Using the keep Clines as is now, you can select them and apply styles to them and rotate them and move them and hide them with browser and name them. You just dont see the selection or colors in the viewport. Seems the only thing missing!

For example when you move your mouse over them, they
don't get a selection preview highlight. They can't be selected
by window select, etc...

So to make it into a fully proper feature involves a variety of
work, not just adding in a single menu item.



Michael, I realize it would take more than just adding a menu item, obviously. You've explained some of the additional work you feel is needed...


I can appreciate keeping all of MoI's functionality orthogonal or behaving in a similar fashion.


In my mind, clines are drawing aids not drawing entities, so I didn't particularly feel they needed to act the same way as other entities, window selection or showing selection highlighting.

Again, I figured you could persist them, and remove them all by clicking on one and selecting an option from the diamond menu popup. Grouping, showing and hiding from the browser. That was the extent of my vision of how to use them.



My suggestion was geared towards limiting the amount of work you had to do in the hopes of seeing this implemented.

The fact that you say the existing cline is a class object is what I had hoped from the beginning - so that's a good thing.


I'm not thirsty for having this now I was reading this thread with interest after thinking of how I could use MoI for my 2D concept drawings if the dynamic cline and the way it works now could be persisted in multiples - that's when I posted my suggestion.

-Will

Hi Will,

> I'm not thirsty for having this now

But you can actually have it now - did you see the part of my previous message showing how you can actually set this up right now on your current version by setting up some keyboard shortcuts?

There are some scripts for this on Petr's page here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#KeepCLine

If you set up a keyboard shortcut with this script on it:
script:moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getConstructionLines().setProperty( "isTemporary", false );

then when you push a key, the clines that you created will stick instead of being cleared at the end of the command...

Also if you set this one on a different shortcut key:
script:var gd = moi.geometryDatabase; gd.removeObjects( gd.getObjects().getConstructionLines() );

Then when you push that it will remove all of the persistent clines.

You can also assign them styles or names I think and that should work to control them using the browser even though some things do not work visually such as the color display. The actual property assignment does work though.

That stuff seems to be what you are asking about here, or am I not understanding you correctly? In the future this will probably be extended by using that menu or something but right now you can set up those keyboard scripts to do it...

Sorry if I was not clear before.

- Michael

Okay, thanks Michael, I'll take a look at the script.

I sort of shy away from scripts cause when I update the betas, they usually don't follow over so I try to avoid using what's not within the MoI base functionality.

This is totally my fault of course.

If I remember correctly, I believe you've even created a utility to help carry over stuff - I'll look around in my MoI notes to see what I can find. (The Pipe command has been about the only command I do try to hang on to since I really like the functionality of that one!)

-Will

Its fairly straight forward will. You can keep a folder in your my docs where you copy any scripts into before you copy them to your commands folder. In same folder a text doc where you type your shortcuts and command names/scripts.

New beta release....Copy folder to folder and copy text to ini shortcuts section. Takes about 30 seconds.

Hi Will,

> I sort of shy away from scripts cause when I update
> the betas, they usually don't follow over so I try to avoid
> using what's not within the MoI base functionality.

Actually the ones that are completely contained inside of a keyboard shortcut (rather than having additional files involved) do carry over between beta releases.

That previous "keep construction lines" one that I mentioned is like that - because the entire script is contained in the keyboard shortcut, that script gets stored in your moi.ini file and unless you have moved the moi.ini file it it will stay in its regular central location and be found automatically by a new beta release.

It's when you have a more intensive "custom command" installed which may contain a larger script or also has accompanying UI files, that you need to copy stuff over between releases. That's when there are additional files involved to run the script, like if you download a .zip file with stuff in it.


> If I remember correctly, I believe you've even created a utility
> to help carry over stuff

Yes, for every v2 beta release shortly after the release I've posted a utility program that will copy any custom commands you had for v1 over to the new v2 beta.

But you don't actually need that for this particular case with the "Keep construction lines" script since it does not have additional files, the whole script is just stored in the keyboard shortcut itself.

- Michael