in version 2014 I could use the ConnectionEditName of an interface behaviour to generate a button in the properties tab. By clicking on the button I could easily connect compatible interfaces by a connection dialog (e.g. MachineTendingRobotManager > Connect Process Stages). Is it planned to add a similar feature?
The functionality to connect interfaces has changed, now basically you drag and drop the connections from component to component. In order to be able to do that you need to enable the Show Interfaces checkbox in the Home context.
If you click on certain component his interfaces will appear in a box. If it is not connected a yellow color is displayed on the component, if it is connected it would be shown in green.
I like this. It’s more visual. Needs still maybe some tweaking for the connectors and lines, but the idea is better than the old connector dialog. Also you can better control which interface connects to which when you have multiple matching interfaces in your component.
I also like this new feature. Compared to the old visualization of abstract interfaces (a white line somewhere in the 3d scene) it is vast improvement. But I think in some cases the old proceeding to connect interfaces would be really faster than the new visual connecting (e.g. MachineTending RoboterManager with a couple of process stages). In my option it would be a very good alternative way to connect interafces and you should think about to additionally provide a connection dialog like the old one. A further advantage of the old connection dialog was the possiblity to only visualize compatible interfaces/components. If components has multiple interfaces the new style can also become unclear (see attachment) .
I also agree with Ralle that the dialog approach might be faster for certain cases where there a LOT of interfaces to connect, otherwise I don’t see really an advantage.
In the “new way” the unconnected compatible interfaces are shown in yellow color and the connected ones in green, as it was done in the past. The colors are shown as soon as the user picks in the interface with the mouse, so the user knows what can be connected to that specific interface.
Take a look to the attached example. In this case the new connection handling is really confusing and results in bad performance. The old table based connection handling would be a blessing.
There is an additional improvement in this new way to connect interfaces. Now you can move and “pin” those boxes so they will stay in the same place all the time. This might help in cases where we have lots connections.
Anyway, I agree that some additional mechanism for fast connecting should be included.