Right now, we can make 100 or 101 variations or designs from a single image. The problem is when we’re looking to find a certain one, we have to scroll through all of them in that left column, and it’s hard to find because some of the tiles look the same until you click on them to see the full pattern.
When I download, I name the file folder and then number each of my designs. It would be nice if you could add a numbering system in the left column as we create each design variation. That way, if we don’t download all the designs at one time, we can easily find the ones we haven’t downloaded yet by knowing which number it is. That would make it so much easier to organize if we could find what we’re looking for faster. I’m adding a screenshot so you can see what I mean. Nevermind the one at the top … it would make the dropdown too long.
Any chance of something like this in the future? Thanks so much for listening.
We’ve had a few similar requests over the years and it’s one of the reasons we added the collection view (see below) a while back: to be able to look through the snapshots with sufficient detail to tell small differences.
I think adding numbering on mouse hover over the sidebar could be a nice option to keep track of them. It does mean you have to remember (rather arbitrary) for any specific collection, but I can definitely see it’s better than not having them at all.
Of course, numbers has its limits: when you delete in-between snapshots or resort them, the numbering would change. A more stable solution would be to have the option to name your designs (for example in the collection view) and see those on hover? That of course would ask for more organising efforts, but the labeling at least wouldn’t change.
That sounds like an even better idea. That way, if we want to incorporate a number system into the title names we can, and those who don’t, wouldn’t have to. I myself, have a hard time coming up with names for abstract designs so I tend to name the collection and add numbers to the various designs within that collection.
Yes, if you guys could do something like that, it would be VERY helpful, I think! Thanks!
I love this idea. I also have trouble coming up with descriptive filenames and think a numbering system would help organize all the individual files in a collection.
I will look into this and see if there is a solid solution here!
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A little backstory about how we add features
As you may have noticed, compared to some other software companies who are happy to just throw as many features as possible into their app and see what sticks, we tend to be quite deliberate in what we add. That’s because there is also a cost to adding new features: it can often make the app as a whole harder to use, especially for anyone who isn’t a power user. We try to maintain that balance, making the app more and more powerful while not losing the simplicity and fun out of sight. For example, when we added the collection views a while back, we went through many dozens of iterations to find the ideal way of integrating it into our app (I hope people feel we succeeded ).
Hi Wouter, always good to know how things are done behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing. You make things that are difficult with many moving parts work so well! Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that as a user of your software.
Again, thanks so much for all you do.
Hi @dpdesigns, I just wanted to let you know that our latest feature, picking and filtering favorites (link) was inspired by this feature discussion!
We tried numbering the designs, which worked okay until you start deleting or re-ordering designs. Then you remembered a number, but maybe a deletion or re-order meant that now a different design had that spot (and thus number) in the list.
At the same time, I was experimenting with an option to pick favorites. This worked well, but once I added filtering by favorites, the numbering solution really started to give confusing results!
So, in the end I decided to drop the numbering and do that favoriting only.
What this feature will solve for you
If you have designs that look alike, but there’s a favorite, you can easily find that one now.
Exporting also becomes easier, because it can simply only export those you’ve favorited
What this feature won’t yet solve for you
If you have a few designs that are similar but all relevant, they are still hard to keep apart
There is not another way to keep track of designs beyond the favorite/not-favorite split
When exporting, you can’t easily see which pattern you are currently work with
Things we may do in the future
Currently, designs do not have a “selected” state when clicked. This is because you cannot edit a design itself: you can make changes and save as a new design. If and when we find an elegant solution for selecting and editing existing designs, keeping track of which one you are exporting will also become easier. (Why do we not have this yet? We tried this and often ended up accidentally making changes to existing designs. So, we first need a solid and intuitive interface solution for this before we can go down this path)
Apart from favoriting, you can imagine different kinds of “labels” you could add to design. For example color labels, that you could assign your own meaning too. Mark all your “maybe’s” in yellow, mark all designs for your mug in blue and for the shirt in red, etc.
So, that’s a little background story to our design process and thinking
If this sparks any ideas or questions, let me know, I’m curious to hear!
I was going to suggest this numbering system too! It would be so helpful to find the design quickly, but I understand the issues with it when you start deleting some etc all the numbers change.
Instead I’d like to suggest that you add a custom name function to each design. So we can name it what we want to name it and easily find it (if someone wants to name it a number, that works too). SO the collection would have a name and each pattern could have a name if you want to add one; if you don’t, leave as is. This matches the idea of real fabric collections – where the collection is named and each pattern is also uniquely named. Problem solved!
@Sara_G Thanks for your suggestion! Adding names to designs is certainly an option. I must say that I have seen quite some people’s list of collections and… it seems people have real trouble finding good names for their collections That makes me suspect many will find it even harder to come up with names for each and every pattern.
That said, for users with the dedication and creativity to come up with names for individual patterns, it could be helpful.
Just a thought: what about tags for each pattern? This way, you could use unique tags for naming, but also use the same tag across multiple patterns for labeling (like we have now in the collections)?
Yes, tags would be amazing and solve 90% of my organizing and streamlining needs!
But the naming function would also be helpful. I think the issue may be that when people download their tiles, then they have a tough time finding that tile again in Repper without going through them all - so the numbers are helpful because you can start at the top, middle or bottom of the list to find it in Repper.
Having an option to add a name would be better though - again should be totally optional for those who don’t want to do it. And names might not be “Provence Clea” but instead “Stripe Wide Green Red”, “Ogee Star Purple”, “Polka Dot Green Blue” etc.
Oh the other reason is – right now if you download individual tiles they do not have a number. So sometimes if you download multiple individual tiles from a collection, they actually have the same exact name even for different tiles. So this causes extra time to put a random digit in front of each tile as you save it so the names are different and it saves.
You are right about exports sometimes having the same name. Would be good to do something about this.
Numbering them based on the position in the saved designs list may not always help, as deleting one in the list may shift the numbering. So you may think that if the app says “do you want to overwrite” you are just overwriting a pattern you have already saved, but it may in fact be another one.
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