Wish Block Insertion

Okay, here's the sticky part: What if you have no open blocks in a row and you try to insert one more? Nothing can shift, because there's no room to do so.
 
Frodebro said:
Okay, here's the sticky part: What if you have no open blocks in a row and you try to insert one more? Nothing can shift, because there's no room to do so.
Click to expand...
Level 1 answer is it should refuse.
Beyond that, maybe it could insert a send return pair, but it gets quite complicated down that path I'd think, and there are still scenarios where there are no more send-return blocks available, no open rows, etc.
Most likely human intervention may be needed in some situations.

Still, having it handle the scenarios that don't run into these complications would be great.
 
Frodebro said:
Okay, here's the sticky part: What if you have no open blocks in a row and you try to insert one more? Nothing can shift, because there's no room to do so.
Click to expand...

I covered that here:

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/block-rearrangement.152886/#post-2487896

It would automatically wrap with send/return. If that can’t be done, then throw an error and the user has to proceed manually, just like you do now. That would still be a big improvement over what we have today if it at least doesn’t break connections unnecessarily.
 
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Is not a big deal but it becomes a big deal when you have to simply add one block moving others and occasionally maybe making a mistake that would interfere in the preset as it already happened with me.
 
+1
A potential approach to handling the uncertainty of where to move blocks when trying to insert is to offer more than one solution and allow for a selection. Alternatively, and much more simply, common key switches could be used to declare intent; for example: CTRL + drop = column insert, where ALT + drop could = row insert (insert with a send & return on a new row). I dunno, just spitballing here.
 
Currently I get around this by adding extra shunts between groups of blocks in my default preset template to leave room for inserting blocks. Adding the send/return pair doubles the amount of available "columns" in the preset which allows for even more shunts. Kind of annoying that they take up a little DSP but it's worth it for me to avoid this creative-flow-interrupting issue.
 
It would be a great start if you would be able to move more blocks in one go. Like in the manage screen of presets. To be able to cut or copy/ paste blocks within a preset would save a lot of time. Being able to do that between different presets is a wet dream..
 
+1

Good idea. I don’t mind moving blocks over but if there parallel effects like delays and reverb the connections get broken so it’s tedious to get it all back together. I love FAS but the editor and the UI need to catch up to the competition. The UI doesn’t bug me but it does for many people.
 
IMHO, the underlying problem here is the use of a row/column grid on the Axe-FX UI.

Rows are helpful of course since they represent a signal path, and multiple rows are good for showing parallel paths.

The problem is columns. All anyone cares about in the vertical dimension is where parallel paths split and merge. The use of columns to force blocks into a 2D grid serves no purpose and just gets in the way because it hinders the placement of blocks.

What I would rather have is rows of blocks where I can drop new blocks into the row as shown in the video in the OP without forcing the blocks into columns. In fact, I don't even want to see columns in the UI. All I want to see is rows of blocks where I'm free to put blocks wherever I want in the row.
 
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