I'm commin to join ya Weezy!!!

Excellent!

Woaw !
That's gonna be a useful feature. :-)
Can the user choose which face of the pasted object he wants to use. For example what if I want to snap the top of your rocket object instead of the bottom ?
Nice addition to the toolset.

Hi Michael,

> One thing I don't like too much is the
> axis triad lines tend to get obscured
> by the object you are pasting in.

Looks like the next thing you'll have to work on is transparency :)
Will it work in edges only, like text, on the other hand if the object your bringing has a lot of edges it might still be a problem.

It would be nice maybe when the triad is activate it has the traditional, different colour for each axis kind of thing, would that make it more distinct also the object coming in could be the 'locked' color.

Just some ideas.

Cheers

Hi Bernard,

> Can the user choose which face of the pasted object he wants
> to use.

Yeah, it will use the construction plane's origin (which by default is the world 0,0,0 origin point) at the time the object was copied to the clipboard as the base point.

So you can position the source object in relation to the origin to adjust that, either that or you can move the cplane to the spot you want.

Also I think there will be an alternate copy command that will prompt you to pick a base point for the copy.

So a few different methods will be available for controlling the part's source position.



> For example what if I want to snap the top of your rocket object
> instead of the bottom ?

So in the examples I showed previously, the pasted in object was in this place when I did Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard:



If you wanted the top to be the snap point, you would instead position the object that you are copying like this:



Or you can alternatively place the cplane instead of moving the object, or use the alternate copy command which will let you click a point and use it as the base point.

- Michael

Hi Danny,

> Will it work in edges only, like text, on the other hand
> if the object your bringing has a lot of edges it might
> still be a problem.

The problem with doing edges only is that it would be different than all the other transform commands.

On a heavy model, drawing the edges actually takes longer than drawing the shaded surface part. Text is kind of a different case, because it has to create the full solid and also mesh it before it could draw the shaded surface. It's due to that creation step being involved that it does wires only in the Text preview.

In MoI v2 there is an optimization that kicks in when you are transforming a model after it gets to a certain number of faces, where it stops drawing the edges and only draws the shaded surfaces for the dynamic mouse feedback, to make for faster feedback.

So doing edges only for the output on a transformation type command is just not a good fit...


> It would be nice maybe when the triad is activate it has
> the traditional, different colour for each axis kind of thing,
> would that make it more distinct

Well, that gets back to the stuff I mentioned a few days ago where I tend to try to minimize the use of colors in the UI in general.

One thing that I don't like about colorizing axis directions is that some people end up strongly associating the colors specifically with the world axis directions, so like if they see a red axis that means "World x axis" to them and can lead to confusion when it is pointing in a different direction (since it is a local axis for some operation) than some other red axis being displayed as the world axis, stuff like that.

There is a big text label that shows up when you mouse over every axis line and the axis line gets a glow around it, and the glow shows up on top of everything. So it's not particularly difficult to figure out what is what after you cruise the mouse over things.

Also colorizing would not do any good if the axis lines were all submerged anyway...


> also the object coming in
> could be the 'locked' color.

That would also be way different than other transform commands. When giving a preview for things, I try when possible to do "What you see is what you get", instead of shifting things suddenly at the end. Like for example if you have a red object and you use the Transform/Copy command (the one like Move not the clipboard one) to make copies of it, you get to see that each object is red when you place it, stuff like that.


So yeah probably some transparency level would be the best way, but that won't be possible until some point in the future.


- Michael

I knew there would be several options for the user to choose from ! :-)
Personally, I like the idea of an "alternate copy command".

Thanks Michael

Hi Bernard, yeah the idea for the alternate copy command is that it would be launched by a Right-click on Edit/Copy, or by doing Ctrl+Shift+C (instead of just Ctrl+C).

That will then ask you to pick an origin point which will be used to define the base point for "PastePart".

So that will be one of the easier ways to use this - if you want to do a Copy/Paste with this repositioning mechanism, use Ctrl+Shift+C to copy it instead of just plain Ctrl+C so you can pick the base point, and use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste it instead of just plain Ctrl+V.

That allows the simple regular Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V behavior to remain the same instead of making extra steps for them.

- Michael

once again a very intelligent solution by you Michael.

Hi Michael,

Very cool tool!

PastePart looks like it's going to be really useful for positioning gemstones and prongs.

Jesse

Wow that's fantastic.

I like your videos too, they really show the possibilities of using snaps and temporary guides actively.

-Fredrik