Disappearing objects and other things

#1

Hello,

So, I’m kind of beyond words at this point. The more I use Silo, the more I’m scratching my head at the thinking behind its design.

I realized that there’s no rotation snap? I wanted to duplicate and manually distribute items around a center point. I found how to move the manipulator, so that’s fine. But I found that typing 90 in the Y axis field doesn’t do anything. I have to manually rotate the object and “eyeball” it.

Then, I ran into an even weirder problem. After rotating the objects into place, I found that they all show up in wireframe mode, but one inexplicably disappears in shaded mode.
See pictures:

I’m only changing the display mode. Nothing else.
If I rotate the view around in solid view, it doesn’t come back. Go back into Wireframe view, and it’s back.

These issues, and a variety of other annoying little “Really? Silo doesn’t have that?” moments are making me second-guess spending much more time learning it.

How active is development? Are there fairly regular updates? If I was to submit bug reports, could I expect it to be addressed within a few months, maybe?

Sincerely not trying to sound like a jerk here. I would love to learn Silo. I like the setup and “focus” of it. But right now it feels like a huge steps down from other options I know are available for free (besides Blender).

Thanks

#2

Typing 90 in the Y axis should work just as you expect it to. You need to exist manipulator edit mode or you will just spin the manipulator.

You can snap rotation. There is a manipulator specifically for snapping. Select the Opts to define rotational increments.

Some things you think it can’t do you probably can - though there are certainly some that it cannot (yet). The simple nature of the interface probably suggests it does less than it can.

Could your vanishing object be affected by viewport clipping? It looks quite big from the screenshot. You can adjust clipping in the display prefs (though you said you rotated around the view and it didn’t come back so it probably isn’t that ). Can you reproduce it with specific steps?

Incidentally, what do you consider it a big step down from (free wise), I would be interested in trying them out.