While using the property panel to set the Parent of a number of selected BaseParts, when clicking a another BasePart in the viewport, the nearest ancestor Model should be chosen as the target. Currently, the clicked BasePart is chosen, causing BaseParts to be parented directly to a BasePart, which is almost never the desired result.
Optional: Holding Alt while choosing a target restores the current behavior, forcing the target to be chosen directly.
Do you really think it’s a good idea to diverge the behavior here?
Currently it’s exactly the same behavior for any Instance ref property + target Instance, this would be the first time it diverges from that behavior. Granted, Parent is a rather special property.
For example, this could be solved with some form of plugin instead.
Yes. The behavior following a single rule is limiting and unhelpful. It should do what is intuitive and idiomatic. BaseParts within BaseParts is exceptional, and often considered poorly-formed.
When the select tool is active while choosing a target, the top-most model is highlighted. So, I would expect the model to be chosen as the target. The proposed Alt mode complements the select tool highlighting the part directly.
That said, the proposal should be amended by having the behavior complement the select tool. That is, it should choose the top-most model, or the part directly while Alt is held. Going with nearest was just me being annoyed by studio’s lack of scoping behavior.
Also, I should clarify that this behavior would only apply to the Parent property, when every selection is a BasePart.
I’d completely forgotten this. That at least, is definitely a bug.
Would you only change this for BasePart? There’s a lot of other Instances which “belong” under a model such as Humanoid, Highlight, BodyColors, etc. Would you apply the behavior of parenting to the model to those too or only leave it at BasePart(s) specifically?
I would limit it specifically to viewport interactions. The explorer panel already gives you fine control, so it should stay that way. Things like Humanoids only have a presence in the explorer panel, so they should be left alone.