Always paste Node(s) in the center of the workflow area

[mwiegand]

Hi,

Knime, for whatever reason, decides to paste nodes quite often off or close to the edge of the workflow area:

Only when right clicking on a particular spot, Knime “follows suit” and pasts the node(s) at that spot. Therefore, I’d like to suggest that Knime, when pressing CTRL + V, pasts the node at the center of the “stage”.

When pasting multiple nodes it might become more tricky but I’d assume, since I i.e. moved the view to the place where I want to paste the nodes, similar to placing the cursor in Word or selecting a cell in Excel, that the leftmost node is placed in the center.

Could I explain my idea properly?

Best
Mike

[ScottF]

Hi @mwiegand -

If I’m reading you correctly, your request is the same as this one:

Paste where mouse points as default

Hi, When pasting copied nodes using Ctrl-V they can end up anywhere on the canvas, which can be quite annoying when you have large workflows, you have to sear for the pasted node(s). I found out that if you right-click somewhere and then choose Paste, the node ends up where the mouse pointer is. Would it be possible to make this the default behavior also when you use Ctrl-V for pasting? Thanks/Evert

The workaround for now is to left-click and past from the context menu instead of CTRL-V. (I run into this all the time myself!)

[iCFO]

I would also like it to be based off of what is selected (when a node or connection is selected), and to function as an “insert”. If a node is selected then paste / connect afterwards. If a connection is selected then paste it as an insert on that selection.

[mwiegand]

Thanks @ScottF but it’s not quite what I meant as I pointed out the right click appraoch as well.

@iCFO also has a pretty nice idea which could be summarized as “auto-connect upon paste when a node was selected”. Though, I’d consider this an even more advanced approach as the fallback, if the node input ports are incompatible, must be catered for.

My suggestion which @evert.homan_scilifelab.se pretty well summarized with "can end up anywhere on the canvas"is to simply ensure, upon pasting one or multiple nodes, that the first in the chain always appears in the center of the canvas.

Giving this some second thought, node-collision likely is something which needs to be catered for in general. I and other likely faced the situation too that two nodes were exactly placed atop of each other. I have an idea and will create a separate ticket for that.

Edit: I already submitted that suggestion once. The idea I had was simply highlighting colliding nodes via i.e. a frame:

Prevent nodes being placed exactly above each other

Valid point but this was frequently the primary cause as the node was unexpectedly not replaced but placed atop. I assume there might be a call / event being fired upon successful replacement. However there is also the scenario when an entire branch with multiple nodes is copy, pasted and placed. Unintentionally, one could easily oversee that there is an unestablished / missing connection. Though, hooking into the assumed „successful event event“ another check could be triggered if nodes are p…

Best
Mike

[mwiegand]

PS: I recently noticed that, when you have a rather large workflow and currently view the “outskirts” of it, then double clicking on a node in the repository to auto place it but have NOT selected the node Knime shall auto-connect to, the node get’s placed somewhere else out of sight. The view area is not moved to that placed note which results in an execution error.