Copy+paste node underscore madness!

"Merge2_1_1_1"

Sometimes I copy and paste nodes that are handy because it is faster than mousing to the top of the screen or hitting ctrl+space and typing a bit of an operator name.

But then I get all these underscore_1_1_1_1...'s

Why would anyone have thought that was a good way to handle multiple, similarly named nodes? Why not just look for an end digit and increment it by 1, and if no digit, add a 1 and increment subsequent copies with 2, 3, 4...? Or is this a bug? Or is there a way in the default settings to tell Fusion to never do this?

I'm loving my transition to Fusion but boy, there are some default behaviors that I think must have persevered because the long-time user base has just gotten used to cuckoo behavior.

go under File->preferences->Globals->General-> use simplified Copy names

this will do what you want

Why would anyone have thought that was a good way to handle multiple, similarly named nodes?

Let's say you have Camera3D1 in your comp. Now lets say you want to make a camera that is ALMOST the same as Camera3D1, only the FoV is different. The easiest way is to copy/paste it. The name is now Camera3D2. Now lets say you make a new camera that is completely independent. It's used for a different angle, or for projection or whatever. So you click on the 3Cm button on the toolbar, and now you have Camera3D3. This is all fine, but does the name mean anything? No. You can't tell that Camera3D2 is derived from Camera3D1 and that Camera3D3 is unrelated to either.

Should you name your tools better when you make them? Sure, but if you had a naming dialog pop up every time you add a tool, people would hate that more.

So the alternative is to make the pasted camera not Camera3D2, but Camera3D1_1. Now you see that it's the first copy of Camera3D1. A new camera will be named Camera3D2, and you can see it has no relation to the Camera3D1 or Camera3D1_1. If you paste a second time, you get Camera3D1_2, which can read as "the second duplicate of Camera3D1".

The downside is that we tend to copy/paste serially, because the recently pasted tools are close at hand, and we don't have multiple copy/paste buffers. So you get the ..._1_1_1_1. Is it ugly? Yup. Is it functional? Yup.

But as Michael pointed out, there was a compromise made for the users' benefit. The copies get _n numbering still, but if you copy a copy, it keeps incrementing _n. You will see the Camera3D1_5 is a copy of Camera3D1, but you WON'T see that it's actually a copy of Camera3D1_3. If you used the default, though, you would see Camera3D1_3_1. So this simplified copy names is less functional, but it is prettier.

If you have a small monitor, the simplified copy names means you can see your tool names in the tool control windowshades and in the flow view, but if you have a high pixel count monitor, the default naming works fine because all those extra characters in the name can fit comfortably without ellipsis (though the windowshades don't get ellipsis anyway).

go under File->preferences->Globals->General-> use simplified Copy names

this will do what you want

Thanks. Much better.