A few Handy UI ideas

Serengeti (Rhino WIP)
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1.) Planar Start Toggle
It would be a very handy option when making 2D curves, lines, circles, etc, in the 2D views would be to have an option to make the entity planar from the starting point.

Often when I draw a line or a circle, I want to make a start point, and regardless of how how many snaps I use, I want the axis going from/into the screen to be at the starting point for both ends (or intermediates) to be at point.

This prevents oval and tilted lines when you don’t want them. It prevents having to setpt so much. I prevents inaccurate measuring/division of referenced entities.

2.) Interactive size information would be great: length for lines and boxes, diameter or radius for circles.

3.) Lose Flash for the tutorials. Flash will likely be shortened to a four letter word before V6 comes out. Personally, I don’t want something on my computer that’s so insecure that it has to be updated on my system every week. I don’t have flash on either of my computers, and well, my browsers run pretty good. Rhino’s cross-platform now, and don’t think they to see Flash any more, either.

4.) This is Mac taboo, but I wish that wherever possible, (I wish) we had the icons prefixed in the menus, because it makes it quicker to learn the icons.

5.) Include Dropline and NameCallout. These were two scrips that were written for me, so they are already done. (Thank you, Pascal) Dropline sets a point in the middle of a temporary line, for marking the centers of things. Name call out makes leaders using block names.

6.) Multi-Level Hide/Show? For making complicated stuff, I wish we had more than one level of hide. I know there’s show/hide a/b/c/d, but it’s not what I want for making complicated stuff. Currently, I resort to invert hide everything I want, but then I often need more clarity, so I end up locking some other things to get to what I want, though lock/unlock isn’t really made for that, is it? UI-wise I don’t know how to make this one elegant, but it would be handy.

Thanks for reading this far,
Brenda

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For point 1.) - Can you not do that by enabling Planar after the first picked point?

Point 6.) - +1. Some sort of Hide ‘palette’ would be great. Hide1, Hide2, Hide3, etc. I only ever use ShowSelected to reveal stuff, but that gets compromised when there’s only one level of Hide.

Still working my way through the other suggestions… :smile:

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When I read this this morning, I had an idea: A hide stack.

1.) You hide objects.
2.) You hide more stuff.
3.) You show stuff, and you are back to 2.

So I guess the commands would be a “Hide more,” and “Show more.”

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Matt, this already exists - are you saying it is not useful as is, or have you not run across it yet. You can save Hide/Sho ‘buckets’ by name - there is a little built in toolbar that has three pre-sets (“A”, B", & “C”, because our imaginations were stalled) that you can try.
V6 has Isolate built in, which is a lot like a macro of the hide bucket system.

@Brenda, Planar, with Project will force planar input even with OSnaps. You can toggle this with

Planar ProjectOSnap Toggle

-Pascal

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Hi Pascal - I’ve tried using them, but is there a way to call ShowSelected A, ShowSelected B etc? Having an ‘All Or Nothing’ Show command isn’t much use to me - I only ever use ShowSelected (I have it set as the right click companion to Hide).

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Hi Matt - so you need to dip into the hidden objects in bucket A to show only some of the objects in A, but never see any of the other hidden objects in the file, correct?

I guess then, a corresponding -ShowSelected “BucketName” command…

-Pascal

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I guess so. Button sets with the Hide light bulb icon appended with the required “A”, “B”, “C” etc could then be added to my ever-expanding popup toolbar to give quick access. Hide is the Poor Man’s History.

Was that the intended use for the extended Hide/Show tool set? I’m still not sure if I missed their point. Oh, the perils of self-learning… :smile:

I see what you mean about the Isolate script tools btw, though my mindset for their use had precluded that way of thinking until you pointed it out.

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7.) It would be handy if there was a preview button on Array on Curve.
(I tend to use it for spacing fasteners.)

8.) I’ve asked for this before, and I will try again: In Rhino 5, there was an annoying IU regression whereas the user has to change every single thing they make to material by object, if you aren’t material by layer. I have had to do this manually for thousands of objects, whereas in V4 it remembered, if memory serves me correctly.

[I tend to set wireframe/curve properties by layer, but I always material by object. To make something with a lot of parts, it often makes more sense to put things of different systems on a separate layer. If you were making a house, you would put all the plumbing on one layer, the electrical on another, right? Though, the plumbing layer could have a mixture of copper and PVC pipe. The electrical could be normal wire or steel wrapped. If you were making a car, you might put the wheels on a separate layer, but the wheels might have a painted or cast aluminum material for the wheel, and a rubber material for the tire. Rhino not remembering what modality the user last used for setting materials makes me do this repetitive action dozens of times a day.]

9.) Nudge settings should live in the document settings, not in (user) Rhino’s settings. It’s bad enough for us poor Americans, saddled with the SAE/imperial measuring system, and when we go back and forth to metric, we have to reset the nudge settings. I know this was an easy thing to miss, if you live in a modern country with only a single rational measuring system.

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  1. In V5, user cannot grab/snap the corner of an object back onto the grid if the translation direction lock/constraint is activated. To get around this, the user has to place a point snapped onto the grid, and reference that or reference another object.

It would be nice if a change was made to this functionality, so that the corner of an object can be snapped back onto the grid even if the direction lock (TAB) is active.

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I frequently wish that I could wire cut using a “line from midpoint.”

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Hi Brenda,

For now this Macro can be of use for that:

_Line _BothSides _Pause _Pause _SelLast _WireCut _Pause _Pause _Delete

HTH
-Willem

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Thank you, Willem : )