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Old 14th August 2012, 05:37 AM   #1
Snow
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Default Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

Whenever an objects is modified, it's going to the end of the hierarchy.
It's important that there's an option to disable that.

When working on an animated cockpit for X-Plane, the exact hierarchy is extremely important. Whenever AC3D does it's automatic sorting, it's messing up the animations.

The exact hierarchy is also important for the drawing order or for avoiding unnecessary status changes regarding the dynamic lighting or drawing state or hard/soft surfaces or 1-sided vs. 2-sided geometry.

Usually, a 3D cockpit contains a large amount of parts with their own animations. Each of them in a single animation group. In most cases this requires scrolling the hierarchy window. Now let's assume one of that groups in the middle of the hierarchy is edited, that group gets moved to the end of the hierarchy by AC3D.

To move it up to the right position again, the only way is to use the 'Move up' option in the context menu repeatedly, because dragging it up with the mouse and place it between other groups is not possible. It will always be thrown into one of these other groups.

Also there's no automatic scrolling if the top or the bottom of the hierarchy window is reached while dragging an object, so it is necessary to put an object into the wrong place, then scroll the hierarchy window, dragging the object further, put it into the wrong place, scroll the hierarchy window, drag the object further...

All in all not very user-friendly.
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Old 14th August 2012, 11:27 AM   #2
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

If you are going to change an object, that is in the middle of the hierarchy, select eveything above it and make it a group. Then select every thing below it and group them seperately. When you have finished your changes, it is very simple to move it back between the groups, and ungroup. It also makes things alot easier, if you number your objects.
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Old 14th August 2012, 11:55 AM   #3
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

Grouping is not possible as the objects already are in a group. As soon as you switch to 'group mode', everything within that group will be selected. It's getting even more difficult, if the object is somewhere within nested animation groups.
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Old 25th September 2012, 07:06 PM   #4
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

Quote:
Originally Posted by Snow View Post
Whenever an objects is modified, it's going to the end of the hierarchy.
It's important that there's an option to disable that.

When working on an animated cockpit for X-Plane, the exact hierarchy is extremely important. Whenever AC3D does it's automatic sorting, it's messing up the animations.

The exact hierarchy is also important for the drawing order or for avoiding unnecessary status changes regarding the dynamic lighting or drawing state or hard/soft surfaces or 1-sided vs. 2-sided geometry.

Usually, a 3D cockpit contains a large amount of parts with their own animations. Each of them in a single animation group. In most cases this requires scrolling the hierarchy window. Now let's assume one of that groups in the middle of the hierarchy is edited, that group gets moved to the end of the hierarchy by AC3D.

To move it up to the right position again, the only way is to use the 'Move up' option in the context menu repeatedly, because dragging it up with the mouse and place it between other groups is not possible. It will always be thrown into one of these other groups.

Also there's no automatic scrolling if the top or the bottom of the hierarchy window is reached while dragging an object, so it is necessary to put an object into the wrong place, then scroll the hierarchy window, dragging the object further, put it into the wrong place, scroll the hierarchy window, drag the object further...

All in all not very user-friendly.
Speaking for the Shade Tree Micro Aviation team, we all agree with Snow. Automatic sorting of objects causes us major heartaches in creating X-Plane objects.

- Jim
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Old 26th September 2012, 01:13 PM   #5
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

+1.

I would have to agree wholeheartedly.
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Old 29th September 2012, 05:21 PM   #6
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

+1

It also makes for some really ugly git (or other CMS) commits when you make a small change to one piece and the whole file shuffles around...

Ron
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Old 2nd October 2012, 07:19 AM   #7
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

Which functions are you using to modify objects that are causing the hierarchy to get messed up? Are they in AC3D and/or the X-Plane plugin?
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Old 2nd October 2012, 11:39 AM   #8
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

From my experience, just selecting an object for any operation puts it in a different place in the list (top or bottom escapes me right now). It was most annoying when working with transparent glass, because those objects have to be at the very bottom of the heirarchy to be sure that other objects show through them.
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Old 2nd October 2012, 07:54 PM   #9
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

They goto the end of the list, but only when you add faces to an existing object.
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Old 3rd October 2012, 09:44 AM   #10
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Default Re: Disable Sorting in the Hierarchy Window

- Removing surfaces
- Boolean Operations
- Merging objects
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