Control Panels

I find myself continually frustrated with Layout. I tend to think that the controls are all over the place - annotation scaling is in one place, drawing scale in another, etc. Lowell has helped me tremendously with these issues but I still often find myself with text that is gigantic and dimensions that are minute, then I have to track it all down and fiddle with it. I instinctively feel that there’s something wrong because it should be obvious to me and it isn’t.

I wish there was a control panel that would collect all the major functions for a layout in one place and that, once opened, would be persistent on your screen until you were ready to close it.

I also think this concept would be relevant to Display Modes. I’m enjoying working in Cinema 4D these days primarily because I’m impressed with their Sketch and Toon display functions (poorly named - it’s their NPR rendering engine). I think Rhino could push this aspect of the program much further than it has - and become something like an Illustrator 3D.

Right now the Display Mode controls aren’t all that convenient. Currently you got to Display Modes and choose New and fiddle around with the controls and then Save, give it a Name and then close the control panel. Then you go to your viewport and try and it out, then you go back through Options to make adjustments, and so on. I think it would be much better if an expanded control panel could be opened and be persistent on your screen. Maybe with sliders to control what you’re seeing. Once you get an effect you like you would give it a name and save it.

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Hi Arail- are you using the Display panel for any of the changes (Panels menu > Display) ? not all are available here but it should help, plus, there is direct access from this panel to the deeper settings of the mode in Options.

-Pascal

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I have Display open in Panels but it’s an abbreviated version of the controls and to get to the deeper stuff I go to Options. This results in a lot of fiddling around and going back and forth.

It could be that because of the sort of work that I do, I want all of these controls and more to be front and center. I’d like them to have a much greater prominence than they currently do. I think my clients are pretty eye weary about super photo realistic work but when I show them something that’s more graphically oriented they tend to sit up and take notice.

I think one of the great advantages Rhino has over any of the big poly modelers (Cinema, 3DS Max, etc.) is none of those programs can do dimensions or annotations. I think with an expanded Display Mode Rhino could offer another path - something that would be quite unique. As I said above - imagine Illustrator in 3D with complete annotation functions. I think Rhino is very close to something like that right now.