Hi Pilou,

> No problem as there are only 3 natures of these objects
> (Cylinder, Cone, Sphere)
> But when I have thousand of different natures?
> There is not an only selection nature Object when Color is yet selected?

In the future I want to have a "filter" mechanism that would help with this kind of thing.

That would be something like - go to the Red style and set it as an active filter (some kind of icon would show on it or something like that), then when that was set if you used other sections of the scene browser the controls would only target objects with style = red in addition to their regular categories.


But it is possible to get what you need currently by using a couple of steps with selection though.


> Say I want see only "red cubes" on the screen with the follow image

Step 1 - start by right-clicking on the eye icon for boxes in the Objects section of the scene browser.

You should now see only all cubes being displayed on the screen. Now the task is to hide all things with style = red.

Step 2 - go to Style = Red in the scene browser, and hold down the Shift key and click on its text label (the text that says "Red", that's where to click to do selections). This will select all the red objects that are currently visible. When you hold down the shift key it means that it will only select visible objects, if you don't hold down shift it will select all of them and make any hidden ones become visible (there is a setting in moi.ini to make the Shift behavior the default, I'm thinking of switching it to be default in v3 also).

Step 3 - invert the selection by Select > Invert (this is a handy thing to put on a keyboard shortcut for I, to do that set the command part of the shortcut key to script:moi.geometryDatabase.invertSelection(); )

Now everything except for the red boxes is selected.

Step 4 - use the Edit > Hide button to hide those objects and you will be left with only red boxes being shown.



In the future a filter mechanism should help to make this easier, but for now you can get what you need by those steps above - the particular trick is to make sure you hold down the Shift key when doing the selection in the scene browser, to only target currently visible objects to be selected.


If you only wanted to do some operation to all the red boxes (like scale them, rotate them, etc...), you could actually skip step 3 & 4 because they are all selected at step 2.


- Michael

I tend to use the locking mechanism as a filtering system, holding the CTRL key and right click the style or object to filter, everything else will be 'unselectable'. This method can also be used with Pilou's example.

-

Hi Michael
I am agree with your description but...
Step 1 Right click on the eyes of the Cube ok
Step 2 clikc + SHift on the Text of red label OK reds cubes are selected
Step 3 Inverse selection curiously don't works!
the button inverse selection function (or the "I" key) don't inverse the selection !
the inverse function disable only the red cubes selected but not select the inverse !!!

so don't works!


If I begin by the Colors then Objects
that's works !!!
Step 1 right click on the eyes of the Red color = all red objects are visible

Step 2 Shift + click on the Text of the Cube = only red cubes are selected

Step 3 Inverse Selection = all red objects except red cubes are selected

Step 4 Hide selection! = Only Red cubes are visible that I Want !
all is ok
So seems begin by the Color is the right order? Curious, curious :)

Hi Pilou,

> Step 1 Right click on the eyes of the Cube ok
> Step 2 clikc + SHift on the Text of red label OK reds cubes are selected
> Step 3 Inverse selection curiously don't works!

I guess you must have some sub-objects selected of the cubes, like faces are selected instead of "whole objects".

When you have a sub-object selection then doing an invert selection will only invert the selection of those sub-objects.

Another thing that you can use instead of inverting the selection is to right-click on the Edit > Hide button - doing a right-click on that button will perform an "Isolate" function where it hides everything other than what is currently selected.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> If I begin by the Colors then Objects
> that's works !!!

By doing that order you ended up with "whole object" selected before doing the invert, instead of having "sub objects" of those cubes selected which is probably what happened with the other way.

- Michael

In the 2 cases I begin with nothing selected!
I have only simple primitives 3D

The file ;)
You must find one "red cube" ;)

Right click style red eye
double clcik ball object eye
double clcik cyl object eye.

Left clcik object cube
Right clcik red style eye
right clcik hide twice

Right clcik object cube text
right clcik hide
right clcik hide

Burr, MoI square dancing steps?

-

""""""""MoI square dancing steps?""""""""

Hahahahaha!!!

I suppose that would be "Rat Click Had... Rat Clcik Had.. Now Dosey Doe!!! :o

Here's another,

CTRL+RMB eye of 'cub'
Pick style 'Rouge'
ALT+RMB Hide (twice)

-

Hi Pilou,

> In the 2 cases I begin with nothing selected!
> I have only simple primitives 3D

Yes, but there is a difference between how the name label is assigned compared to how the Styles are assigned.

The name label is assigned to the "top level object" - meaning the solid that is the parent container object that owns the faces and edges.

The Style = Red on the other hand is not assigned to the parent object, it's only assigned to face and edges sub-objects and not to the parent container object.

So when you do a "select things with style = red", what you end up with is a sub-object selection, similar to if you had selected 1 face or or edge for example. And when you have a sub-object selection, doing an Invert after that will invert the selection of sub-objects inside of the parent container and not invert the selection of top level objects.

This is due to the script that I sent to you earlier by PM - in that script I forgot to have the script assign the style to the parent object - instead it ended up assigning the styles to sub-objects only leaving the parent object actually assigned to a different style. It's difficult to see this since what you see on the screen is actually the edge and face sub objects.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> The file ;)
> You must find one "red cube" ;)

Follow the same first 2 steps that I wrote previously here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4194.6

And then for the 3rd step instead of inverting the selection, just right-click on the Edit > Hide button instead.

So do these steps:

Step 1 - right click on the eye icon for cub in the Objects section of the scene browser.

Now only boxes are being shown.


Step 2 - go to Style = Red in the scene browser, and hold down the Shift key and click on its text label.

Now the red edges and faces are selected.


Step 3 - right click on the Edit > Hide button, here:




The result is just one red box being displayed, and it's actually one less step than what I wrote originally. This method is not sensitive to the styles being assigned only to sub-objects and not to the parent.

Note that if you want to repeat these steps more than once, you may need to do the right-click in the 3rd step twice, because the way that right-click isolate function works is that the first time you use it, it makes a memory snapshot of the current display properties and then hides everything other than the current selection. Then when you use it again it restores that memory snapshot - object visibility will be the same then as before you did the isolate. So it actually works in sets of 2 clicks - 1 right click to isolate and then the 2nd right click to restore.

- Michael

Hi Pilou, so here's an updated script for assigning random colors:

script: /* Assign random styles to solids */ var styles = moi.geometryDatabase.getObjectStyles(); var breps = moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getBReps(); for ( var i = 0; i < breps.length; ++i ) { var brep = breps.item(i); var style_index = Math.floor(Math.random() * styles.length); brep.styleIndex = style_index; }

This script also assigns the style to the parent object instead of only to sub-object edges and faces like the previous one that I sent you by PM - if you use this script instead of the previous one to assign the colors then it won't have the tricky behavior with the invert selection.

- Michael

Ok! Now that works in 3 steps with the last new script! ;)
Right click on the eye's Cube
Shift + Click on the Color text Label
Right Click on the Hide Button

Thanks for all this swinging selection!
All seems now working fine! :)

THX also to Mr Bur, and DannyT for add some test variations :)

PS So maybe a good thing to put also an Hide / Show and Inverse selection buttons (icone) inside the Browser for avoid to accoss the screen with the Graphic Pen /mouse?

Hi Pilou,

> PS So maybe a good thing to put also an Hide / Show
> and Inverse selection buttons (icone) inside the Browser
> for avoid to accoss the screen with the Graphic Pen /mouse?

Well, adding a lot of extra buttons to the scene browser will have a bad side effect of making its basic existing functions more difficult to use - too many buttons just makes things more difficult to manage and to see what is going on.

The browser actually already does do hide/show functions, by clicking on the eye icon on any browser item. But that also targets that browser item's category. Like for Style = red, it is focused on hiding and showing the items that have been assigned Style = red, which is pretty simple to figure out.

The other controls for Edit > Hide use the current selection instead of a predefined category like the scene browser.

One thing that's nice about MoI's system is that you can use these different pieces in combination with one another (like hide/show by category inside the scene browser, or hide/show by selection using Edit > Hide).

Having them in slightly different areas of the screen actually helps keep things well organized and easier to understand.

If the scene browser had a bunch of additional controls within a single item that were not actually related to that particular item (which seems to be what you are asking for), that would probably be confusing for someone to try and figure out.

So it's kind of tricky - trying to optimize everything for not moving the mouse very far is not very helpful if it causes a UI that has too many not strongly related things just jumbled together...


In the future I would like to add a kind of "filter" mechanism which I think would simplify this particular task that you were asking about though.


- Michael

Hi Pilou, also you can avoid moving the mouse all the way across the screen by switching the Scene browser position back to its default value of "Adjacent" - that will make it show up right next to the side pane instead of on the opposite side of the screen from it.

For that setting, go to Options > General > "Scene browser position" = Adjacent.

- Michael

Yes, that is also possible ;)