SHIFT selection is broken within child elements in Next Gen Explorer

Description

image

If I click at “I hold down shift here”, then press SHIFT and then click on “I click here”, the old explorer would select all of the items that are inbetween those two.

The New Explorer doesn’t do that if the items are within the same hierarchy, but differently parented.

 

Re-production Steps

  1. Replicate the instance hierarchy like in that image.
  2. Click on “I hold down shift here” so it is selected.
  3. Hold down SHIFT
  4. Now move your cursor to “I click here” and then click on it (make sure you’re still holding down SHIFT)
  5. Observe

Expected Result

4 items were selected!

Video

Actual Result

2 items were selected instead of 4…

Video

This is an intentional change that we are experimenting with–the intent is that we suspect this provides more useful results when changing properties. It’s something we might change in the future, but this is as intended. It would especially help if you had use cases where this is undesirable. In addition, box select intentionally does not do this behavior.

 

A concrete use case would be helpful.

Like, why do you have four parts parented like this and not want to color them the same?

Generally parenting implies that things are related to some extent.

To quickly demonstrate hierarchies like these

Selecting multiple Instances of multiple different types will show and merge together in the Properties. Model doesn’t have BrickColor so it’s fine for example :thinking:

It will only affect Parts if I quickly want to alter the BrickColor, assuming it only contains Parts.

Otherwise if it’s mixed, you can filter out a specific Instance Type, like Part and still do the shift selection (if it would work in the New Explorer).

 

Otherwise you have to deal with CTRL + SHIFT click combos, but if there’s a hierarchy like this, it’s more painful

It’s easier if you can just select the bottom and then Group A.

In the example above, you can select the parts, actually more easily than you could before.

If you Click the first part, and then Shift-Click the last part, it will select all of the parts, and none of the models.

The Shift-Select is now hierarchy level aware.

If I have 3 groups, then I have to do that 3 times.

It’s like I have to do O(n) but manually.

Along with that Select children… and Select parents thing is gone that was present in the old explorer.

If I wanted to move a certain amount of instances somewhere else, I have to either manually select all the child roots 1 by 1. But I can also shift-select them if they’re on the same hierarchy level.

But for different hierarchies this might not be the case.

Maybe there could be an option to customize box select preferences.