Wish: 'Shopping Cart' Widget

Ok, this might be totally dumb, but I often find myself knowing that I will need a list of components, say, a point param, a num param, and a text param. It would be nice to be able to shift-click on each of the components in their respective tabs and have these go into a growing list of components. When I am ready, I can click on the canvas and have them all automagically appear...maybe just organized in a straight (+/- y axis on canvas).

Could be like the markov widget, except it just keeps track of the components you want at that time. Maybe I just stumbled on this idea because at the moment I am doing this kind of thing over and over again, but thought I'd toss it out there...

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Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on January 25, 2012 at 5:42am

I like it.

And if you added a recent history of "check outs" or you could pin some as favorites that would be even better.

I find the way I approach this at the moment is F4 --> type --> return --> F4 --> type etc. which is less time consuming than moving the mouse such great distances.

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Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on January 25, 2012 at 6:07am

Nice!

Yes, somehow I can't train myself to type out the components. I see how fast some people go, and there are so many initialization options...maybe I need a workflow workout. I will try your F4-->type-->return regimen.

But yes, the recent 'check outs' would be rad.

David, where do the widgets live? What are your thoughts on custom widgets?

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Permalink Reply by Philipp on January 25, 2012 at 6:00am

Great idea....

Maybe we can make it as an "independent" pallete to where we can drag`n`drop components,

with "drop all on canvas" option..

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on January 25, 2012 at 1:07pm

Gave myself one hour to get this done. As you can see below, not quite finished yet but I ran out of time.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on January 25, 2012 at 1:54pm

One hell of an hour! Can't wait to work it into the workflow. Thanks for considering it!

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Permalink Reply by greg bethel on January 25, 2012 at 1:25pm

Nice idea and awesome implementation! I'm usually a typer, but I would definitely use the menus more with this cart.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Lewis on January 25, 2012 at 2:44pm

Couldn't you do something similar with a cluster? Maybe make a cluster for common operations. Being to explode or aggregate the cluster on the active canvas would be nice