Hi scott, usually it tends to be better to use hiding/showing to work on focused areas rather than moving things away / moving back.

The "isolate" method that Samuel mentions above can help with that, that's available by a shortcut key script like he has above or also in the UI it is triggered by a right-click on the Edit > Hide button. It hides everything other than what is selected so you can focus more easily on the selected objects. It also retains a memory of the hidden state of everything before the isolation and when you trigger it a second time it will restore everything to its pre-isolate state.

For an "object stack" sometimes Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V copy paste can work well for that, before you disturb the object, grab a snapshot of it with Ctrl+C, then when you want to restore it delete the disturbed object and use Ctrl+V paste to paste back in the original.

You could also do export/import to files for a similar effect, set up something like this on a shortcut key:

Export c:\3DM\MyFile.3DM

When the shortcut for Export has a filename after it like that, it will use that filename directly for the export rather than popping up a file name dialog. Then you put:

Import c:\3DM\MyFile.3DM

on a different shortcut key to read it in. You can set up several separate "channels" this way by using different keys that use different file names.


Hope those help give you some ideas.

But usually it tends to be a bit better to use hide/show rather than those methods.

Another trick for hide/show is "Show subset", that's available by a Ctrl+click on the Edit > Hide button. That will temporarily show all the hidden objects and let you select just some of them to be shown rather than showing them all.

- Michael

"Another trick for hide/show is "Show subset", that's available by a Ctrl+click on the Edit > Hide button. That will temporarily show all the hidden objects and let you select just some of them to be shown rather than showing them all."

Oh god... After all those years using MoI I still learn awesome stuff!! This is so useful!! Thanks

Also what I usually do in my workflow when Isolate is not enough is that I pick the move tool and move the part by a fixed value like 100 units in 1 axis

Just pick the move tool then type 100 and done, then you can work on it and after that you just move it back by the exact same value :)

Hi Samuel,

> Also what I usually do in my workflow when Isolate is not enough is that I pick the move tool and
> move the part by a fixed value like 100 units in 1 axis
>
> Just pick the move tool then type 100 and done, then you can work on it and after that you just
> move it back by the exact same value :)

You can also do this by object dragging without needing to trigger the move tool.

Type your distance value in before you do the drag, it will then use that as a distance constraint during the drag operation.

If you do this a lot you can also use this script on a shortcut key to trigger a fixed distance constraint with one keystroke:

script: /* Set distance constraint of 100 */ var pp = moi.ui.getActivePointPicker(); if ( !pp ) pp = moi.ui.createPointPicker(); pp.setDistanceConstraint( 100.0 );

The shortcut key for that can be triggered either before or during the drag.

- Michael

This is great learning, thanks!

Wow, the Ctrl + click on the Hide button is a very useful tip, thanks once again Michael!