> That looks like a very interesting idea for a toolbar, did you 
> implement drag and drop? 

Yes.

> What about a graphic view instead of just text? The names of the 
> pieces aren't very helpful (to be honest I've been considering removing 
> them) so I'm thinking it could have a picture of each step with the 
> pieces from the previous steps faded or the pieces added in each step 
> highlighted. 

Would that be purely a visual cue of what pieces that step is referring to, or 
do you imagine actually selecting pieces in the step graphic?  

I thought briefly of a movie strip type view-only similar to video editing and 
animation apps, but the utility of that wasn't obvious to me in this case.

A feature I thought of along similar lines with fading was adding a horizontal 
slider (perhaps at the bottom of the window) that lets you navigate the model 
view through the steps quickly - if you press the shift key while doing this 
you see all pieces that are not part of the current step become faded.  

Regarding piece names, again, I like using drawing apps with layering and such 
- it doesn't solve all problems, but it is nice to spot those two wheels by 
name in your axle group or whatever when organizing things.  What seems to make 
names far less important is having a sophisticated selection mechanism (like 
drilling the selection down into a group by clicking the same piece multiple 
times.)

P.S. I am periodically reminded that there is a "hide step" property in the 
piece structure.  What's the intended purpose of that?  Incorporating that 
might warrant a true storyboard/timeline type interface.  My experiment is not 
aware of it.

- Rod

> 
> You could also have the text view combined with the groups toolbar 
> and an option to group pieces by step or by group. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 7:59 AM, Rodney Rushing 
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: 
> I've been experimenting with my storyboard ideas. 
> 
> http://www.yenandjen.com/steps-toolbar.png 
> 
> One significant observation is that arranging steps is a separate 
> creative process from simply building a model. I think I would always 
> build the entire model first, then figure out how to explode it into 
> steps. That gets tricky for me. While the story board and render view 
> lets me see what pieces are in the current step, it doesn't help me 
> visualize which other pieces I might want to move into the current step 
> - I can't see them in the render view, and I can't distinguish between 
> two 1 x 1 bricks in the step view. 
> 
> One thought is a step render view where you can only view and select 
> pieces at any step independent of the edit render view. This way you 
> can see what's in other steps, select pieces, and send them to the 
> current step view. 
> 
> - Rod 
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