Hi Michael,
I don't know if this is on your Browser tweak list, when selecting/highlighting 'Types and 'Styles' from the Browser, I was expecting it to highlight only visible items not to show and highlight hidden items as well, tell me your fixing this in the next beta :)

Cheers

Hi Danny,

> I was expecting it to highlight only visible items not to show
> and highlight hidden items as well

Actually that is intentional behavior.

By working in that way, it basically ensures that the selection operation works on the same set of objects as the hide/show operation does.

Basically it makes it easier to know what is going to happen - the action is consistently applied to all things that make up that set.

You mention 'Types' and 'Styles' - what about named objects? For example if you have 2 objects named "something", you mean you would expect for the selection action to not actually select all objects with that name, instead skipping over the ones that are currently hidden?


What if I added a modifier key that would do what you are talking about, maybe like holding down Shift would target only currently visible objects?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

A modifier key would be good, I had the situation where I had a bunch of construction curves that were of the same style, there were some that I wanted to keep and the rest to be deleted, I hide the curves I want to keep then highlight the visible curves using the browser for deletion.
In the way you have set it up it will delete all curves hidden or not.


Cheers

Hi Danny, yeah it definitely sounds like it would be useful for situations like that, and probably various other things.

I'm just not sure about doing it by default since that would mean you could possibly have to do 2 clicks (first on the eye, then do the select) to actually select everything that belongs to a given browser item slot, if some things were hidden.

I think that especially when we get to groups it will be kind of nice to have the default browser selection action be kind of a "single click always selects this whole thing".


So I've set it up with a modifier key for the next beta - if you hold down shift when you click on the browser item's text, the selection will skip over any currently hidden objects, they will stay hidden and unselected.

That will work for both shift+left click (add to current selection) as well as shift+right click (make "isolated" selection - only those items become the selection).

Thanks for the feedback!

- Michael

Sounds good Micheal,

The browser is starting to shape up nicely to cater for the different styles and methodology of scene management that different people would be used to.

Cheers

I would expect that things hidden would be left out of current operations also. Until I explicitly unhide them.

Hi Michael,

Is there any chance in the near future that we might see some form of an "example file" on how you see the Browser to be used?
Obviously this "example file" would need to wait until you've finished sorting out the various Browser sections.

My reason for asking is that the only kind of "system" I've ever used is Rhino's Layers system, so my understanding is very limited.
I do grasp the fact that your Browser system offers many more options & once it's all complete will be very powerful.
Aside from using the Styles as the replacement for Layers, I'm kind of lost as to how best to use the rest of it?

I should add that I'm not creating any of my models for render purposes...so maybe I'll only ever need the Styles section??
All of my completed models are just being Exported out as an STL file for milling as jewellery items.
In most cases I'm just saving various Curves & Surfaces to the various Styles for reference should I need to modify the model later on.

regards Colin

Hi Colin, well currently the sections that you can use are "Styles", "Types", and "Objects".

It sounded like styles made sense to you? Styles are basically for organizing objects into different colored categories, like you were mentioning this is the closest thing to layers that you are used to in Rhino.

The Types section is for doing an action on all objects of a particular type like "hide all curves", or "select all solids". One example of this is after you have built a few surfaces, you may notice that your viewport is pretty cluttered up with a lot of the input curves getting in the way. To hide those, you can go to the Types section, and click the eye icon for "Curves", which will hide all those curves. Or maybe you want to only see curves for some work on them - in that case go to Types and right-click on the eye icon for Curves. That will "isolate" the curves making them the only displayed thing and hiding everything else.

In Rhino there is a set of commands kind of similar to this, such as "SelCrv", "SelSrf", etc... , the Types section in MoI has similar functionality except it provides a few different kinds of actions like Hide/Show/Isolate/Select/Deselect , instead of only being a selection mechanism.


Then "Objects" is a list of all objects that you have assigned a name property to, so that you can refer back to it later on. If you don't care so much about differentiating an object by its color, you can instead just assign a name to it, and then later on hide, show, isolate, select, or deselect that object by using its entry in this section.


Basically though all the sections have a pretty simliar purpose - they are all for doing an action like hiding, showing, selecting, etc... on some defined set of objects.

If you don't have a very complex model, you may not really need to use any of this though, it's basically for when you start to notice that it is taking too much time to click on different pieces of things, or when there is quite a lot of stuff on the screen which is getting in your way and you would like to hide chunks of it with a few clicks, stuff like that.

Hope this helps to explain it a bit!

Also you don't necessarily have to use every section - there are some different sections to try and give you some flexibility and choice in how to organize things. If just one method of organization works fine for you then you can just work with that one section and you don't have to use the others.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the explanation & break down of the possible uses.

Just wasn't sure if there was "something more" to all of this than I was presently doing & thinking.
That's partly why I wondered if there might be an "example file" at some point...
...or something similar to your earlier V1 Video Tutorials perhaps?

I guess I'll just wait & see if I'm really going to need anything more than the Styles & Objects.

regards Colin

Hi Colin,

> Just wasn't sure if there was "something more" to all
> of this than I was presently doing & thinking.

No, probably if you haven't had a feeling like you have been frustrated with trying to keep track of things then many of the things in the browser probably won't really be useful to your situation.

The browser stuff will generally tend to be more useful when you have a pretty complex model made up of a lot of pieces.

If you don't have a whole lot of pieces you may not even need to use anything in the browser at all.


re: Example file or video tutorials... Since it mainly helps out when things get more complex, making a really good example file is also maybe a bit more complex than it normally would be. Similar for a video, I may possibly need to put together a kind of complex project to make that, that would unfortunately take quite a bit of time to do. You'd be amazed how much time it took me just to make those v1 videos that were focused on some more simple projects!

- Michael

Hi Michael,

No prob's, Thanks again

regards Colin

I would also like the default action to be that things hidden be left out of current operations until I explicitly unhide them. Could the default action be an option Michael?