A complete UI overhaul of Rhino would be a much welcomed move

I´ve just passed 20years on using rhino, and not suprisingly I really like the interface.

Autodesk has made many iterations on Autocad in the same span of time, and I still set it up as much like the old one as possible. But I can´t cause they´ve made too much changes. Same goes with Photoshop, had to adapt to changes.

The best part of Rhino is you can set it up as you like. Some people like to use lot of icons and toolbars, some people like drop downs, some like me who learnt on 768px screens use the command line. I´m all in for new features and themes for new people, but I will never use them unless forced.

As for priorities, I still use rh5 cause t-splines, so I´d rather see the SubD ready so I could swap to rh6.

8 Likes

“всич” comes from “всички”, which in Bulgarian language means “all”. I use this icon for the command “Select all”. :slight_smile: For that very reason I also replaced: “hide” with “скрий”, “cut” with “клъц”, the icon for the “Select by colour” with “цвят” (meaning “colour” in Bulgarian), the icon for “Invert selection” with “обр” (“обратно” means “invert”), the icon for “Hide objects” with “скрий”, and the icon for “Select none” with “нищо”.
I also improved some of the default Rhino icons to give them a more distinguished look that increase the speed of figuring out where they are located on the toolbar. One of these is the “MovenUVN” icon that I uploaded in my previous post. I added extra “UVN” letters to it at the upper left corner.
It’s so nice that everybody could customize the toolbars according to their liking.

1 Like

Oh, gotcha, I just use the native icons for that, the selection tab is so damn useful, I always dock it next to the properties pane, it became sort of a tradition for me. The next step would be giving them custom aliases, undock the tab and free up extra 10-20 pixels and become a true Rhino wizard :crazy_face:, but I’m a tad hesitant about it since they are many and I’m one and some of them I use only in unique situations and would tend to forget the alias I gave them. :weary:

There is enough space even on screens with 1080p resolution to keep at least 12 of these icons under the left vertical toolbar. :slight_smile:

1 Like

True, but I’ve got other stuff there :sunglasses:

1 Like

I think that Unity is the best UI example that I can imagine and my wish for Rhino. Because is super flexible (resizing and drag and drop), use components that you can populate, is super versatile (you can program it), do not change in that much alog time (only improve) and do not lose space (you can feel the gaps if you wish).

About a defoult Dak Sking Template, here is my feedback: [FEEDBACK] Rhino Dark Skin

We can combine these ideas. For example: we divide all commands into six groups. Commands which make new objects have white background. Commands which change objects have light-grey background. Commands which provide information have background gradient: top = white, bottom = light-grey. Commands which change options or defaults have opposite background gradient: top = light-grey, bottom = white. Commands which export or import data have opposite horizontal background gradients.

Andrew - I think this might work !

Very good feedback, bud - THANKS !

-C.

Hell no, please. Don’t hardcode the background. On contrary both background and foreground should be allowed to be set to transparent.

5 Likes

Hi!
AlanMattano posted a Mac screenshot, dark theme. I’ve inverted the brightness to test what the light version would look like.
Both ways - Rhino’s Mac version looks so much cleaner than on Windows! 2019 vs the nineties…
It’s because there’s less line clutter in the windows decoration (no tabs just icons, no double border lines…)

I’m just talking about the UI looks here (not UI logic or workflows) - but this is not mere eye candy! A UI should be as calm and unobtrusive as possible. It’s an art form of it’s own.

1 Like

My main criticism of the Rhino UI is that new users are completely lost at certain important things, without going to the forums to ask about it, like commands that don’t have toolbar icons. This is important because Rhino often uses completely different terms than the rest of the industry, like “match” instead of “align” and “polysurface/join” instead of “stitched surface”.

Similarly “one shot snap” things, for example, I still must refer to a forum thread I created once, every time I want to perform a very basic thing like snap to isoparms on a different surface, which requires holding down of control over the snapping options to reveal a whole new set of options, which then you must know precisely where and in what order to click, unless you want them to disappear again.

And filleting, one of the most important things in product design, is hidden under so many different tools, which apparently either don’t work very well, or work but are extremely basic…

…which leads me to actually the command line. That’s the most eye sore thing that tarnishes the entire UI of Rhino, and scares away many new users. Sure, ok, for advanced users, fine. But why on earth would you bury tool options in there in this day and age? I get that’s it’s cheap to develop, but it’s 2019. One would hope to have a proper UI for tools.

Ok, venting over (and I do get that the price of Rhino is very cheap, so my expectations should be tempered accordinly). :slight_smile:

EDIT: Oh, also interesting to see some people mentioning wanting monochromatic icons and comparing to Blender, because there was quite a big backlash against this on the Blender forums, and some color is now back even in the default 2.8 theme. :slight_smile:

EDIT: Forgot another big thing! When importing STEP/IGES files from a CAD application that works with assemblies, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible to work with it without destroying the inherent hierarchy in the file. The “block editor” doesn’t cut it and is pretty much unusable from a usability perspective (and possibly even functional perspective, I honestly don’t know).

4 Likes

Hi, probably some mentioned this, but I would love having the option of a pop up menus like GH, with a radial organization.

Is this possible now?

Also the same kind of menu, with content aware tools for selected objects would be great.

image

4 Likes

Read the manual before criticizing any professional CAD program. These programs are made for people who invest about one thousand hours in learning how to use one CAD program. If your attention span is too short for professional CAD program, use Moment of Inspiration (a.k.a. MoI, only $279).

1 Like

I am sorry, but I think you completely misunderstood everything I wrote! :upside_down_face:

Guess what “professional CAD program” the screenshot I posted from is. Guess how many hours I have invested in it? Hint: I’ve been using it since 2010. :wink:

1 Like

What do you suggest we have instead of command line?
How do I enter my commands?

How do you enter commands in 99% of other CAD software?

I’m not saying they should remove it. But they absolutely need to start making proper custom dialogs for their tools, like the screenshot I posted.

I don’t use other CAD software.

1 Like

Command Line is awesome!

7 Likes

@eobet if you like dialog boxes you might want to try out the Mac version. I am very happy with the way Rhino is made with very few tools having dialog boxes. Once you get fully into it you don’t have to look at the command line that often and can fully focus on the task at hand. For tool settings that you need often it’s very easy to make a macro for them and aliases.

1 Like

On the contrary, I’ve found Rhino one of the easiest to use. I just use the command line and have most buttons hidden (buttons waste time). I can’t think of a software with better named commands. You want to move you type “move”. You want to draw a curve you type “curve”. You want to project you type “project”. You want to join something you type “join” (you can’t tell me “stitched surface” is a more suitable name :smiley: , what software calls it that anyway?)

6 Likes