Selection of Geometry issues

[aymanhab]

In the past it was relatively clear from the context what was the user intention from selection in the 3D view for example:

• Muscles were not select-able
• Muscle points and markers were select-able and drag-gable
• Individual display geometry and frames were not selectable.

Now we have more things to show/select and we need to decide when a Frame is selected if the intention is to select the Frame or the Body that the Frame is attached to. Other CAD systems and Blender have a drop down to decide what you're selecting: Geometry/Object/.... Need a consistent policy that scales and we need to build it in the visualizer API.

[aymanhab]

@jimmyDunne @aseth1 @msdemers @sherm1 @jenhicks @chrisdembia Your thoughts are appreciated.

[chrisdembia]

Other CAD systems and Blender have a drop down to decide what you're selecting: Geometry/Object/....

Could you clarify what you mean by "Geometry/Object/..."? Do you mean the dropdown would list "Frame ", "Body "?

Are you referring to something like this dropdown?

It'd be nice to be able to select any component in the GUI that is visualized, so it'd be nice if Frames are selectable. It seems that if Frames are selectable, it'd be pretty hard to select the Body (it'd be hard to find a point to click that is the body and not the frame), but this depends on how we end up visualizing frames. I suppose if it's 3 axes, then it's easy to still select the body. I like the idea of a dropdown.

Editing the location of an object in the view vs selecting it can be different types of clicks (shift+click vs ctrl+click), or we could have one of those fancy circular menus that let you choose a context-based list of options as well as the specific geometry you're selecting.

[msdemers]

@aymanhab I remember when ProEngineer Wildfire came out, I really liked their selection paradigm. Left click worked like direct select, making its best guess at what you want. When selection is ambiguous, Right-click (or some key modifier I can't remember) cycled through selection of other nearby entities you may mean to select. Basically just keep toggling to cycle through and highlight hidden or obscured entities.

I also like the idea of a dropdown menu. I just found that in most cases, quickly cycling through likely entities of interest was faster. In either case, we should definitely highlight the selected entity to make it clear to the user.

[jenhicks]

@aymanhab What is the behavior in the current GUI? I think that adding dropdown selection seems like a post-4.0 task at this point.

[aymanhab]

Agreed.