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Is it possible to force Add or Select Mode?
Hi,
I know that the ‘A’ key toggles the Add/Select mode, but I would like to ask if there is a way of getting into a particular mode without first looking at the screen to see what mode you’re already in.
The reason for this question is that I am creating keyboard macros, and of course the macros don’t know whether I’m in Add or Select mode, and so do not know whether to issue an ‘A’ command.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Rob
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2 Replies
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Interesting question! I believe the answer is “no” though, unless your macro recorder has some way to know about disabled items or the mouse cursor (I don’t know if any do). When in “Select” mode the “add blocker”, “add deflector”, and “add force” functions are disabled.
Some other info that may or may not be helpful:
If I were writing a macro to add an emitter, I would make it click in the stage, then toggle Select/Add mode, then click in the stage in the same position again. This ensures that you’ll add the emitter no matter which mode you started in.
There are other ways of selecting emitters (other than clicking on them in “select” mode): Ctrl-A (Cmd-A on Mac) selects all emitters, and the TAB key cycles through emitters. I was hoping that TAB would select the first emitter when none were selected but that doesn’t work, or that you could Ctrl-A to select All and then TAB to select the first emitter, but it selects the “next” emitter, not the first one (based on whatever the last one selected was).
One thing that may help: when pI3 starts, it always starts in “Add” mode (at least on Mac).
Hope some of this helps. If you want to give more details about what you’re trying to do with the macros, perhaps I can provide more help.
Alan.
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Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
Thanks for the reply.
I liked your idea about clicking twice. Unfortunately when I tried it Windows interpreted that as a double-click and opened the emitter properties.
The macros I’d like to create are pretty simple – such as place emitter regardless of mode, or place blocker regardless of mode.
Another I’ve created which I find really useful is “stop playing and rewind”, since I otherwise invariably forget to rewind after playing.
As a workaround, I can try just leaving it in Select mode all the time, and have the macros assume that they start in Select mode.
Thanks again for your help,
Rob
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