Hi okapi, I'm not so sure about just directly copying the way that Rhino handles parent/child layers, it's kind of weird in some ways.

In particular I don't like how in Rhino the parent layer has its own color setting which when set has no effect on the child at all. Having a parent/child relationship like that makes it seem like there should be some kind of inheritence happening with stuff like materials or color properties but then there isn't.

It seems like a cleaner idea for that kind of grouping mechanism would be to have folders where you could make a folder to contain items and collapse things, rather than trying to make an actual style for the parent object.

But a folder mechanism like that may not be compatible with Rhino's parent/child layer structure, so I'm not sure about being able to transfer that structure back and forth from MoI to Rhino.

One big potential thing for a folder mechanism is that maybe it could be used as a general purpose organizer thing throughout the scene browser, like in the future there will probably be many other sections in the scene browser like "named views", "saved cplanes", etc... and having one general mechanism to organize that stuff with folders would be nice.

There was some previous discussion of this here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3415.1

- Michael

Hi Michael,
it would be nice if it could somehow be compatible with Rhino's system, but if not it is not too bad.
I think the ideas you are talking about sound very interesting.
Basically, I am finding myself working in some files where I have, say 4 elevations and 3 sections, and each of these has about 20 or 30 styles.
I can of course put all lines from one object into a style, but it would be better if I can keep the colors, for readability.
However, with 100+ styles visible in the manager, it is hard to find anything there.

I agree with the idea of having one general type of mechanism for the different browsers, it makes the program more logical, instead of having separate mechanisms for each.

The tricky part with compatibility would be what to do with objects that were assigned to a "parent" layer in Rhino.

In the folder concept, the folder itself would not be a style or layer, it would just be a container. Objects would not be assigned just directly to a folder, they would be assigned to one of the styles that were contained inside of the folder.

Maybe I could give compatibility if you did not have any objects assigned directly to parent layers themselves in Rhino, like if you were just using those layers as placeholders to contain a bunch of sub-layers only. Then those empty parent layers would be able to be mapped to a folder in MoI.

- Michael

I'm not sure why the groups have to be related to styles...

But I would really like the added functionality of groups in MoI.

So you could assign soem objects to a named group, and then they'd all move/rotate/scale together (unless you go inside the group, then you can edit the objects individually).

The more I use MoI (for larger projects) the more I find myself wanting groups :)

Hi NightCabbage, yeah there will be something called a "group" like you are talking about that will be separate from what's being discussed here.

The option that I'm talking about here is just to help organize big lists of things in the scene browser.

Like for example say you need to make a model that has 500 different styles in it. That would make for a very long styles list and browsing through the list can get tedious. But if it was possible to organize the styles by putting them in a folder type list that could be useful. That way you could collapse many of the folders to keep a lot of those styles out of the way from the currently visible list of styles.

It would not be meant as a replacement for an object group, it would be something additional to that just as an option to use in the scene browser lists of stuff.

- Michael

Ah cool ok, that sounds good too :)

Hi everyone,

Remember, MoI is NOT Rhinoceros. It's better:-)

Michael T.