Layers in Carbide Create

Playing with this (hope to write a tutorial tomorrow or so for the forum)

  • I’d love to have a “duplicate layer” function where a layer and all objects in it get copied to a new layer
  • If you try to copy (ctrl-C) a text object from not-the-active-layer, it gets put in the top layer, not in the active layer. That is neither what I wanted, nor is it consistent with the concept of the active layer
  • If you do a pocket operation with an outside box from an inactive layer, something really weird happens. Will attach file below
  • Would be nice to have a radio button or something for the active layer, rather than having to click into the submenu
  • There is a lot of vertical space on the left side below the icons… would like to just see the layers there rather than as a separate dialog

Problem file:
yourtexthere.c2d (1.4 MB)

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hmm I cannot reproduce the weird pocket behavior by doing the work from scratch so probably discard that was some weird fluke

+1

Also, within 1 minute of playing with layer colours, I picked “orange” as the layer color, and oh boy that’s a good way to confuse oneself :slight_smile:

Yup…that was my #7 above

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another nit… Ctrl-A keybinding… I’d really would like to consider that to be changed to “select all on the current active layer”… it’s more intuitive in the workflows that I’ve done so far. I’ve always wanted to select-all-in-the-current-layer and never “select really all except from locked layers” :wink:

one more request; on Ctrl-C from an object selected from not-the-active-layer… (after the bug gets fixed that puts it in the wrong layer)… maybe do NOT apply the offset that was done for objects in the same layer. The use case for me to do those copies is always to have them in the same spot. WIthout layers, I get that no-offset was confusing… but now with layers, that’s not the case anymore.
(Simplified use case: Layer 1 has a piece of text, Layer 2 will also have its own text but I need to do a boolean operation on that layer 2 text with the text from layer 1 to make multi layered text plaques. I’d like to just copy the Layer 1 text with layer 2 active, and join the original text. Now I first need to carefully align it back to overlap with the original… error prone)

one more: Default color of the layer. RIght now it’s always black, I would suggest to change that to be the next color out of a sequence each time you add a layer… it’s a better user experience. And you can pick colors that are not-orange-or-pink to not confuse Julien or Gary.

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The Golden Record of layer management, in my eyes, is Photoshop. They really have mastered the whole layer concept. I would defer to their standards:
CTRL-A is Select ALL - literally ALL…across layers
CTRL-Click on the Layer in the Layers dialog selects all on that layer. The equivalent in CC would be right-click on the layer and select Select All on this Layer.

Photoshop’s version works well because the layer dialog is docked and usually available on the screen. You click to activate the layer, your ctrl click to select everything on it (and only that layer…it doesn’t add to the current selection as CC seems to do right now). I’d like to see the Layers dialog docked (#12 above)…which would likely solve your problem easily.

I don’t know about Julien, but it takes a lot more to NOT confuse Gary! :slight_smile:

I’ll be happy to defer to Photoshop as ultimate experience for this. My request is mostly rooted in the number of clicks that are currently needed to get this common thing (especially with layers, it’s going to be much more common than I’d have this before).

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I just added this to my list above as #13. Standard behavior in CC is to deselect what’s currently selected when you select something else - unless CTRL or SHIFT is pressed. Same should hold true for this option.

Shift adds or removes an object from the current selection in current versions.

Control was used in older versions.

@WillAdams OK…but Layers - Select all in this layer ADDS to the selection, it does not replace it. That’s the defect I’m pointing out.

Tutorial (slightly WIP but still) done:

3 Likes

@robgrz I noticed that loading a c3d file (from the tutorial) created in v522 into v524 caused most of my toolpaths to get messed up (basically, some of the “selections” went away causing the pockets to either not exist or to cut too much). Is this an expected thing?

(not too big a deal if it’s expected, was easy to recreate)

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There was a bug in 521-523 that caused layer information to be saved incorrectly so, while it wasn’t expected, it probably is what it is. 524 should be fixed.

3 Likes

Checked out 524 and created an example of how Layers can be really useful here. The new copy feature (as requested by @fenrus) caused me to add a #14 to the list above.

Thanks,

  • Gary
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I had been leveling on my Create skills for the past week or so trying to get this carve design to work the way I wanted. I ultimately got it working without layers but immediately saw how layers would have been a boon when trying to tackle the problem in the first place.

@robgrz do you guys allow developers to contribute to CC?

We don’t. While we give it away to use, Carbide Create is closed source.

If we had it to do over, we would have skipped grouping back in the day and just added layers from the start. The more we play with them, the more useful they are.

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