[Bf-funboard] Blender Pie Menus Prototype Addon

[Sean Olson]

Hi Matjaž,
Thanks for the feedback.  I'm going to reply to your email inline.


On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Matjaz Lamut <matjaz.lamut at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I see pie/radial menus as a quick way to select a tool or an option. It's
> why I don't imagine much use from having too many options, such as sliders,
> radio buttons or whatever crammed into them, as these widgets require the
> user to aim and hit them with the mouse.

True & False - It true that a strength is to select options very quickly.
 Another big advantage though to having sliders and other widgets in the
pie is mouse movement.  With this setup you can quickly get to relevent
settings with very minimal mouse movement.  Currently, in the sculpt mode
brushes, the 'V' key is set to bring up a pie with options that are very
nice to access very quickly.  This pie menu greatly speeds up workflow
because you don't have to constantly move over to the side menu to modify
settings, minimize/maximize tabs, and scroll up and down.  It's a lot
faster.



> The main strength of pie menus is
> that you only need to move the mouse in the general direction without
> accurately aiming, with choices limited to cardinal and ordinal directions.
>

This is what we have been aiming for.



> Of course, if it's optional, then different user needs don't clash.
>


> But I do agree with the idea where moving the mouse outside the radial menu
> selects the highlighted option. Another and similar way to interact with
> pie menus could be holding a key (i.e. tab), moving the mouse over one of
> the options and releasing the key, thus selecting the highlighted option.
>

This is how it already works.


>
> I also wonder whether it's possible to make the menus round, like this.
> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/Blender%20UI/Radials-mockup.png


Round menus have a big downside of lack of space.  You can't fit nearly as
much text & icons in them.  They are also limiting in that layouts are not
as dynamic and are limited to 8 total slices.  You go past that and you
really have little to no space.  We try to limit each pie to 8 slices, but
sometimes it just is not practical for given situations.


>
>
> The current menu doesn't work in certain situations where the cursor is
> over an option, but another one is highlighted.
> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1482587/Blender%20UI/Radial%20menu%20problem.png


>From your screenshot it looks like you are using a very very old build of
the menus.  A lot has changed since then.  Try a new build, from here:
https://bitbucket.org/liquidape/blender-pie-menus/downloads
 (always grab one with newest date)

-Sean