I’ve reached colorful-level only in this tool, since it’s a disaster.
in Rhino V5 when the input varies it used to show this:
the triangle in front of the numeric values was a way to tell the user that something is up.
Totally inconsistent with other tools when they need to tell you that the values is not the same for multiple objects, for example if all these cylinders have several names, they use the term ‘(varies)’
The ‘Δ 0.000’ wasn’t as good or elegant as ‘(varies)’ but at least it was trying to tell you that something is up. By saying "0.000’ the tools whose job is telling you a dimension of something it’s actually lying to you.
this is a ‘0.000’ value:
Zero is a number, an a very important one. let me explain why:
if I have 3 surfaces and I want to make use they are flat/planar/and coplanar to world Z I can select them and see that:
Now I want to show you how this tool can lie. I will move 2 points of one of these surfaces up 3mm…
when I select the three planes (with ‘transform objects individually’) checked I’m still told that their z value is 0 mm, instead of (varies):
I’ll do the same but with those two points moved up only 0.05mm, instead of 3mm, and now Rhino will tell you with confidence that something that you check for planarity is planar, when in fact isn’t:
So I think clusterfuck is an understatement about the state of this tool. It’s:
The biggest clusterfuck of carelessness and clusterfuckness of all Rhino tools at the moment, and probably in Rhino’s history
…especially considering the impact this has for costly downstream engineering mistakes in production/prototyping/RP.
I want professional tools for professional work. This isn’t it. Not even close. And it’s unacceptable. I stand by it.
G