Workflow Request: Notes popup on Imported Geomtery or External Linking

[popwfx]

One thing I'm noticing in my workflow now, is, especially when I am bringing LightWave objects into 3DCoat by Importing for per pixel painting or Replace Geometry in an existing .3b file I have saved - is that I can't tell what version/iteration of my model is inside the .3b file at all. I have to examine the object inside 3DCoat, and/or look at the file system date of the .3b file and hope there is a correlation with my saved .LWO object files.

Now before anyone tells me - yes I use subversion on projects to save histories, and I also name files and have a proper folder structure. But when being creative you don't want to care to stick to a rigid path of when to load the content into what application. If I want to model in LW and then paint in 3D Coat and then tweak in LW and then repaint or reUV in 3DCoat I should be able to go back and forth to whatever programs as often as I like without trouble. The only thing about embedding the LWO inside the .3b file as opposed to linking it to an external object file, is that you may have an iteration inside your .3b file which is older than a previous pass and it's hard to tell what is what easily.

To that end, I propose at minimum, there is a "Notes" section whenever you import ANY kind of mesh/object/or file into 3DCoat that ends up getting embedded into the .3b file. Then there should be a mechanism - whether an additional popup menu called "NOTES" which shows you the time & date stamp of when the file was imported into 3DC and your text notes in a popup of the object. That would be immensly helpful.

Perhaps later on, a better way of dealing with this could be to potentially allow the option of external linking of meshes and not having them embedded into the .3b file - which would then mean that particular .3b file has a dependency of that external .LWO file. This is common in programs like Lightwave and After Effects which commonly link to dependent files in the system - much like a project. Maybe that means there should be a new 3DCoat file format for 3DCoat projects?

What do you all think - any one else have workflow issues related to this?