BOX SELECTION - ruby request
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Hi there!
I'm thinking of a ruby the converts a ordinary box into a "selection-box" it often comes to me, that i want to select many entities by drawing selection-square from the right side (everything crossed is selected) or from the left side (only the entities, which a completely inside the box are selected)- but because its 3d there are often some entities far BEHIND the ones i'd like to select. You sometimes want that, but often you don't.
Somebody got an idea?
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So you want a selection tool that only looks at what is visible?
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@chris fullmer said:
So you want a selection tool that only looks at what is visible?
I think he's asking for a 3D selection box. One that lies in 3D space, not in 2D over the viewport.
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Hmm, that's an interesting idea. Seems like it would work.
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How would you check if things are inside the selection box?
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@thomthom said:
How would you check if things are inside the selection box?
apply a transparent material and orbit around it
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I think he meant in the ruby script. That's a good question. I suppose define it as a bounding box and iterate through the model to determine what entities bounds lie within the selection bounding box.
I suppose that could become time intensive always having to go through all the entities in the model like that. Should work though, right?
Chris
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As a work around I toggle the camera to Parallel Projection and choose an appropriate standard view. then the 2D selection box gets everything no matter how far from the camera it is.
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@dave r said:
As a work around I toggle the camera to Parallel Projection and choose an appropriate standard view. then the 2D selection box gets everything no matter how far from the camera it is.
yep, i do that too, but how do you select different entities on different levels? i just wanted the opposite
not to select the far objects, only the near. -
Yeah, but what if you DON'T want everything. You just want the first 15' of 100's of feet deep geometry. That is what I was thinking he meant.
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@chris fullmer said:
I think he meant in the ruby script. That's a good question. I suppose define it as a bounding box and iterate through the model to determine what entities bounds lie within the selection bounding box.
I suppose that could become time intensive always having to go through all the entities in the model like that. Should work though, right?
Chris
I think so. I'm wondering if we could save some processing time and not check the entities inside groups/components, instead just using the group/component's boundingbox? Only checking the active entities.
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Ahh true, and I think that could help immensely.
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@chris fullmer said:
Yeah, but what if you DON'T want everything. You just want the first 15' of 100's of feet deep geometry. That is what I was thinking he meant.
You have a point there.
But if you wear a hat...
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The temporary 'box' [group] you draw will have a 3D boundingbox [let's call it bigbox].
You then test for all model.active_entities that either have...
some part of their boundingbox within the bigbox - mimics right-drag, OR
their entire boundingbox within the bigbox - mimics left-drag...............Easy-peasy...
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I was wondering if it was possible to just draw the selection box using a Tool class. Instead of using actual geometry?
But you can't draw faces, only lines right? So a dummy group with transparent material is maybe more usable? I just imagine that it's useful to see transparent faces of the selectionbox to visually see how it intersects the model... -
I think you could define 3dpoints and use those to define the bounding box. And then visually represent it like Thom says in a tool draw method using view.draw GL_QUADS pts.
I think the drawback there though is that I don't know if you can define the drawing color as partially transparent. So it would be a solid box.
Maybe the actual geometry method is better?
Chris
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@thomthom said:
I just imagine that it's useful to see transparent faces of the selectionbox to visually see how it intersects the model...
thats what i imagine, too. maybe could be a sphere too.
so if some of you think about realizing this, could look like this:- draw box / sphere
- group
- convert group to "bigbox"
- delete all entities within the box
- with message: "Do you want to keep the box? Y / N"
so you can simply erase with the "3d-eraser" parts next to the erased area...
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Ahh, actually deleting the geometry inside is a whole different tool. The discussion here has only been covering the idea of creatin a new selection tool. Fortunately for you, what you want already exists. Its called booltools.rb. Check it out.
Another way to do it manually would be to create your box and group it, move it in place, then right click on it and choose "intersect with model" and then delete what you don't want. But booltools will do that automatically for you.
Chris
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Just grouping and intersecting is not working, i wanted to erase all closed objects and / or lines within the box- and leave bigger surrounding faces intersecting the "bigbox" untouched.
A box selection-tool would be really helpful too, thats what i imagined first, too. Having a box, selecting line-clusters- then they get nicely blue and i can erase them all- or move or scale or whatever.
I think, the booltools is just a more direct way to group -> intersect -> erase, right?
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Yes, booltools is a more direct way to do the intersect with model actions.
So if you are still interested in a 3d selection tool, that should be do-able. a sphere might be too complex for now though,
Chris
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