First of all, this is not meant as an angry rant :). I have been enjoying learning CE, and talking to people on the forums. I just wanted to throw some ideas out there from my experience of CE the last couple weeks which is not all that dissimilar from acadamymans.
I have been struggling with issues similar to academyman - in that it is usually not a specific issue that is causing headache, but more the counter intuitiveness of the UI that becomes frustrating or how sometimes procedures seem to work and other times they don't (most likely from user error :). I would imagine the software is a work in progress, so hopefully some of these extra steps to accomplish simple tasks get ironed out.
Right now it seems like there are too many different ways to get 'stuff' into the model. It seems like for every data set that you might want to import, there is a different way of getting it into the model (import, create new map layer, drag and drop) - which makes sense because the data is inherently different - but it seems like it could be simplified. For example, wouldn't it be great if I could just drag and materials from my assets folder right onto the surface of a building and have CE ask me if I want to apply to just this building or all buildings that are similar? Or if I want to have a random selection of materials, could I not select multiple textures. Or assume that whatever the projection of my first data import, all future imports will be the same projection.
Same thing with the imports from Sketchup. I haven't tried it yet, but I can feel academyman's frustration that one cannot simply drag the file from the desktop into the viewport, and then be prompted as to where and what scale the model should be imported (automatically copying or cutting and pasting the file from the desktop into the CityEngine workspace.) Or if I have a rule in a folder in the CE workspace, it would be awesome to be able to just drag it from any other project right into my current scene and have that rule and all attached assets be copied automatically into the project that I am working on. (instead of getting "TEXTURE MISSING" written all over my building shape because I didn't copy all the other files that go with it).
I guess what I might be getting at, is that this tool is extremely powerful with the right coding abilities, but it would be even more powerful if the viewports were interactive and but still procedural.
Something for the future would be a way to 'code' without coding. Perhaps something like a building creation wizard that could be used to create .cga's through the viewport. Think sketchup that prompts you for thresholds. I think this was attemped in the 'visual' UI for coding, but it isn't exactly intuitive, and you cannot see what you are creating while you are doing it.
As to the tutorials, they can be a little steep, I agree. I found that one of the most difficult parts of them was getting the data prepped before - through ArcMap. It would be nice if there was a better tutorial that very specifically addresses bridging the gap between software. It would also be awesome to get some tutorials on the coding syntax in general. I have a feeling many users will be coming into this with no coding experience, but could get it if they understood the basics of the language structure.
That's all I got. Thanks for listening. Thanks Matt for keeping these forums running and for your help. I am sure these ideas are not new, and perhaps where CE is headed. My attention span is dangerously too low for CE - I want using it to be like using an I-Phone - but of course this comes at a price of perhaps losing some functionality. It will be hard to walk that line.
THANKS!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂