[Bf-committers] Bounding box, linked size, and Transform Properties

[Chris Burt]

It seems very obvious to me what he's accomplishing here because long 
ago I tried to code this feature myself.

Essentially he's made it so you can control the actual size, in Blender 
units, of an object rather than its scale. So rather than displaying the 
factor by which an object is scaled it shows the dimensions of that 
object's bound box. It makes perfect sense.

The reason why it sounds "confusing" is what you mentioned. The fact 
that the other buttons are named "Size" despite the fact that the data 
displayed in those buttons isn't the size at all. Its a factor.

I vote that Mr. Want rename his buttons "SizeX, SizeY, and SizeZ" losing 
the "BBox" and rename the original scale buttons to "ScaleX, ScaleY, 
ScaleZ". This is not only consistent, but will be clear to new users. I 
also vote that the header read "Scale:" and not "Size:" when SKey is 
pressed. It doesn't make any sense at all to display a different word in 
the header than you do in the menu.

When I originally attempted this I labeled my buttons "DimX, DimY, and 
DimZ" referring to dimensions.

Mr. Want: You have my vote on committing this with the changes above. I 
think its a great idea for a feature (I've had a use for it many times) 
and I think it fits perfectly there in the UI.

Regards,
--Chris

Matt Ebb wrote:
> I read your message and saw the screenshot, but I still don't really 
> understand what's going on there. I think it needs to be made clearer.
> 
> What does adjusting the 'bounding box' actually do? Does it mean that 
> potentially even if an object's vertices are only 1BU wide, the object 
> itself seems 2 BU wide even though there's nothing there in that extra 
> space? This seems pretty weird, even by Blender standards. What would it 
> be useful for?
> 
> As a side note if anything is going to happen there, it would really be 
> a good (and long-overdue) thing to change the word 'Size' to 'Scale'. 
> The word size is very misleading, since it doesn't define an absolute 
> size, but the scale from a somewhat arbitrary reference point, and many 
> people have been confused by it.
> 
> cheers
> 
> Matt
> 
> 
> On 11/06/2006, at 14:51 PM, Chris Want wrote:
> 
>>
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I've written some code that allows a person to manipulate
>> the bounding box size of a mesh object through the
>> transform properties panel:
>>
>> http://bebop.cns.ualberta.ca/~cwant/bbox_transform_properties.png
>>
>> The bbox values, when manipulated, set SizeX, SizeY and SizeZ
>> so that the object will have a bbox of the desired size.
>> In the example picture, the object is the default 2x2x2 cube,
>> which is why the bounding box values are all double that of
>> the size values.
>>
>> There is also a mysterious, badly drawn, 'chain' icon there:
>> this links the size/bbox values so that they vary together
>> (i.e., if you modify one value by, say 10%, the others values
>> will change by 10%).
>>
>> If nobody (with commit rights) has any objections, I will
>> commit this tomorrow.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Chris
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