Select by name - Why does Autodesk continue to break things?

[senorpablo]

Why does Autodesk continue to break things? fired up 2015 and hit 'h' for select by name. The window now pops up in the top left corner of my 30" monitor. So, instead of displaying in the middle of the screen, directly in my line of sight where you would expect a modal dialog, where it ALWAYS has been for over a decade, it's up in a far away corner of the screen.

The other annoyance, is that it STILL doesn't remember your preference for 'display hierarchy.' The old version of select by name did this trivially. If you're working on an assembly or character rig with hundreds of objects, all child to a parent, what good is select by name if you can only see ONE THING in the display by default? That's select by top level parent only, not select by name!

Select by name used to be such an efficient and elegant way to QUICKLY and EFFORTLESSLY select something in a complex scene. It's been butchered by Autodesk over and over. Every couple of years they butcher it some more and 2015 carrys on that tradition.

Autodesk: please stop destroying well designed and elegant software functionality. And, if you insit on replacing great software with your hamb-fisted, butchered vision of things, please don't make us edit an obscure ini file to get the great features back--put it somewhere accessable within the software itself, like the preferences UI.

[spacefrog_]

You are aware that you still can use the legacy "Select by name" dialog ?

[smartin193]

Why don't you play nice? Answer the man's question.

[senorpablo]

Yes, I am aware. I make reference to it in my last paragraph where I mention editing obscure ini files... 

I'm currently on a project where I'm helping half a dozen Maya animators and artists get up to speed on Max. It's comical to see their response when I tell them you have to clilck 'expand all' every time you want to see a complete list of objects in the scene, when you want to select by name. It's a collasal pain to have to edit everyone's ini file to get trivial functionality which should be there(and was for 15+ years) by default. 

I always thought that Max alone suffered from poor design and programming discipline. Working with a Maya crew now, I understand the distaste for Autodesk is cross-platform. When someone in the office announced that Autodesk bought Shotgun, sighs and groans could be heard throughtout the office. One more promissing piece of software down the tubes!

[aon.914858227]

And you teach them to use a modal selection dialog instead of the SceneExplorer( a concept already familiar to Maya users) because....?

[senorpablo]

...because there are numerous advantages to select by name:

1. it doesn't take up valuable screen real estate, until you need it

2. it used to come up centered in the screen, right in the line of focus(until Autodesk botched it up) which is more important in the age of huge monitors

3. there is a default hot-key to bring it up

4. once it's up, you can begin typing immediately to select by name

For example, if I want to select everything named box in the scene, I can do it with the keyboard only: h,b,o,x,[enter] which for a professional, is much faster than cursoring and clicking all over the screen to use the "scene explorer."

The scene explorer was half baked too, until 2015. You can see and select hidden and frozen objects, but there was no mechanism to unhide or unfreeaze them. The Maya guys got a good laugh out of that(we're using 2014 on this project becuase no one dares use Max until 6-9 months after release).

[aon.914858227]

Well, you can add colums for freeze and hide propertys to the ScreenExplorer just as many more.

You can build your own LightExplorer, for example. Even in the 2014 release.

And you can select by name in SceneExplorer too. In 2015 you can also filter the list by name which is really handy.

But hey, to each his own. I`m not here to sell you anything.

Good luck to you!

[senorpablo]

I appreciate all the workarounbd suggestions. That wasn't really the focus of my post however--to solicit workarounds. I'm aware there are numerous ways to do almost everything in Max. As a professional, I gravitate to the most efficient and effective means to get something done. After two decades of using 3d studio, there is nothing more efficient than the classic select by name for certain tasks--for the reasons I've outline above. One would think that Autodesk would be interested in providing, or maintaining, these highly efficient methods.  The new select by name, for my use, is missing a couple critical features and in my opinion there is no valid reason as to why. That should be a concern to everyone who uses Max. While this particular example might not effect you directly, who knows when Autodesk will botch something that is important to you?

The new scene explorer was thrust upon us years ago, and it still doesn't do what the classic one does. To re-itterate: a) there is no sticky way to show a hierarchy(expand all) b) it displays in the far left corner of the screen now, whereas in 2014 it remembered the position, and the classic one was always centered(which was fine for a modal dialog).

If anyone can pose a single, well reasoned argument as to why these changes were made, I'd love to hear them. I think they're a result of poor design and/or sloppy programming. 

[aon.914858227]

I don`t think  the new dialog being placed upper left corner was intentional. It might be a bug/SAT that carrys over from the rewrite of the SceneExplorer for 2015 since the Select-By-Name dialog is simply a modal version of it. Maybe they ran out of time.

Should be easy fixable just as remembering the hierarchy state of the dialog.

[jonathan.matthews]

Hello.

Please report all issues that you find to the following site:

http://download.autodesk.com/us/support/report_a_bug.html?SelProduct=3dsMax

This is direct link to our development department.  

Best Regards.

[senorpablo]

Reported. 

[jonathan.matthews]

Thank you.  Did you recieve a tracking or case number?  If so please let me know what that is.

[senorpablo]

BSPR-15419

Anything you can do to help push this trough would be greatly appreciated, Johnathon. I've reported this in the past, back when the new select by name dialog was introduced, and it's never been addressed. It's absolutely maddening to be working on character rigs with hundreds of parts, and only ever see one item listed every time I bring up select by name. 

[jonathan.matthews]

Thank you.  I will keep an eye on it.