Am I the only one who keeps trying to turn off the current layer?

Yup, I know. You’d think I would eventually get over it and sometimes I do for brief periods.

This post, however, is about how Rhino deals with me when I forget.

I’ve got a 4K monitor so my layer tab is a pretty small percentage of the screen and I’ve got it over on the right side. When Rhino tells me I’ve done bad it does so by using a Windows standard dialog box in the Windows standard location at the center of the screen. This means a long mouse trip to the center of the screen to dismiss the warning and another long trip back to the layer tab to do it right.

In my humble opinion this could be improved by having the warning pop up like a toolbar right next to the culprit click and have it disappear when the warning is clicked on anywhere. Even better, perhaps, would be to have it disappear the next time the mouse is clicked for any layer related reason (except trying to turn off the current layer again - which would just flash it instead).

Perhaps there are other things in Rhino that use default warning dialogs at the default center-screen location which could benefit from a similar improvement in this day of hi-res monitors.

Just a tip to prevent you from making miles with the mouse: enable the option to move the cursor to the default button. this is found in the control panel

It might help to have a larger target too:

http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/5/video/highres/toolbars_and_text_too_small_in_64-bit_rhino_5_on_high_resolution_screen

Is there a reason that turning off the current layer is a problem that needs a warning?

_Creating geometry on the current layer if it is off will obviously cause an issue and confusion, but turning off the layer isn't really a big deal and it happens regularly._

Why not remove the warning about turning off the current layer and replace it with a warning when creating geometry on the turned off current layer?

2cents

My vote would be to close that dialog with RMB. It works with SPACE and ENTER, so why not with the mouse ?

c.

That’s exactly what I have been thinking every time this warning pops up…

If a boolean union fails, splits etc we get a warning in the command line…yet we get a window requiring acknowledgement for trying to turn a parent layer off.

Why can`t it be like a failed boolean union etc? …fail and just give us a warning in the command line that I can ignore and move on.

The current layer might simply refuse to turn off.
We would than understand the problem and move on without annoying warnings

And, yes, it happens to me pretty regularly too …

EDIT:

Or … the current layer might turn off and some kind of warning might appear that tells us to set the new current layer before doing anything else. Without having to click on the warning or elsewhere.

I don’t have a ‘bulb’ next to the current layer over here… Am I missing something ?

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@Jarek, try turning OFF a sublayer of the current layer to get to the dialog.

c.

That works OK here, but a dialog pops up when the sublayer is current and you try to turn off its parent… --Mitch

Oh I see it now. thx.

that is what i wanted to say.

Some good points of view that I hadn’t considered!

I’m thinking that popup warnings can be very useful, but they should occur at the time and place of the event requiring the warning. Having it show up on the command line provides the opportunity to miss it, especially for users whose mode of operation is mostly menu and icon oriented.

Comments here suggest that having to click to dismiss the warning quite possibly is something that’s completely unnecessary. Especially if it pops up right at the click of shame. It could disappear after a suitable time, and in this day and age of cool visual effects could just fade away. Of course if the developers just want to use a Windows-provided dialog box, then we need to put up with the way it works.

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haha, seems I was mixing up AutoCAD and Rhino…AutoCAD allows you to turn off the current layer, but pops up a warning…Rhino doesn’t allow current layer or its parent layer to be turned off and warns of such.

I don`t want another window to pop up for a failed split or boolean etc so I hope this does not sound like I am requesting it…but my point was that at present we get a command line warning for a failure of some actions on our geometry which I would think are easier to miss than the obvious failure of an attempt to hide a layer.

To me it is pretty obvious to see if the layer is still visible or not.

Could we perhaps get a “do not show me this warning again” option?