Factorio Forums

Add an option to the blueprint to update it (eg. by an update button in it's gui when you right-click on it).

This will immediately clear the blueprint and place it in your hand to take a new blueprint. However, when you are done talking the blueprint, it will preserve the existing icons and name the blueprint had.

Another option is to add the ability to clear a blueprint but keep it's icons and name and maybe just gray it out to say it's empty.

Yea i always wished for an option to quickly redo a blueprint. IE a button to rescan, click it and be able to drag a rectangle again. Just to not redo icons and texts multiple times.

I was thinking about suggesting this myself a couple hours ago. Having to redo the icons and name every time I make a change to a blueprint is very annoying.

Isn't what you really want not just a blueprint-editor, where you can edit/simulate/be creative on a blueprint?

Yup, I was gonna ask for something similar as well. There used to be a single button to clear a blueprint, which I used all the time. Being able to permanently maintain blueprint libraries across games is great, but I don't actually want to permanently store every single blueprint. 95% of the blueprints I make I use for a few minutes and that's it. That kind of temporary blueprint used to be super easy -- use it, then right click, clear, and blueprint something else. Now I've gotta right click, delete it, then go open up the blueprint menu and create a new one and close out of the menu and THEN make my new one. I mean I realize it's only three extra buttons but it's been annoying the crap out of me the last couple days...

A separate blueprint editor might be nice too, but that's nowhere near as useful as just putting back the clear button. I wouldn't mind if the clear button maintains the icons though, I'll just set them to TMP or something

urza99814 wrote:Yup, I was gonna ask for something similar as well. There used to be a single button to clear a blueprint, which I used all the time. Being able to permanently maintain blueprint libraries across games is great, but I don't actually want to permanently store every single blueprint. 95% of the blueprints I make I use for a few minutes and that's it. That kind of temporary blueprint used to be super easy -- use it, then right click, clear, and blueprint something else. Now I've gotta right click, delete it, then go open up the blueprint menu and create a new one and close out of the menu and THEN make my new one. I mean I realize it's only three extra buttons but it's been annoying the crap out of me the last couple days...

A separate blueprint editor might be nice too, but that's nowhere near as useful as just putting back the clear button. I wouldn't mind if the clear button maintains the icons though, I'll just set them to TMP or something

You can shift+right click blueprints to clear them. I keep one in the hotbar that I use this way, for copy/paste.

Unfortunately blueprints used to work like this and it was great. You could make small tweaks to your design (usually in the stamped, running version in your factory) and quickly re-capture them. Now 90% of your time doing this is resetting the icons and the name.

ssilk wrote:Isn't what you really want not just a blueprint-editor, where you can edit/simulate/be creative on a blueprint?

If by this you mean being able to at least zoom in on blueprint previews so you can edit it easier, I would love that too, but that's not what this item is about.

Any update on this? Seems like an easy thing to implement and it would really improve the gameplay. It's a great quality of life change.

For eg. you can do the button idea I suggested or another way I'm thinking is to have a shortcut key where if you hold it with the existing blueprint in your hand, you can blueprint a new area. Then you get shown the edit blueprint dialog with the new blueprint but with the old blueprint icons and name. Then if you hit ok, you existing blueprint will be updated, and if you hit cancel, your old blueprint will be restored (this is useful in case you hit the shortcut by accident and didn't mean to override your blueprint).

Thanks

Now that blueprints are being reworked/improved, can we have this feature?

Blueprints should allow for being retaken without having to reset their icons, name, or checkboxes of what you want blueprinted (they should default to the previous settings). All blueprints when taken from a blank blueprint should default to all options checked by default (eg. train stop names). it's frustrating to take a blueprint, go somewhere else, place it down, have it not work, and realize that the checkbox was unchecked for blueprinting train stop names, (trains, etc in future update).

As for reworking the blueprint library, I like the file manager type interface with directories and names showing along with icons. The icons are not as effective at communicating meaning for blueprints as names. Blueprints should be auto sorted by name same as file managers in operating systems.

I would also like an improved blueprint update workflow. Currently I have a cheat world where I build and improve
my blueprints. But there is no easy way to recapture the changes.

Another thing, that makes things harder to update, is the blueprint creation workflow for blueprints that
end up in a book. Often I capture the blueprint, setup the Icons and Name, insert it into my blueprint book, and find that the name/icons
have not been saved. I guess that is because blueprints are "copied" into the book or maybe I am doing something
wrong when setting the name and icons.

I would expect a "recapture" button in the blueprint, not just from the toolbar at the bottom, but also from the
"My blueprints" dialog, especially when editing a book.

The main idea is, that you want to improve your blueprints and designs. The best thing would be a blueprint editing world,
with robots and storage chests containing infinite amounts of all items. There you can just drop down your blueprint,
let it be build, and try it, and improve it and hopefully in future easily recapture it.
(For editing blueprints I could also envision a micro-world like provided in the tutorials, but that might be hard if you
want to run ores into your constructions, so just having a "blueprint edit robot cheat mode" would already help a lot.)

For that "editing world" I currently made a cheat save game and have to fill in the chests for the robots manually,
but thats a bit tedious.

I hope this will be in 0.17 with all the blueprint improvements. This is the most annoying thing with blueprints right now and makes them a chore to update.

Can we please have a confirmation from someone that works there that this will be in 0.17.

Just as a quick, more specific, interface suggestion to resolve the issue. Shift-right click on a completed blueprint will clear it, but leave icons, etc... intact. Shift-right click on a blueprint that has been cleared but still has icons, etc... intact clears out everything. Thus, for those wanted a completely cleared blueprint it's just two shift-right clicks (or a double shift-right click).

Darinth wrote: Tue Nov 13, 2018 2:40 pm Just as a quick, more specific, interface suggestion to resolve the issue. Shift-right click on a completed blueprint will clear it, but leave icons, etc... intact. Shift-right click on a blueprint that has been cleared but still has icons, etc... intact clears out everything. Thus, for those wanted a completely cleared blueprint it's just two shift-right clicks (or a double shift-right click).

I would definitely like a shortcut to do this, and what you suggest would work quite well. I use Shift-right click now to clear my temporary blueprints that I use for quick things. I also got used to the current shortcut keys to do this.

I would like to add one additional suggestion though. Since blueprints will change the blueprint library right away now in 0.17, we need an undo feature per blueprint or at least a way to make copies of the entire library and whole blueprint books quickly and easily inside the blueprint library itself. Like a take a snapshot/backup of my library as it is now so I can get it back in case something goes wrong or the blueprint gets wiped accidentally.

As such I would also like to suggest having a snapshot/backup button in the blueprint library that will backup the entire library and you can ideally see the backups you made with the dates and times and apply them over the current blueprint library at any time in game.

Can we have an update by devs on this? Is this going to be in 0.17?