3D view of objects showing their z-order

[Khealy]

Today I was working with a drawing where the lines were formed by
solid-filled shapes overlapping one another (e.g. a black solid circle,
with a slightly smaller white solid circle on top of it).

While working, I realised that a 3d-view showing the z-order of all the
objects would be very useful.

What I have in mind is a 3d isometric view, showing the objects in
top-to-bottom order with suitable z-spacing between them.

[Bug Importer (bug-importer)]

That would be so cool and useful!

[Horkana-users (horkana-users)]

Originator: NO

Please try to describe in more detail what you mean.
Screenshots or mockups of what you mean might be helpful too.
Also if you can describe the underlying problem you are trying to solve
perhaps we can suggest a workaround.

[Tjvigil66 (tjvigil66)]

Originator: NO

Personally, I would prefer a more complete layer/object hierarchy dialog
that displays the layers and the objects within the layer. Selecting
objects in the hierarchy dialog would select the object on the canvas and
allow you to drag it above/below other objects and into other layers as
well within the dialog.

This would be much more useful than an iso view.

I should also point out that you can do this already using the XML editor,
but the XML editor is currently very awkward to use in this capacity.

[Khealy (khealy)]

Originator: YES

Sorry I haven't had a chance to describe my suggestion in more detail
before now.

I suppose the underlying problem I am trying to solve (if you can call it
a problem, since practically all drawing programs I've used operate the
same way), is that it is difficult to work with many objects stacked on top
of one another, because you can easily "lose" one underneath the others.

Perhaps a basic implementation of the feature I have suggested would be
when the user holds down Alt to do "Select under", the outlines of all the
hidden objects under the cursor are drawn, shaded in such a way so that the
z-order can be estimated.
Also, when you move the mouse over one of the outlines, it should change
color to indicate that it will be selected if clicked.

I would see the 3d view as a more complicated implementation of this that
would allow the user to see the z-order more clearly. So instead of the
outlines being highlighted, the objects would drawn in 3d above the plane
of the drawing, sort of popping out of the screen.
And if you want to get into the Vista/OSX style eye-candy, this would
probably be a good candidate - to have this 3d view smoothly popping up and
down out of the drawing surface.

tgvigil66, your suggestion sounds like a useful and sensible feature also.
I guess it provides the similar functionality, and would be more useful
when you quickly want to reorder objects, or select groups.
I think the difference with my suggestion is that it is visual and right
there in front of the user as he is drawing, and also it could be an
enhancement to the existing select-under functionality.

[Tjvigil66 (tjvigil66)]

Originator: NO

I suppose there isn't any reason why the layer/object list couldn't be
displayed as a graphical 3d ISO representation. In fact, that would be
neat! I think that it would take just that much more time and effort to
implement than a textual layer/object hierarchy dialog with drag/drop
capability.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Feature as requested in new duplicate report bug #1016760:
<quote>
Inspired by Firefox's fantastic developer tool 3Dview, I imagined something similar for SVG in Inkscape.
SVG is implicitly layered to start with.
</quote>