Assign command to single keystroke

Rhino
,
1

Hello,

I have a pretty basic question:

is it possible in Rhino to assign a command or a script to a single key without having to press enter in Rhino? This way the workflow for often used commands could be boosted considerably IMHO.

best

Andreas

2

Hi Andreas -

Yes, to all the keys that are available on the Rhino Options -> Keyboard page.
-wim

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3

Well, not entirely. The only single keys available are Home, End, Tab and the F-keys. All others involve either multiple keys (Ctrl, Shift, Alt as modifiers) or Enter/Space/Right click to confirm the execution of the command. Single key commands has been discussed many times before.
HTH, Jakob

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thank you Wim, I was looking at the alias section… Sorry for the noob question, I guess it is still too early in the morning for me :wink:

However, I saw that apart from the F keys and some special keys like e.g. Tab, everything needs the crl key to work. Is there any reason that I cannot have normal keys assigned?

EDIT:
I just found this:

quite nice but I don’t have time (and maybe not the capability…) to build one on my own. Does anyone know if such a thing is commercially available?

@Normand : I wasn’t aware it has been discussed before. Can you tell what would be the reason for not having it?

5

Hi @walther
I think the main argument is that it will interfere with Rhino’s approach to aliases; being able to have “multi-letter” aliases. I use aliases a LOT (currently have 300+) and that would be impossible if only single letter aliases were allowed. SW is sweep1, SWSW is sweep2, PL is Polyline, B is BlendCrv, BE is BlendEdge and so on and so forth. I would have run out of keys a long time ago :joy: A single key mode has was implemented in a (now gone) plugin called T-splines, and I would love to see someone taking a stab at implementing just that feature as a plugin, as some workflows would surely benefit from greatly from it. T-splines was somewhat similar to Rhino’s Sub-d’s, and being able to switch between edges, vertices and faces, UVN and world coordinate, grow or shrink selections etc. with a single key would be nice! Not being programmatically inclined, I have NO idea how difficult it would be to do for real.
-Jakob

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6

Google Macropad and programmable keypad - plenty to choose from! :slight_smile:
-Jakob

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7

Thanks for the summary Jakob, that is very interesting!
I completely understand the problem with existing aliases users, but it would be sice if this could be an option in the Rhino settings, letting the user chose if he would rather have :

a) the current system with the possibility to use multi letter aliases
or
b) opt for having single stroke capabilities.

IMHO b) might be the better option, especially for people using only a limited amount of commands.
Actually I suspect that let’s say the 30 most used commands will probably cover 95% of the commands you will use in one hour of work, so speeding these up would be the real workflow booster. The flipside would be that there would have to be a special hotkey to access the command prompt.

8

The programmable macropad, or even keyboard is an interesting udea. I should create a new key layer on my Kyria split keyboard where I can give myself exactly that: single keypress shortcuts. I have in my current layout one shortcut for TestMooCow (:

9

this looks interesting:

should also work for Rhino I suppose.
I think I will try it out and report back :wink:

If I got it right you could even save and share your layouts and create different layout environments (drafting, sub-d, etc. !

10

They even have a pedal :rofl:
image

that is so cool : step on gas → fullscreen !

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