Removing nodes from a frame

Archive Usability
1

I don’t know why I keep posting these, nobody cares anyway. A way to vent frustration, I guess…

PROBLEM

  • I added a frame to my shader nodes
  • Now, when I duplicate nodes from within a frame, the new nodes are stuck
  • I don’t know how to get them out of the frame

SOLUTION

  • I tried holding down a modifier key, hoping that one of them would allow me to move the node outside of the border
  • I tried right-clicking and looking in the context menu, hoping that there would be an option to break free of the frame
  • I tried shaking the node in frustration, hoping that this would break it loose from the frame (you laugh, but some software actually implement this user action)

Preferrably, all of the above three should work. I still don’t know how to get nodes out from within a frame…

4 Likes
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Quick fix for you:

  • copy paste
  • shortcut: alt+p
  • operator is called: Remove From Frame if you search in F3 menu

yes, this is an awfull user experience case, it is not listed in any menu.

Do you mind asking about this on #user-interface-module?

1 Like
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Ok, I have seen couple of posts and now I see your frustration. I can give you some other perspective. What you are doing is a really nice user story, but development is an ongoing fight between time and goals. Sometimes and actual patches wait for review for years (not only blender, open source projects in general), keep that in mind when you find some paper cut :slight_smile:
Nevertheless what you have here is a kind of easy patch, once you have a design. I bet this can sum up to 8 hours of (junior, advanced junior) developer work if you include review and back and fourht.

If I really wanted to disect bisect and inspect your solutions and bring it closer to design:

  • add an operator do menu Node on the top: good, no objections. Can we do more:
  • modifier key when move: ok, fine, it would work like duplicating objeccts in blender, but this is more work, probably new operator is needed, we may remove the old one Remove From Frame
  • right click context menu: ok, fine but do we show it all the time, and black it yout when you do not have frame selected (wasted space, unused in most situations - bad) or allow for changes in menu layout (changes memory - bad). UI team has strong some guidelines about it

And this is only 30 minutes of thining. That would be 30 minus of developer time out of mentioned 8h.

Anyway, dont give up, we are still fighting!!

3 Likes
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Oh no, please don’t tell me there’s a fifth place for user feedback… :onion:

I don’t feel comfortable stepping into the developer chat… feels like I’m walking into someone else’s workplace. Your reply was nice, though. Thank you for that.

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yes, blender chat is more developer oriented chat, but there are also channels like #support, so not everything is developer oriented.
Module teams use chat to communicate. UI team uses mentioned channel

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Screenshot from 2020-11-14 13-12-46

I guess I’m confused about what you’re talking about, isn’t this operator already in the Node menu? So it shows up in normal menu search too.

1 Like
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Your menu and mine does not look the same. I’m using the released 2.90.1… has it perhaps been added to 2.91 or 2.92?

bild

(Or don’t tell me that Node Wrangler messes up this context menu? That’s the only add-on I think I have activated that could affect this… because everyone said I should use that…)

1 Like
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Ah, that’s the context menu. I was looking at the “Node” menu from the node editor’s header.

I guess the difference between them is a bit arbitrary. But it being in a menu means that it is accessible with search.

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Thank you for pointing that out. Guess this is a paper-cut then.

I suspect someone thought the full Node menu was a bit tall, so the context menu attempts to be shorter, but as @grzelins suggested, if you open the context menu on a node that’s within a frame, it would make sense to show that option.

1 Like