Rhino 5 splash screen is annoying

I have to concur here… I love the idea of the functional splash screen, but its current implementation is often more hassle than benefit. I haven’t had anything as bad as this, but I have often had the splash screen interrupt other work while waiting for rhino to open something in the background. Then the clicking game begins, trying to restore focus on the proper window. It’s a bit of a pain compared to the gain.

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Ugh. I know. Unfortunately we can’t fix this easily in Rhino 5 - whether or not the splash can be disabled. There is code all over the place in Rhino to get it to come to the front when it’s done loading. We recently figured out a deep core reason why Rhino doesn’t behave nicely with Windows, and why all the hacks were necessary. But we discovered it while restructuring the Rhino 6 code, and it’s a big change that we’re not comfortable porting back to Rhino 5. Worse, if we take all the hacks out that bring Rhino to the front, then Rhino consistently starts behind all other applications.

I recently had almost the same horrible experience with Windows update…

I’m replying to an email, and Windows Update appears with a system-always-on-top dialog asking “Would you like to restart your computer so we can install a new driver for that mouse you haven’t used in 8 months?”(1) The default button is “Awesome, yeah! Close all my apps, right now!”

Without noticing, I press Enter to get a new line in my email, and boom - all my apps are shutting down - without saving. Thanks Microsoft!

I’m glad you had backups of your file, and I’m sorry we’re doing to you what Windows did to me. I hope Rhino 6 is better in this regard.

1: Ok, seriously, it probably was a really important update. I admit that. But I still lost some work.

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Brian, you can’t be serious here… so what you’re saying is that we have to wait another 5+ years to get the splashscreen fixed??

Please give us an option to turn it off in the meantime.

thx, Tobias

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Turning off the splash, sure, we can do that in Rhino 5. But making the hideous problem of focus and Rhino coming to the top won’t get better in V5.

I tested and if the /nosplash is set for the shortcut then no splash occurs (everyone here already know that.) When I double click on a 3dm to open it, the splash shows up, but it doesn’t show the “recent” pane by default which is where the privacy issues come up. Maybe there is a way to get the recent pane to stick, but I couldn’t do it with my lame tests.

Is this enough for you @tobias? I’m asking because I would rather spend the time working on V6 than patching in features for V5 (which can slow down progress on V6.)

I looked around with no success trying to add options to the file association. Isn’t that possible?

Guys with better knowledge of the registry, isn’t it possible to hack that into the registry?

Or start delivering a nosplash version of the .exe

Its not so easy to find the right key to edit the file association.
Rhino 4 has a \shell\open\command key with a path to Rhino4.exe.
Rhino 5 has just a \shell\open\ key with a friendlyname value but no command.

Does a simple option to turn off the splash altogether slow down progress on V6 so much? Or does McNeel simply don’t want the user to turn it off?

Or do you know how to edit the registry shell open command for Rhino 5 (see my answer toRicardo). That would also be fine.

thx, Tobias

I tried putting the /nosplash in:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Rhino5x64.Document\shell\open\command

I couldn’t get it to work: couldn’t open 5, or file type not supported sort of errors…
It’s the right key at least (I only know because I broke it)…

Any typing on V5 in any way slows down the progress on V6. It’s not a question of how much does it slow down progress to me as it is “where do you draw the line?” There are many small requests like this that I think would be great to add to Rhino, but if there is a workaround that works just as well for the user then it seems like it may be best to use the workaround.

Let’s say we add a checkbox to the options dialog to turn the splash screen off in V5. This will involve small amounts of time from the developer, the documentation team, the translators (every language), and the testers to properly implement.

Again, I’m not opposed to adding this. I was just trying to figure out how critical this was for you.

Would it be too complicated to reverse the behavior?

Default no splash, /splash for splash?

Ok, ok… that’s indeed true. So does anyone of you know if its possible to add the /nosplash to the shell command of Rhino5 64 bit? That would be a working solution of course.

thx, Tobias

So I found a hack that works on Windows 7 if you want to open by double clicking through explorer. This works on my machine:

This requires a batch file named OpenRhinoNoSplash.bat
The batch file needs to be saved in a folder that is listed in the PATH variable ( I used “C:\Windows”)
C:\Windows\OpenRhinoNoSplash.bat

Contents of the batch file:
rem ==============
rem start rhino without a splash screen
start “” “C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\System\Rhino.exe” /nosplash %1
Exit
rem =============

In regedit goto:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Rhino5x64.Document\shell\open\command

Do yourself a favor and export this key as a backup just in case you need to revert.

Now replace:
“C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5.0 (64-bit)\System\Rhino.exe” “%1”
(This may be different depending on your install location)

with:
“OpenRhinoNoSplash” “%1”

Now when you double click on a Rhino Doc through explorer, it will open without the splash (you do see the quick flash of the console window)

HTH,
tom

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Oh thanks for the right key. /nosplask can be added directly to the key, no bat needed:

“C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5 (64-bit)\System\Rhino.exe” “/nosplash” “%1”

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Even better - nice catch!
(I see now - my mistake was not separating out that string in the reg…)

Yes! That works. Thanks a bunch!!

I appreciate the effort to make the splash screen usable. I generally like its function. BUT… until a method is found that doesn’t make rhino keep popping to the top as a file is opening while I’m trying to do other things, this splash screen is more hassle than it is worth – I keep messing things up. I’d like to ask again for a switch to turn it off in Rhino 5 without doing some crazy registry hacks, or adding /nosplash that only works when opening rhino without opening directly from a file. The splash screen is driving me nuts.

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its so simple to pass away the splash screen,I just delete that particular file from the directory of Rhino5 RhinoSplash.dll and its done…

“C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5\System\RhinoSplash.dll”

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Hahahaha, what a brilliant hack.:rofl: But it works and will save me a lot of time! Awesome!

These forum “archives” really can be extremely useful !
Unacceptably slow Rhino6 startup times (30+ seconds some times) banished at the stroke of a “/nosplash” command line option.

Many thanks steveB!

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