second scene tree

[andy.engelkemier]

I'm working on someone's file and they have a TON of unorganized objects. It's a revit file, and I don't have revit. So I'm stuck in Keyshot. Not the worst place to be stuck, but there are a few places it falls short in terms of saving me time on setup and organizing.

This has hit me before, but I either go back to Rhino, or find that it's not a Huge deal because I only have a few parts or groups that are not where I need them.

But in this case, I have hundreds of parts to reorganize. Most of the model is on a layer named, "First Floor". Great! It's a 1 story building!
So the majority isn't grouped.

So the problem is, when you select an object, it dives pretty deep into the scene tree. I hold Ctrl+Left arrow to see if it has a parent, and collapse to that until I find what I need. No problem (although, that ctrl_left arrow could be documented somewhere I could actually find it).
Now I want to move that to the group I made. The fastest way to do that is, of course, drag it. But I can't see that group. It's Waaaaay at the top of my scene tree. So I have to right click, add to group. Well, of course, everything you import has a parent group. and that's closed up. So now expand that. Then expand the next group, where your group is sitting.
And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

So doing that once or twice, no big deal. But when you repeat the action over and over, you begin to hate the fact that there's not a way to just open a second copy of the scene tree so that you could just drag it to where it needs to go.

I'd be happy to just split the view as well. I would prefer left to right. Collapsing/expanding should not be mirrored. So I could expand the left side (lets call that the primary side and you could just leave that side alone to how it currently works if you prefer) but the right side (or second window) would not be effected. That side only expands when you specifically tell it to. So if you select an object, you'd have to click a button to find it in the scene tree, if you even want the scene tree to move at all. This is actually how I want the current scene tree to work. When you select an object, the scene tree should highlight the parent object that your selection is in. You could then expand those parent objects one at a time, or hit a button to expand the necessary parents to get to your object. Moving straight to your object every time causes your scene tree to expand Crazy fast, making large scenes difficult to navigate. Help me find my part without making the scene tree less useful.

[mattjgerard]

Cinema has a function where it will select the part in the scene tree but only scroll to it if you hit S.

It would be nice to have an option to have the scene tree react to collapsing everything except for the group that the part is in. Call it "Compact Scroll View" or something. So as you click from object to object, the scene tree updates to close all the groups that aren't in play, and only expands the group of the active object enough to show that object.

Cinema can also have as many scene trees (object manager) open as you want, and that is a huge workflow plus for situations like yours. You can even lock them to certain groups or layers that are assigned.

Keyshot is awesome, but there are some niggling UI stuff like this that would make the whole experience a lot more pleasing. They have changed some things in 9 that are nice, but this would be fantastic. They are on the way of getting a more customization interface though.

[andy.engelkemier]

That's why I went to wishlist. I haven't used a DCC, that isn't CAD focused, that doesn't have some ways of addressing this. I think it's pretty important to have some solutions for this. The most obvious to me, is just give me another window.
Things like compact scroll view would probably be pretty good as well. It might be complicated in my case though because the majority of things are flat in one group. So I still have to scroll forever.
And also there's always the balance of not forcing users to remember Too many hotkeys. Blender is great, but OMG that's a lot of learning hotkeys. Every key seems to be contextual and doing something different in different windows. Fast once you Know them all, but pretty slow until then. I don't think that's the right direction for Keyshot's users.

[Eric Summers]

I've had several times where having two instances of the scene tree would be helpful. SolidWorks has an interesting way of doing a second tree where you just drag down from the top of the Feature Tree to create a second one. It's always great when features like a second tree aren't in your way, but easy to get when you need them.

They have changed some things in 9 that are nice, but this would be fantastic.

Matt: Do you already have access to KS 9?

[mattjgerard]

I've had several times where having two instances of the scene tree would be helpful. SolidWorks has an interesting way of doing a second tree where you just drag down from the top of the Feature Tree to create a second one. It's always great when features like a second tree aren't in your way, but easy to get when you need them.

They have changed some things in 9 that are nice, but this would be fantastic.

Matt: Do you already have access to KS 9?

Yeah, I have it and the UI has some cool tweaks.

Andy- if everything is flat, then yeah, there's not much you can do with that. I use the SHIFT+Drag in the real time view to select stuff and add to groups that way to sort of organize stuff, but my issue with that is that there is about 6-7 mouse clicks to get that done, instead of hitting a "Group" Button or shortcut key.

And about shortcut keys, yeah, I'm a shortcut junkie. The less I touch the mouse the better. I used to have so many odd shortcuts my old boss couldn't use my computer I love me some shortcuts, and no matter what I'll ask for more. I'll modify them, change them, create short cut sets for different layouts, depending on what task I'm doing. This does have a negative effect when I ned to work on someone elses computer which doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I think if they can implement stuff like this that makes the app easier to use (and fun) I have less reason to go to Cinema 4D, which is good. I'd rather stick to one app if I can.