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[edit] Half-Edge Mesh User-Interface Design

[edit] Introduction

Since HE mesh is growing in size, it is now time to consider UI design issues. Generally a Blender Object UI seems (to me) to consist of the following:

• A single menu that contains all the commands (plus their hotkeys) so newbies can easily find access to new features.
• Hotkeys, some of which lead to menus, others simply do something. These are the real power of the UI, the "newbie menu" is just there for learning purposes.

[edit] Hotkeys/Menus

Like oter Blener Objects, HE Mesh's tools/commands fall into the following categories:

[edit] WKEY Specials Menu

This contains Subdivide/Subdivide Smooth, Smooth (average verts), Merge, and a few other things.

[edit] EKEY Extrude Menu

This contains Extrude Region, Faces, Verts, plus "extend" boundary edges.

[edit] Other Hotkeys:

And then there is the other hotkeys. Select linked verts, select/deselect all, all the transform ones, macro hotkeys, etc.

[edit] UI Design Issues

[edit] Multiple Selection Modes

The advantages of Ton's (or whoever came up with it) multiple selection modes idea, is rather then having to change selmode for a certain tool, you can instead enter multiple-selmode and retain both selection modes. Like, for example, executing Extrude Verts in face mode will enter Face-Vert selection mode.

[edit] Macro/Construction History Editor

The macro/construction history editor I plan to make as a new window type. Unfortunately, as this may break backwards compatibility (past experiments have shown that Blender crashes when it finds an unkown window are ID in a .blend file) I may have to find some way to hijack some other window type.

Anyway, essentially the macro/command history editor will work on individual command "stacks." Things like adding new commands, rearranging them, etc will be supported.

[edit] Comments

-- JosephEagar - 17 Mar 2005