Right now Block Manager has no search option. I think nowadays it’s hard to call some piece of software without a search button, a manager ;).
Anyways it’s ok when I have a small file and only a few block definitions in it. Later on, I can add 001, 002 numbers in front of the blocks names, but it’s a silly workaround. Things got more complicated when I forgot to add those prefixes and I import some CAD file with hundreds of blocks inside of it. Then my blocks are scattered all the way through blocks list.
I think that having a search option (the best if it would work as a live filter) inside Block Manager would be helpful for many of us.
May I ask if there is anyone working on this (like for real)?
We are reaching half a year now since this thread started.
On you-track I see that implementing such an easy functionality as that, is shifted to Rhino 7, which means waiting a couple of years and buying a new product just to have this inconvenience resolved.
Block Manager should have not only a search bar (pretty obvious for me) but also more organization options and be more user-friendly (maybe tags or folders?).
One of my pretty big files started to be very clunky so I decided to split it into three pieces.
Right now I’m cleaning all the crap which some CAD file brought into.
I’m deleting blocks in the Block Manager. I found it very stressful because I have there also blocks which I would like to avoid deleting by accident.
All the blocks are mixed up in the list so I am precisely picking up dozens of them to delete. Adding prefixes to the names, so they sort is not enough, especially if we import blocks with external files.
I am not a fan of using Purge command in big files because it is very aggressive.
MORE GENERAL OBSERVATION:
Maybe I could use some grasshopper tricks to deal with this situation and many other, but I noticed how much time I spend on stuff which IMO should be built-in and easy to do, but is not. Power users and developers usually deal with them by grasshopper/coding acrobatics.
I have a feeling that many of the (devs/power users) can have so much knowledge and experience that they are somewhat blind to some problems. They are resolving those situations with “just a few lines of code” which for every other “normal” user is absurd. Not because normal users are uneducated or too lazy to do it this way, but because they are pursuing also other things than being coders/software experts by themselves.
I’m fine with going deeper and deeper into the software but sometimes a pile of things to resolve by workarounds gets so huge that there is no time left to design.
Sorry for the emotional tone, but I’m a bit frustrated.
Rhino 6 updates will be in general only bug fixes. So maybe in the meantime while waiting for Rhino 7 one of those power users can code up something for you
Sounds like a nice challenge. Not sure if it is possible though with the Rhino common tools available.
As an added bonus it could lead to something that acts as a prototype to tell exactly to McNeel how we want it to function.
Just to add something to my wishes.
I think block manager would serve us better if data from used by and count could be shown in one table with other information.
We were shown a work-in-progress version of the new block manager in last week’s developers meeting and that had a search bar / filter. I would expect this to become available in a public Rhino 8 WIP within a few months - that is assuming no unforeseen things turn up…
-wim
