[Bf-committers] UI idea: do operation delete and toggle visibility/select/render on object including all child-objects

[Torsten Rupp]

Dear Pablo, Michelangelo, Roger, Michael,

Thank you for your comments. Some of them already answer my question 
and give a solution for the proposed idea with existing functions.

> Torsten' idea of changing visibility/render for many objects:
> This can be done already by using object groups, thanks to Campbell
> on Durian, since a few months we can restrict
> visibility/select/render on Groups in the outliner (groups view).

Concerning visibility/selectability/renderability:

I see. In the outliner "group view" clicking on the view/render icon 
do exactly what I looked for in the outliner "all view" - great! Thus 
this functionallity is already available in some form. Nevertheless 
it requires the definition of a group. But the "group" information is 
already available in some form by the parent definition of the 
objects, even there is no name for it. Thus my idea was to simplify 
the usage of Blender a little by having this functionallity also for 
objects which are not grouped.

For me it would be more straighforward if the outliner "all view" UI 
would offer functions to handle objects including all child-objects as 
the tree-view seems to suggest it or even handle several objects 
(including all child-objects of these objects) together.

BTW: another option for the "object including children" functions 
would IMHO  be to execute an operation like toggle visibility always 
for the object and all child-objects when clicking on the 
visibility/selectability/renderability icons. Of course changing this 
would change the existing UI behaviour. Thus I don't know if this is 
an option we may think about, too. For me this idea look attractive.

Concerning delete:

This is still unknown to me: is it possble to delete an object and all 
child-objects with a single operation? This is for me the most missed 
functionallity. I can simply add (grouped) objects from an external 
file by the "Append" operator (Shift-F1). But how to delete this 
imported object and all child-objects with a single 
operation/mouse-click?

Selecting the parent object, then select all children with Shift-G 
does not necessarily include all parts, e. g. an armature seems not 
to be included and will stay after deletion.

The outliner group view does not have an operator "Delete". And 
deleting the parent object in the outliner "all view" does only 
delete the parent object and keep the children (which then move up 
one level in the overall tree view and could cause there a mess).

Thus I looked for a function like "Delete including all children".

Resume:

My idea was to make the UI a little more easier to use by 
adding "convenient functions" (or new functions if these do not exist 
already). Some already existing functions may be used to do 
something, e. g. using render layers or groups to handle serveral 
objects with a single operation - thank you very much for these 
advices! Nevertheless it would IMHO be nice if some operations could 
be done in a single-step and without adding first additional 
structure to the already existing data and structure, e. g. group 
objects which are already linked together.

> Michael Williamson' s idea for changing properties of many objects
> at once: An attempt to this we needed on Durian, so Campbell
> quickly made a script to allow us this, is currently an 3D View
> addon called: "Object Property Chart", it *really* helped us and is
> really handy, though it was a quick approach he said, so maybe it
> could be improved by someone else (like adding an option to toggle
> all options on that column at once or so).

Thanx! This sounds interesting. I will have a look on it.

Torsten