99% of the times I do a “Tear off pane tab Copy” on a parameter pane of a certain node, is because I want a floating window locked (“following selection”) so that I can drag and drop its parms to other nodes (typical use: when I create the main controls of a digital asset).


I noticed few things that break a lot my workflow:

1) When you do “ctrl-alt-c” to tear of off the pane, the new floating panel starts super minimized in a top left position (as shown in the screenshot). This requires 2 operations: 1) drag the corners and resize the panel to make the top bar appears. 2) Drag the panel from the top bar and move it in a more useful position (I usually move it over the area of the other non-floating parms pane, so that I can drag and drop parms easily between the twos)


2) In my experiences, after 1, 99% of the times I'm going to press the “follow selection” button as well. (and most of the time I forget to do it, resulting in losing my link when I dive into the subnetwork. Time wasted, break of flow)

3) Also 99% of the times I will open the Edit Parameter Interface of the new floating panel, which requires another 2 mouse operations (click on OP menu, click on Edit parameter Interface). The shortcut “E” doesn't work, even if your mouse is over the new floating panel.

So a total amount of 5 point and click operations in order to be ready to work. This is only for the setup. But consider to add another 2 * N point and click operations during the actual work, where N is the amount of times I need to recall the Edit Parms Interface.

I'd say the whole thing is a flow breaker and potentially energy waster.


Ideal Scenario:
I don't know if the following could be the ideal scenario for every user, but regarding my needs ideally when I press the “ctrl-alt-c” shortcut the new floating panel should start already resized (with the top bar already existing) and positioned in the area of the non-floating parameter pane. Also it should have already checked by default the “following selection” button.
And allow the “edit parameter interface” to be called by the shortcut “E” when mouse is over the new floating panel.

Is there a simple way I can at least improve issue 2 and 3 like in my ideal scenario?

Thanks a lot!
Cheers

Following the idea of minimizing the amount of annoying “point and click” operations,
another useful addition would be to have the “ctrl+b” shortcut working on the new floating pane: especially if you're working on a ramp parm, you might like to work on a maximized window for better fine-tuning the ramp, unfortunately the shortcut “ctrl+b” doesn't have any effect on the window.



I'm sorry to point-out all these little issues, let it be granted that I wouldn't bother spending time writing these considerations for more fluid workflow if I didn't love this software so much (-:

cheers,
Andr

Don't forget to submit those RFEs here: https://www.sidefx.com/Support/report-a-bugrfe/ [sidefx.com]

thanks for pointing that out, I've just submitted it.

Hi Andrea, please do you have RFE number of this issue? I would ask SESI to have it solved, too.

Or did you find any workaround, solution, python script, or anything, please?

Hey sorry for the super late replay, I just happen to find this thread again.
No, I haven't found a solution.

At that time (Houdini 15.5) SESI Support told me that issue 1) was probably due to a dual monitor setup, but they weren't able to reproduce it. So bad chance for it to be fixed. Do you experience this problem?
I can confirm that it's still happening in Hou17, but this time the new pane is created super minimized on the bottom left (instead of top left) of the screen. Well, something changed

Regarding issue 2) , I was told that they would address it in the next major release. But it appears that it wasn't addressed in Hou16, nor in Hou 16.5 and Hou 17.
If you ‘Tear off Pane Tab Copy’ (shift-alt-c), the new floating pane still gets NOT automatically set to “Not Following Selection”

Regarding issue 3) I don't really know what was I talking about 2 years ago



I don't have an RFE number for 1) and 2) unfortunately.


cheers

Hi! Thank you very much for your answer.

I also have dual monitor setup. Yes, here in H17 it still behaves wrong, bottom left.

As a partial solution, I bound a hotkey to the Node > Parameters and Channels > Parameters… which creates “nice” popup and it helps me in many situations, to have it floating above the UI.