Displaying Composite Datasets
Composite datasets provides a means to organize the datasets into blocks which could represent the logical structure of the dataset or some arbitrary grouping that makes it easier to understand and analyze. It is useful for users to be able to show/hide individual blocks or change their display properties. Currently, the only mechanism for doing that is to use "Extract Blocks" file to extract the blocks of interest and then change their display properties. This document propose a design that would make it possible to change a few of the display properties without having to extract blocks.
Controllable Display Properties
Initially, we will limit ourselves to the following display properties:
- visibility - control whether a block is shown or hidden.
- opacity - control the translucency of a block.
- solid-color - control whether to use a fixed solid color.
User Interface
The "Display" panel will still control the "global" properties of the dataset that are used by default for each block unless overridden explicitly. This is true for all properties except visibility. If visibility is off on the display panel, then all blocks are hidden.
One can override block specific properties in two ways:
- Select blocks using 3D view using the Select Block tool button. Multiple selections can be made by keeping the Ctrl button pressed while clicking on a new block. Once the selection is setup, simply right click on the selected blocks to set the block specific overrides for visibility/color/opacity. Also provided is a "Hide all other blocks" option that hides all other blocks expect the ones selected.
- Use the Dataset Inspector (we may have to come up with a better name) to setup the properties using a panel.
