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Easier grouping of components

Additional functionality for the component panel, allow users to group components, maybe called a Parent Component, for easier selecting/moving/group assignment.

Take the Missile/Turret section of the SC Combat Shard. You select Turret and it hides a bunch of components and shows a bunch of other. Missile does the opposite. Currently each individual component needs to be selected for both of those buttons (each button can trigger the other's hide method so that saves half the work at least). While the components would now be "soft grouped" with those buttons, if I want to move those components it may be tricky depending on the complexity of the shard, selecting everything would be difficult.

With this new functionality, you could assign each component to the Parent Component in the component panel (or just a renamable group function when you select them all in the editor) and it's just the Parent Component that needs to be added to the Hide/Show command AND you can select the entirety of the Parent Component for easy moving/editing.

In the component panel I'd imagine bolded text to represent these Parent Components and when you select the Parent it would expand out the Children Components (like a folder in windows file explorer) in a list down. Initially the entirety of the Parent would be selected (all Children selected) but you could also individually select the Children if you only need to move one of them. They would stay grouped with the rest even when you move them individually. An option would be present to remove that specific Child from the Parent. When you have the entire Parent selected you could ungroup the whole thing, removing the Parent and making the Children their own individual ungrouped components again, just as they are currently.

Nested Parent Components should also be possible (where Parents can be Children of a higher up group/Parent component, Grandparent components if you will)

Use case for this is for making extremely complex shards that have multiple screens in which each also might have various screen options, for instance you combine the SC Avionics shard with the Combat shard into a single shard and can freely switch between the two without losing functionality and enhancing the ability to edit the shard.

1 comment

This request was merged into another request

Comments1

  • Craig Sartor

    •

    May 21, 2024

    Thanks for the detailed request! You have some great ideas here that expand beyond the base functionality of traditional "grouping" within a visual design application.

    Grouping would be the first version of this, but I do believe creating a bespoke version that satisfies the specific needs of GG users is very important.