Select-O-Matic

2002

Select-O-Matic is a grouping and selection plug-in for Lightwave 7.5. I provides improved item selection features as well as arbitrary grouping of items. This plug-in requires Lightwave 7.5.

Click here to download Select-O-Matic (156 KB)

Installation

To install Select-O-Matic, just follow these steps:

• If any copies of Layout are running, quit them now.
• Create a new directory in your Lightwave Plugins directory called TMPro and copy Select-O-Matic.p into it.
• Load Layout
• Select Add Plug-ins.
• Find and add ReplaceObjects.p. Layout should report that the plug-ins have been added.
• Quit Layout. This will update your Lightwave config and ensure that everything works properly.
• The next time you run Layout, you can launch the Select-O-Matic plug-ins from the Generics pop-up in the Plug-in Options Panel, or assign them to keys or buttons on the interface with Configure Keys and Configure Menus. Please refer to your Lightwave documentation for more information. The plug-ins will be the prefixed with TM_P under the Plugins heading of the Configure Keys and Configure Menus panels.

Main Interface

Select-O-Matic's core is the Master plug-in of the same name. This can be added directly from the Master plug-ins panel, or via the Select-O-Matic Properties generic plug-in.

Initially, the properties panel shows the current selection. This can be changed to show custom groups by clicking the Groupings button at the top of the panel.

Groupings allow the creation of selection sets of items. An item can belong to multiple groups, and any combination of items can be in any group. Groups can also have sub-groups. Items can be moved between groups by simple drag and drop, and can be sorted in the same way when Sort is set to Manual.

You can create a new group by right-clicking in the group list and selecting Create Group from the menu. You can also remove or rename existing groups from here. Add selected items in Layout to group will add all selected items to the current group. You can also remove items selected in the list from the groups they belong to.

The yellow block to the left of one of the groups marks it as the current group. Similarly, the black dot marks an item as the current item. These are used as the starting point by the navigation generics. You can click in this column to directly set the current group or item.

The Selection Tools button toggles the selection controls on and off. The Mode popup determines if this palette will selected, deselect or add to the current selection or invert the selection of items that match when the Execute button is clicked. The Match popup allows for specific comparisons to be made based on item name. The Skip/Keep fields allow you to skip some number of items, and then keep another count of items. For example, a skip of one and a keep of 2 would skip one item, keep two, skip another item, keep two more, and so on. The Random field allows a random number of the items to be selected out of the total number of matches. The closer this is to 100%, the more items will be selected. Once you have entered the appropriate settings, click the Execute button to perform it. It's best to be in the Selection display mode so you can see the effects immediately.

The Fetch button will simply refresh the selected items list. This is usually done automatically, so you'll likely not need to use this button.

Navigation Generics

The navigation generics allow you to walk the groupings list through Layout menus or key mappings:

• Select First Group and Select Last Group, which select the first or last group.
• Select Parent Group, which selects the parent of the current group.
• Select Next Group and Select Previous Group, which select the next or previous group.
• Select Next in Group Hierarchy and Select Previous in Group Hierarchy, which select the next or previous group or the next or previous item, depending on which is after the current item in the list.
• Select First in Group and Select Last in Group, which select the first or last item in a group.
• Select Next in Group and Select Previous in Group, which select the next or previous item in a group.

Also included are a series of high-level selection functions:

• Select All Nulls, which selects all null objects in the scene.
• Select All Roots, which selects all items of the current type that don't have any parents.
• Select Root, which selects the root of the current item.
• Select Target, which selects the target of the current item.
• Select IK Goal, which selects the IK goal of the current item.
• Select Clones, which selects all clones of the current item.

Revision History

• 05-13-02
  - First public release