- Joined
- Aug 21, 2015
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- 165
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Like the title says, I'd like to suggest allowing the user to shift the orientation of the advanced build placement/copy/remove box by scrolling the mouse wheel while the advanced build menu is up and the placement box is snapped to an object.
I'm working on a set of modular builds right now, which leads to a lot of template copy/paste. I've found that the way that the placement box snaps to cubes is just a little different in orientation between copy/paste/remove/block placement, and sometime I have to play with helper blocks and camera orientation to get the placement box pointing in the right direction. Although it'd be nice to have a more intuitive snap to blocks, the better solution would be to allow the user to cycle through possible snap alignments and choose the one they want. Mouse wheel is currently used for block orientation in advanced build mode, but shift+mouse wheel is unused. Using Shift+ Mouse Wheel for adjusting the placement block orientation feels natural (I found myself trying to do it before I realized I couldn't), and parallels the existing concept of mouse wheel block orientation changes.
I would imagine an implementation of this as follows:
1) User selects an XYZ placement volume in the advanced build menu
2) User holds Ctrl and holds the mouse over a block, activating the existing snap behavior between the block and placement volume outline
3)User holds Shift and scrolls mouse wheel. Each wheel click orients the pointed-to block face with one of the six corners of the cube, in some pre-determined order. After 6 clicks the user is back to the original corner-snap.
NOTE: I am not recommending rotating the placement box in 3D space, just translating it so that one face of each corner meets the block face the mouse is pointing to. Handling rotations would require swapping the XYZ dimensions and would have significantly more permutations. I think translating the placement volume would be easier to implement in code and perhaps a bit easier for the user to wrap their brain around.
I'm working on a set of modular builds right now, which leads to a lot of template copy/paste. I've found that the way that the placement box snaps to cubes is just a little different in orientation between copy/paste/remove/block placement, and sometime I have to play with helper blocks and camera orientation to get the placement box pointing in the right direction. Although it'd be nice to have a more intuitive snap to blocks, the better solution would be to allow the user to cycle through possible snap alignments and choose the one they want. Mouse wheel is currently used for block orientation in advanced build mode, but shift+mouse wheel is unused. Using Shift+ Mouse Wheel for adjusting the placement block orientation feels natural (I found myself trying to do it before I realized I couldn't), and parallels the existing concept of mouse wheel block orientation changes.
I would imagine an implementation of this as follows:
1) User selects an XYZ placement volume in the advanced build menu
2) User holds Ctrl and holds the mouse over a block, activating the existing snap behavior between the block and placement volume outline
3)User holds Shift and scrolls mouse wheel. Each wheel click orients the pointed-to block face with one of the six corners of the cube, in some pre-determined order. After 6 clicks the user is back to the original corner-snap.
NOTE: I am not recommending rotating the placement box in 3D space, just translating it so that one face of each corner meets the block face the mouse is pointing to. Handling rotations would require swapping the XYZ dimensions and would have significantly more permutations. I think translating the placement volume would be easier to implement in code and perhaps a bit easier for the user to wrap their brain around.