Targeting dynamic instance

Question

Hello, just a quick levels issue (maybe) or me being out of
me depth as usual - quick summary, Im creating several movieclips
on the fly and adding external images to them. These mcs then
become moveable and I want the user to drag them into a preference
dropbox "Good","Not Sure" etc.. which are other movieclips -
because the user can drag several mcs into any one dropbox I'll
need a routine to scale and position the selected mcs - because of
this my approach thus far has been to remove the mcs from the main
timeline and add them to the dropbox with the same name and image
etc. and give that dropbox a function to scale and postion (have'nt
thought of that one yet...) I am adding and removing the mc with
this function
function isindropbox(mc:MovieClip){ //mc is the name of the
mc to add
for(var z in dropboxArry) {
if ((eval(dropboxArry[z])).hitTest(_xmouse, _ymouse, false))
{ //checks if mouse is released in dropbox
var pic_mcchosen:MovieClipLoader = new MovieClipLoader();
pic_mcchosen.loadClip("images/"+mc._name+".jpg",
(eval(dropboxArry[z])).createEmptyMovieClip(mc._name+"A",
this.getNextHighestDepth()));
deleteThis = eval(mc._name);
removeMovieClip(_root.deleteThis);
all this works fine and I can see the mc in this scenario
"MarsA" being generated in the selected dropbox, but I can't within
the same function reference it i.e.
trace(this.holder_ins1["MarsA"]._width); // or
trace(_root.holder_ins1["MarsA"]._width);// returns 0
yet if I have a button on the stage elsewhere calling this:
tempbutt_mc.onPress = function () {
trace(_root.holder_ins1["MarsA"]._width);
} // returns the correct width
does a dynamically created instance not get registered with a
player until the function that made it finishes??
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

MikeLB,
> I'm creating the mc on a mousedown/event/function and
> then scaling the mc on a mousemove as follows
> mouseListener.onMouseDown = function() {
> var mc:MovieClip = _root.attachMovie("my etc...
> isdrawing = true;
> }
Aha.
> and then:-
> mouseListener.onMouseMove = function() {
> if (isDrawing) {
> mc._xscale = etc
Okay, this is a scope issue. In your onMouseDown event,
you've assigned
a function literal that declares a variable mc. That variable
is scoped to
the function only, as is the case any time you declare a
variable inside a
function. As soon as the function completes execution, the
variable is
gone. That's why the onMouseMove-assigned function isn't able
to see it.
Declare the variable outside the scope of either function
first, then it
will be available to both.
var mc:MovieClip;
var isDrawing:Boolean;
mouseListener.onMouseDown = function() {
mc = _root.attachMovie(//etc.);
isDrawing = true;
mouseListener.onMouseMove = function() {
if (isDrawing) { // etc.
David Stiller
Adobe Community Expert
Dev blog,
http://www.quip.net/blog/
"Luck is the residue of good design."