toolbar area (between Object Snap and Options). This is probably something that will happen before a full blown palette drag/drop, but I'm still not sure exactly when.

It is possible to edit the UI files to place a particular button in that area right now, let me know if you would like more information on how to do that.

- Michael

I like the UI with as much as possible on the right hand side.
Similar to the one given me by Michael on a thread recently.
I only need the manipulators to be on the RH side(vertical) as maybe coming as an option in V2?

Thanks for the comments people. I made this partially because I wanted to see how far I could get and also I always like customizing the interface. For V2 I would also really like to be able to detach the palettes (tabs?). I have a whole second monitor that I use for palettes for photoshop, etc. that MoI can't use at the moment.

>> It looks like you have really gotten the hang of all the mechanisms that make up the UI.

Thanks Michael. I'm no html expert though - I just kept trying things until I figured out what did what. Managed to cause a few errors along the way but nothing stopped MoI loading.

>>What I dont understand is why the scale array is not where the
>>other array tool is....?

I put it there because, in my mind, it isn't really an array. It's a tool you use after you made an array. Made sense to me ;-)

>>For example Select tab with additional commands from Tony could be under one button, like Boolean etc

I tried to make this but failed to get it working properly. Also this makes for an extra click which I didn't want so I gave up and left them all available. I find myself using the select all curves one quite a bit.

Hi yannada,

>>>I have to keep switching between tabs in order to get to the tools and that gets confusing

I have changed my layout that does remove the tabs, (the commandsets are still in place on this version, so when I click on "line" for example, it does then open out to the option of line/polyine)



I have on this version placed all commands out into view (no commandsets, no sub options)

image trimmed~ not showing all commands

Manz

This is great idea - did you use just one tab or no tabs at all? Can't quite see on the image.

Hi Tony,

There is a need to place a tab (just one at the top), but I did not name it, so the tab is there (and can be clicked) but it is very thin (so not easy to see)

Thanks manz.

Thanks Michael. I didn't know that it would be a lot of work. Something else like creating a custom palette will work just as fine. The tools I find myself using most frequently after edge tools are boolean operations and surface creation tools in one tab and then scale and mirror on the other. I got some hot keys set up, but the problem with scale is that it has more options and the hot key will use the last used setting, so it is necessary to switch sometimes.

Thanks!
Val

Hi Val,

> I got some hot keys set up, but the problem with scale is
> that it has more options and the hot key will use the last
> used setting, so it is necessary to switch sometimes.

Could you please elaborate a bit on this one - for the regular Scale command there is just one "Make copies" option... Is that the option you are referring to here? Or are you talking about the difference between the 3D / 2D / 1D scaling commands?

If that "Make copies" option gets in your way, you can actually skip setting it by instead holding down the Ctrl key when you click the final point for the scale, that is an alternate way to drop a copy without setting the check-box.


But definitely simple scaling and rotating are things that I want to enable by a kind of "in viewport" type grips which should really reduce needing to open up the Transform tab so much.

You can get a feel for how I think these will work by using the current View/Image command to insert a background image - while you are in that Image command it will have grips just outside the corners of it for scaling, and also one for rotation as well.

- Michael

> But definitely simple scaling and rotating are things that I want to enable by a kind of "in viewport"
> type grips which should really reduce needing to
> open up the Transform tab so much.

I hope you plan to leave the existing scale commands as well. I love the way they work.

Me too !
i like the way they work !
Much better then the eyeballing in some other programs !
Peter

Hi Tony,

> I hope you plan to leave the existing scale commands as well.
> I love the way they work.

Yup, that is the plan - the existing scale and rotate commands will stay exactly as they are. The existing ones will have some advantages for precision work since they can snap on to reference points in the model for exact measurements and also take specific numeric input.

The idea for the other ones will be for doing quicker more just mouse-driven type manipulation.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>>But definitely simple scaling and rotating are things that I want to enable by a kind of "in viewport" type grips....

I would agree with Tony,....... but think you would leave current scaling (and move/ rotate) in place anyway.

I know having onscreen (widgets) manipulators can be good and save some time if they are implemented well. I see the "widgets" in many 3d poly modelers and they can be a complete pain at times, as they can become hidden/ off screen, I usually end up disabling them.

So if you do implement such a feature, could you please make it an option, so I can disable if wanted.


- Steve

edit:

Sorry Michael, you replied already.

Great, thanks Michael