On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Rodney Rushing <[email protected]>wrote:
> > 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. > We're probably thinking about the same thing, it would look cool and help with navigation but I'm not sure how that would help with this problem. Maybe you could drag a piece from the main view into the step you want or the other way, drag the step you want from the timeline and drop it over a piece in the main view? > 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. > Max and Maya have a scrollbar like that but I think time for an animation has a different meaning than time in instructions so a scrollbar might not be useful. The timeline toolbar could help with the navigation here. I'm starting to think that a simple option to fade pieces older than the current step is enough or at least a good start. > 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.) > When I say piece names I mean the ability to name each piece anything you want, in previous versions you could change the name of a piece from 'Brick 1x1 #01' to 'Front Left Chair Leg' for example. I don't think anyone ever used this feature and it's not even exposed since the Qt switch. > 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. > It's used if you want to hide a piece after a few steps, I'm not sure anyone ever used this either.
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