Idea development: ability to manage well the kind of visibility of the objects, groups and layers in the same menu that the layers

=:-)

Because of stability on larger projects.

That being said:

Here follows a few comments which hints at the problems with layers [and possibly why some of the former patches haven't been accepted]

http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2007-December/019927.html
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2008-January/019976.html

All in all: The way event handling is structured now, it is impossible to make layer management. You can make elaborate grouping and that might work for most. But for a true stable and useful layer management, with the possibility's of extending/improving layer management codewise a full rewrite of eventhandeling is needed.

I think the reason for the exclusion of such features in the main code is because of the way it's been handled in the past. It's all very well to hack in a layer manager, but doing it properly is a whole different kettle of fish, and one that requires substantial changes to the way layers are handled. I think the devs want groups to take over where layers currently fails, and just keep the existing layers as a separate feature.

Pardon my lack of knowledge on the way this script actually works, but I think it's closer to the current groups feature than layers. (simply because the only way to actually implement layers using a script is basically the same way groups work at the moment) I'm pretty sure if the same functionality was coded for groups in the main blender code, nobody would complain… (though I'm not sure how the event system rewrite would affect this, but from my understanding, not much!)

I actually think that scripts like these deserve to stay as scripts. (easier to code new features, simpler to fix bugs, easier to modify if it doesn't quite do what you want, etc…) Scripts are actually a better bet for this sort of stuff, unless tight integration with the rest of blender is needed. The event system rewrite will (hopefully) allow better integration of scripts with blender in terms of UI, and decent written scripts actually tend to be more stable than the rest of blender.

The best feature that could possibly be added to this script in my eyes would be integration with the groups feature of blender. That really would shine out. I'm not sure whether this is currently possible via the python API, but it could probably be added very simply if it isn't…

NathanKP – Imagination Manifesto

I hope this script gets REWRITTEN into Blender #C code so it will
operate safely and fast when in heavy productions, this is a very nice
and much needed "upgrade" towards a "pro" Blender environment.

Scripts are a GREAT way to implement function Ideas and when they are
successful they should (if someone can, and are willing to do it of course)
be rewritten as an integral part, the reason I mention this is because of
my extensive 3Dstudio max background, I remember the sole reason for
its crash complexity over time…was that half of everything was based on
scripts, this of course…slows everything down to an halt – albeit nicely
functioning as stand alone functions….oh you get the point.

Anyway GREAT work! And thank you for this beautiful script!