More Blueprint functions

[MysticalBacon]

Hey there.

I have a few Ideas on how to make blueprints better:

No. 1: You should be able to mirror blueprints So in addition to the normal roation way you should also be able to do this.

No. 2: As you can see the, ground tiles are not copied onto the blueprint. It would be great if you can choose between these modes:

1. Copy everything: Copies everything including ground tiles and structures.
2. Copy structures: Copies all structurs and not the ground tiles (the same way we have now).
3. Copy ground tiles: Copies no structures, only ground tiles.

You ask why this would be a good addition? Well this would not help much in Vanilly Factorio (only a little) more important: this is really useful if you have mods installed which adds new ground tiles.
For example: if you have a cool pattern with machines on it and you don't want to rebuild the ground tile pattern or delete the machines on top of it, you can just activate "ground tiles" mode
(or however you wanna call it ) and copy just the ground tiles.

No. 3: Duplicate blueprints: It's already self explaining: copy the blueprint of a blueprint on another blueprint so you have two of the same blueprint.

What do you think of these additions?
Let me know!

[silverkitty23]

There's a mod for No1 (Blueprint Flipper - viewtopic.php?f=92&t=23106 ) and for No3 sorta (Blueprint String - viewtopic.php?f=92&t=13651 - turns your blueprint into a string you can share with other people, but also, incidentally, with yourself if you want to make a copy (or make a backup copy, or copy between saves))

[ssilk]

The problem is also: Not every blueprint can be mirrored. Best examples are the chemical production....

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=4682 Planing (Signs, Cloning, Ghosts, Blueprinting and further...

[Doylecan]

I would like to be able to drag a selection box by holding the right mouse button within a blueprint to remove multiple items from blueprints. For even medium sized blueprints, it is dreadful to remove multiple items or areas of items. Maybe being able to zoom in inside blueprints also, you know how big blueprints can get.

[blitz_skull]

I was thinking about this the other day and I can't fathom why blueprints are not editable. It's a big pain that you can't add/remove items after creating a blueprint. Sometimes you forget or overlook a tiny addition: a light here, an extra belt there... Surely this can't be a technical limitation, but to my surprise I haven't seen anyone else talk about this.

It also creates a lot of redundancy / bloat whenever you have to create a whole brand new blueprint, rename it, and then delete the old one that you just barely changed. You also have to re-select all the icons on it if you want those to remain the same.

Help a brother out?

[Oktokolo]

I was thinking about this the other day and I can't fathom why blueprints are not editable.

The optimum would be a blueprint editor wich lets you enter a fresh creative mode map in god mode with all tech researched and the blueprinted structure centered in the middle of an endless desert. Then we could edit the structure and test it with creative mode tools untill it works as intended.
On leaving that editor the player would return to form where he started the blueprint editor. Multiplayer maps would have kept running in background, single player maps would have been paused while the player toys with the editor.

Don't expect such an editor to happen in vanilla though.
Factorio probably is not able to run multiple maps with different tech levels at once (it can run multiple layers in one map though and there is a blueprint editor mod using such layers to allow designing and testing of blueprints containing the player faction's researched tech).

[Koub]

Since the old time when, three years ago, this suggestion was first made, other threads have indeed requested a full fledged blueprint editor :
search.php?keywords=blueprint+editor&te ... mit=Search
(just on the first page of this search, there is a handful suggestions in this direction).

[Darinth]

And we're already a decent chunk of the way there with the tutorials. Only a few more changes would in theory allow the same general system to be used for creative-mode style testing... <3