Struggling to filter block geometry by layer

…and definitely not getting there.
I’m still completely confused by the UI of the “Match Text Filter” component.
Given a filter criteria, I’m never quite sure what Key/Value combo to select, and to make matters worse, the “Value” doesn’t remain highlighted, so if you don’t check “Show expression”, you have no idea what the filter is.
Frankly, this is a very confusing and poorly executed UI …

Anyways, here’s an example ; can someone help me filter the objects inside my blocks by layer name ?


250201_MOD_Geometry in blocks-Filter by layer.3dm (212.9 KB)
250201_MOD_Geometry in blocks-Filter by layer.gh (11.2 KB)

Related posts :

When you filter by layer name, only use the child layer name.

You can filter by Layer.Parent too and use the logical and filter.

250201_MOD_Geometry in blocks-Filter by layer mrtn.gh (24.4 KB)

Hi Martin,

It works, but it can’t be the right way.
Parent::Child layer notation exists for a reason.

I was able to get a result like this :

Still not sure what I’m doing as I don’t get the difference between the “Contains text” and the “Match text” filters.

Also, please point me out to some explanations about the Key/Value scheme of these UIs.
It confuses the heck out of me, and the fact there is no hint of the currently selected value doesn’t help !

The one you mention works is this:

The same filter fails with an equality filter.

I wouldn’t use the wildcard or contains filter when filtering the full layer name.

…and then there’s the whole cryptic option thing :

I’m amazed at how convoluted and confusing this filtering mechanism is…

I assume you know what regex is?

What’s that ?

Err… why ?
You rather use a compound filter ; that doesn’t sound straightforward.

Anyways, I need to understand what twisted logic McNeel is trying to force upon me.

If you can explain this to me in simple terms, it means that I’m missing something obvious.
If you can’t , then it means it’s just a big confuzeball.

I think it’s good to be as precise with the filtering. So when you know the full layer name, you don’t use a wildcard filter because the equality filter is more specific and doesn’t let through anything else but the exact match. Not sure how to explain any better.

No. I don’t feel I need to know this to perform such a simple task as filtering objects by layers.
If I do, then maybe McNeel just made a mess of a simple thing.

Yeah, yeah… That’s not really the problem here.
I just DON’T UNDERSTAND THE FILTER UI.

If you had a basic brain like mine, I promise you would be equally dumbfounded by this whole filtering oil rig…

The concatenated full layer name is not stored anywhere. Content information outputs parent and Layer.Name and that’s what I use to filter an exact layer match.

:slight_smile:

Layer.Path would work as a single equality filter.