First of all I just want to thank you all readers of this blog. I received many questions about this new custom action and I decided to share my answers. Thank you very much for your support, it is an encouragement for me to do even better!
- Question: Fred, thank you for this new cool free feature. I'm a developer and I will be very interested to have a look to your code.
- Well it's not possible for security reason since this code will be partially included in Nova Studio 2011 with more features. But technically it's mainly based on Excel open source provider and .NET reflection for the job.
- Question: does this custom action will work on prior version to 6.0.0.26?
- Question: why?
- In fact, we did a small evolution in the Nova SDK by adding a property on the Nova Scene to merge on the fly all scene entities into a single generic collection called NovaIDs. The new custom action uses this new property.
- Question: why don't you manage custom type assisgnement such as Vector3, enumerated types, ... ?
- Well, maybe you will have to wait for Nova Studio 2011 for that
- Question: why can't we edit the preview grid to change values?
- Well, maybe you will have to wait for Nova Studio 2011 for that
- Question: and what about a database to store input value?
- Well, technically all is possible with .NET Framework and if you are interested, why not to develop this new custom action on an open source model and to diffuse it with Codeplex? I don't want to manage this project but i can participate on functional and technical specifications, ergonomics, design and tests. I think with one project leader, one or two developers and with me for reviews, it will be enough. So who wants to participate?
- Question: what about performance of this new custom action?
- Well, you should avoid to call this custom action on the trigger on every frame! Indeed, even if I always try to optimize my code, there is no cache for this first version. To read a file may be fast, but if there are too many records it may become longer. In other terms choose corrrectly the right trigger and the update frequency. I will make a parallel with development processes: even if action builder is done for graphic artist and art director and even if it's very easy to use, you should always try to think before on how to implement a solution inside the action builder.
- Question: why are there so few widgets in the Action Builder?
- Well, to be completely honest, this is mainly due to time. In fact, I'm an avid proponents of ergonomics and for me the future is possible in the immersion of HMI in 3D scenes. But that's another story that deserves a more substantial post!
- Question: who developed the icon of this new custom action?
- Graphic Design is a full-time job that I willingly leave it to the professionals! Michel Rousseau did the job.
Thank you for all your questions. Again, if you are interested to participate to Nova Community, remember you can do it on our forums by helping users and developers and through Vertice wiki.