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

My fav tool command icon

Road

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Actually I think the original name for smash (and the icon) was ROADKILL. That should raise your bloodpressure a few more points. Chill dude.

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If you are going to be pro active then at least learn to use waste/waist properly. Capitalisation must be a challenge too.

Want? Not really :wink:

But to get back to the original post: we always are working on making the GUI better. But a complete overhaul as hinted at (at least as how I interpret the OP and the majority of this thread) isnā€™t something of the near future. I donā€™t see that happen for v7, but nothing is set in stone.

I just want to point out that this is a good and constructive discussion on a topic that can easily turn emotional. Even though we arenā€™t replying, we are reading threads like this and thinking about the ideas posted for future work.

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A dark theme would be welcome but monochrome icons in 1D(!) that makes potato print look futuristic and other Win10 design (flaws) like light blue text on bright white background No thanks.
A bit of red on a delete button make all the difference for example.

Even though there been attempts to change to white themes in cad or design software I think most people
who sits in front of their screen prefer a more relaxed darker theme.

A simple F11 full screen would be top of my list of UI improvements.
I used to run ufuboceros plugin on Rhino 5 and I do miss it in 6.

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That analogy misses the point at a much larger distance than the apples and the oranges at the grocery store. Also, completely contradicts your first statement.

Here is Rhinoā€™s interface rendering after being idle for a while. Itā€™s a traumatic flashback to another decade.

And donā€™t tell me that this is a technical issue on my end. Itā€™s just what Windows does, in order to save or dedicate resources to another active process. Every modern operating system does this.
The thing is - modern applications are optimized to render instantly or at least handle that delay in a more elegant way. And that is ā€œkeeping up with the timesā€.

You are telling me that every CAD software if itā€™s less expensive from the competition and does everything you need, should have a bad UI, just ā€˜becauseā€™ā€¦ and we should all roll over and play dead.
The software still costs something and has a paying clientele [also, itā€™s nowhere near that stage to justify a turn as a subscription-based business model].

And Iā€™d say that Rhino is not cheap, but itā€™s priced fairly. The price rises with each new version, and sure will do that as long as they are adding new features.
And a good UI is not a justification to rip people off, but itā€™s just another new ā€œtoolā€ added to the set of awesome.
As with any other business - raising the price of a product, as long as itā€™s truly beneficial to the consumer, it will be praised instead of having those customers [which is a pretty tech-savvy base] run to the next competitor and adjust their workflow.
Those A-holes that you are mentioning, are in business just because it seems they are ā€œtoo big to failā€, but Iā€™d say - never say never. They lost a huge number of a very valuable base to their community along the years, and still do.
And why canā€™t a beautiful piece of code like Rhino, with a community so involved as this one, bring in some new customers by visually appealing to them, and satisfy the needs and wants of their current ones along the way?!

Taking a minute or two to rethink the first-person experience and updating it, in no way would be a waste of time and resources, and we should welcome it with open hands and help out along the way.

I truly believe that Rhino is the future for my industry [architecture] and many others, so much so, I embraced it and adjusted my workflow completely to a one single software package, and I want it to succeed and evolve to a much better piece of software.


Rhino has far more commands and a vast set of different tool categories, to bring itā€™s iconography to a monochromatic palette. IMO color differentiation between sets of tools is necessary and I think Rhino already has this principle embedded into itā€™s UI. Maybe not always and in the best way, but this is a nice element to itā€™s UI. If there are any changes to it, a polishing of its iconography would be ā€˜a mustā€™, just to bring this differentiation in order.


I completely agree and I encourage you to, at least, make an assessment and have a more serious discussion about Rhinoā€™s UI, and put in place a way for the community to be involved when the time for change comes.
I would much rather have this thread be filled with constructive suggestions than people flaming and dismissing something, Iā€™m sure, is very obvious to you all at McNeel.

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Actually it kind of looks like a technical issue at your endā€¦or a combination of factors that we need to understand and deal with better - Iā€™ve never seen this one ā€¦ can you post the output from SystemInfo? That will be a start. Weird UI display is a little different from a UI overhaul - more urgent, I would say, if your screen looks like thatā€¦

thanks,

-Pascal

F11 is already assigned to Points Off, but F4 is not assigned yet.

This sure is a controversial topic. If one however planned creating a darker workspace for Rhino and wanted to do this job properly one would not come around redoing all icons anyway. The existing icon colours are optimized towards the bright default colour scheme. Thatā€™s the inherent problem with any multicolour icons ā€“ colours lose contrast and readability suffers inevitably, as soon as background colours change.

Monochromatic icons are a lot more robust in that respect. Itā€™s therefore absolutely no surprise that all 4357 Font Awesome Icons (used on x-millions of websites) are monochromatic as well. They look equally good on any background colour, whether black, white or purple and they may use any colour tint. Monochromatic would not mean that all icons had to be strictly grey ā€“ one still could use colour semantics to make things more memorable.

Hereā€™s a recent clip on how things will look in the upcoming Blender 2.8 version: Itā€™s makers will replace all existing icons inside Blender (and these are several hundreds as well) with monochromatic ones. The Blender foundation gets a lot of backfire for doing this (see comments under the linked post) but I think this measure makes a lot of sense ā€“ in particular for a crazy customizable program like Blender. Whatever the user does to the background colours ā€“ all buttons should remain readable :o)

This has been true since day one. Probably for most software with any kind of interface. Some users like change, others donā€™t. And that is how it will be till the end of days.

edit: in the end people will be grumpy about change, but in most cases people will learn, and eventually embrace the new, possibly better, way. (me included).

/Nathan

P.S. No, I didnā€™t say we shouldnā€™t strive to improve. I think it should be clear Iā€™ve always said the opposite.

You guys sure like your dark backgrounds. I hope no matter what happens there ends up an option I can opt out of.

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+1
Better opt-in to dark.

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Yeah, but itā€™s of course not that simple. Change isnā€™t always good and nay-sayers may have some damn good arguments. In this particular instance my preference for flat and simple iconography accidentally matches the solution which should be the easiest for developers to maintain :o)

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Itā€™s trendy. Wait a few years, some other scheme will be trendyā€¦

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IF the GUI were to be updatet then I wish for this:

  • Fully scalable vector icons (doesnā€™t need to be drawn as vectors, they could quickly be rendered to raster when size was chosen)
  • Adjustable function colors (background color, main color, highlight color, secondary highlight color) for fast adjustment of the entire appearance.

My personal choice now would be dark gray, white and redish orange, but one of the things I really fell in love with when starting to use Rhino was itā€™s light and bright GUI. Back then most CADā€™s were darke since it saved the CRT screens and it was less straining on the eyes since a lot of monitors flickered when full bright white as the default refresh rate could be as low as 30 fps :slight_smile: (none interlaced though)

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I know,
The new Blender UI looks amazing now.

I understand why people are hating the flat-monochromatic look.
There are pros and cons, but thatā€™s why I said that Rhino should keep the colors in its iconography, but put in place a system of layered (primary, secondaryā€¦) colors, so it can keep the differentiation in the category of tool-set the icon represents, and make it configurable, so the user can adjust it, according to the major color-scheme he uses.
Maybe even, combine the two styles, and have a single color, monochromatic, for the general system tools, and categorize by color specific tool-sets.
Rhino already does this, and thatā€™s a great move, but it needs to be implemented better and hopefully with a flatter iconography.
Also, those rules should be followed by developers, and thatā€™s how you get a beautiful unified GUI experience.
There will be a transition period when this change happens, but its a necessary temporary sore for the eye.


CAD and 3d modeling software in general always favored the dark scheme just because of the long hours people spend in front of it, and it pops-out the model, the subject you are working on. Itā€™s a matter of preference in the end.
Rhino can still keep its customizability, and let users tweak things as they please, but changes need to be made in the core, and that, understandably, seems to be very hard and time-consuming to do.
Iā€™m simply advocating that - ā€œWe deserve better. Rhino deserves betterā€.
Itā€™s lacking behind, and itā€™s a bug that needs to be fixed, preferably, sooner than later.


I doubt it, but here is my SystemInfo. It happens when Rhino is idle for some period of time, and in the meantime, Iā€™ve been running some other heavy-duty process. When in continuous use, it renders instantly.
Itā€™s understandable. I wanted to point out that that delay can be handled differently [ex. ā€œblurred-to-sharpā€ animation].
Rhino 6 Sysinfo.txt (3.0 KB)

Since youā€™ve mentioned diagnostics, RhinoDotNetCrash shows an error with Windows Forms.

RhinoDotNetCrash.txt (432 Bytes)

For the modeling window, perhaps. My first CAM software had 16 colors, and for the choice of modeling window colors, it was as Henry Ford is often paraphrased as having said: ā€œYou can have any color you like as long as itā€™s blackā€. When a later version had the option of making the modeling window background white, black, gray (medium) or blue, it was a revolutionā€¦ But the toolbars and other controls stayed resolutely medium gray - and still are as far as I know.

An awful lot of modelers use a gradient modeling background today to ā€œpopā€ out the model. And many offer both light and dark control areas.

It is not trendy, at least not for me. Brightness hurts my eyes. I cannot go out on a bright day without sunglasses. Dark grey is bearble but white - not an option.

Maybe a pair of cool cad-glasses can be our new trend then?
image
(Those are made for gamers who just like cadā€™ers spend hours in front of the screen :slight_smile: )

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