Wish Select/bypass/engage multiple blocks

Jason Scott

Jason Scott

Fractal Fanatic
In my opinion, it would be useful to be able to hold down a Shift, Alt or CTRL key and select multiple blocks that I could bypass/engage as a group. I mean, you can currently A/B a group of blocks engaged/bypassed by creating two scenes, but if all of your scenes are full... Plus, I think it would be faster to be able to do it on the fly.
 
Jason Scott said:
In my opinion, it would be useful to be able to hold down a Shift, Alt or CTRL key and select multiple blocks that I could bypass/engage as a group. I mean, you can currently A/B a group of blocks engaged/bypassed by creating two scenes, but if all of your scenes are full... Plus, I think it would be faster to be able to do it on the fly.
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Agreed. A SHIFT+modifier would be great for selecting multiple blocks.

This would be hard to implement though, as the editor is driven by functionality in the hardware editor and display. How would the hardware display or edit it?

I think eventually the hardware will have to only have rudimentary editing capability and we'll rely on our computer/tablet/phone and an editor, or the hardware will have to get a much more sophisticated graphical display and touch interface similar to an embedded tablet.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Agreed. A SHIFT+modifier would be great for selecting multiple blocks.

This would be hard to implement though, as the editor is driven by functionality in the hardware editor and display. How would the hardware display or edit it?

I think eventually the hardware will have to only have rudimentary editing capability and we'll rely on our computer/tablet/phone and an editor, or the hardware will have to get a much more sophisticated graphical display and touch interface similar to an embedded tablet.
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The hardware wouldn't need to display the move in real time it would just snap to the post-moved state.
 
Djenter said:
The hardware wouldn't need to display the move in real time it would just snap to the post-moved state.
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That's fine for after selecting and moving the blocks, but how would we, the users, select multiple blocks and how would the hardware display that they're selected prior to the move? It's the intermediate things that are hard, the display afterwards is easy.

If it all occurs by magic, that's fine and it can be tossed over the fence to the developers to implement and magically make happen, but if we can suggest the changes needed it makes it easier for them to implement in the hardware rather than guess what we envision.

I say all this because I've seen several times that being able to do something in the hardware without the editor is important to Fractal. The editor is beginning to have "macro" capabilities, where it can perform several repetitions of the same action, such as resetting amp blocks in the preset manager, but the underlying hardware still has that capability, the editor is just telling it to do those things multiple times. Maybe that's how they'd implement it in the editor as three separate moves in the hardware.
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
That's fine for after selecting and moving the blocks, but how would we, the users, select multiple blocks and how would the hardware display that they're selected prior to the move? It's the intermediate things that are hard, the display afterwards is easy.

If it all occurs by magic, that's fine and it can be tossed over the fence to the developers to implement and magically make happen, but if we can suggest the changes needed it makes it easier for them to implement rather than guess what we envision.
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The hardware would not need to display they are selected. Why would it need to anyways? It would be expected that the user would be focusing on the Axe Edit display for the actions.
By the way you can (in axe edit) move entire columns with a drag button at the bottom of the grid.
 
Djenter said:
The hardware would not need to display they are selected. Why would it need to anyways? It would be expected that the user would be focusing on the Axe Edit display for the actions.
By the way you can move columns with a drag button at the bottom of the grid you know.
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You're not understanding. What if you don't have a computer and/or have it connected to the hardware? What then? That's what controls a lot of suggested changes in the editor.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
You're not understanding. What if you don't have a computer and/or have it connected to the hardware? What then? That's what controls a lot of suggested changes in the editor.
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Some functionality is only available in Axe-Edit, but I'm not qualified to say how something like multi-select might actually be implemented by the developers.
 
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Djenter said:
Im beyond understanding too well.

Try fracpad.
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And if you don't have FracPad or don't have a connection to the hardware? What then? That is my point. You're talking about software front-ends to the hardware that rely on a computer or a tablet or a phone. Fractal wants to be able to support actions in the hardware by itself, without an "editor" attached to it.

They might be loosening those reins, but they want people to be able to use the front of the modeler itself to accomplish actions, not to have to rely on some other piece of software. If we can articulate how the hardware would change to handle these requests, then the odds of them implementing it in the hardware and the editor go way up, otherwise we're asking them to imagineer what we're suggesting.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
And if you don't have FracPad or don't have a connection to the hardware? What then? That is my point. You're talking about software front-ends to the hardware that rely on a computer or a tablet or a phone. Fractal wants to be able to support actions in the hardware by itself, without an "editor" attached to it.

They might be loosening those reins, but they want people to be able to use the front of the modeler itself to accomplish actions, not to have to rely on some other piece of software. If we can articulate how the hardware would change to handle these requests, then the odds of them implementing it in the hardware and the editor go way up, otherwise we're asking them to imagineer what we're suggesting.
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Not all functions that are accessible in Axe-Edit can be accessed from the front panel of the hardware. For instance, Performance Pages can't be edited using the front panel. You can only edit them via Axe-Edit.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
And if you don't have FracPad or don't have a connection to the hardware?
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Note that this is an Axe-Edit wish and specifically mentioned control/alt/shift keys... So the wish is for something computer based.

While it would be cool on hardware as well, having it in Axe-Edit would be very useful.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
That's fine for after selecting and moving the blocks, but how would we, the users, select multiple blocks and how would the hardware display that they're selected prior to the move? It's the intermediate things that are hard, the display afterwards is easy.
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Bypassed blocks go dim.

Selected blocks get a yellow border.

Seems like the latter could be extended to multiple blocks and the pane below could show a 'multiple blocks selected' warning message so peeps don't expect to be able to edit while multiple blocks are selected. Blocks in the group would move relative to the dragged block, with collision detection happening after the mouse drag movement pauses over a destination block for a half second or so.
 
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