Anyone else wondering where this "Filter Parts List" feature is from the Patch Notes?

[Glockshna]

Am I the only one wondering where this: (red box) is?

http://img.techpowerup.org/130528/Glockshna_pix071.jpg

There's no search keybinding and no button that I've seen anywhere... Any ideas on this? I want it so bad.

[CalculusWarrior]

I believe it is implemented partially in that when you first enter the VAB/SPH, only some parts are available. The devs may include a search bar later on when the amount of parts increases to something more manageable.

[Glockshna]

Well, with the advent of mods (and it's pretty safe to say most people have parts packs installed) a search bar sooner rather than later would be very nice.

I suppose there are mods for that though.

[Finnerty]

Am I the only one wondering where this: (red box) is?

http://img.techpowerup.org/130528/Glockshna_pix071.jpg

There's no search keybinding and no button that I've seen anywhere... Any ideas on this? I want it so bad.

When you are in the VAB and building a ship, the greyed-out parts in the parts lists is the filtering. Parts you can't begin building with are greyed-out, so you can't select them to start with.

And I think that is it, that's all it is, greyout boxes that you can't use.

[jeti140973]

The filter was explained in Harvesters blog entry Seats, Pods and Other Parts. We are just seeing the first steps, and it will probably be extended in later updates.

[...] you can see that parts that aren't allowed are greyed out. This is a new system we cooked up, that I have to say I'm very excited about. Excited as only a code geek can get about managing enumerated collections of data, which is saying something both about the geekiness involved, and the level of excitement.

In a nutshell, the parts list is now equipped with two 'filter stacks'. One for excluding parts off the list, and another for greying them out. The cool thing about this is that these filters are completely arbitrary. That is, the parts list doesn't know what the filtering criteria are, it just applies and combines all of them, to produce a list of parts that matches all of them.

So, now when you have zero parts in your editor build area, the editor logic files the "rootPartsOnly" filter, which sets a requirement for parts, saying only parts that allow both stacking and surface attachment are valid. This causes all other parts to become grey, and to show the reason why they're grey on their tooltips.

Each filter has a "reason" it writes to parts that fail to meet the criteria. If a part is culled by more than one filter, the reasons will accumulate. So if your part can't be used as a first part, and on top of that, you wouldn't be able to afford it, the part will tell you both reasons why you're not able to pick it.

The second stack of filters is more straightforward. That's the exlusion filter. It's applied in much the same way, with filters that add criteria parts must meet, but instead of greying them out, the part is completely omitted off the list. This is useful for things like guided tutorials, where we only want a few parts to be shown at a time, and also later for when we have R&D implemented, to hide away parts you haven't researched yet.

All in all, a very useful addition.