I wish there was a way for Rhino to warn me if I’m about to delete something other than what I’m looking at. For example, I simply delete a stray line, but don’t realize that it’s actually connected to a whole building way off to the right out of the viewport. Then I keep working locally only to find out 30 mins later that I am missing a big chunk of my model. Devastating. Is there a way to avoid this? I’ve done it many times.
It’s about layer and file management. Whenever you make an important step, you should make sure you save the file and “save as” the file as a new starting point. If the described situation happens later on, you can go back to previous files and copytoclipboard.
Yes. That’s how I do it, but it would also be really helpful if there could be a setting that could be turned on if you want to be notified if you’re about to delete something outside of the viewport. I make a lot of important steps 
Slam,
I keep the gumball active, and lots of times I have noticed when I select something the gumball scale handles are not completely in view–a dead giveaway that the object selected is grouped with something outside the view. Now I always check the gumball before making any transformation to be sure I’m only affecting the intended objects.
The box above the command line has a summary of what is selected. Check to see if it is what you think you are deleting.
Slam,
If you keep enough undos, you can use UndoMulitple to quickly return to the deletion, then copy the geometry to the clipboard, then restore the file with RedoMultiple, then paste back in the geometry. I find that faster than opening past copies to source the geometry, especially on large files. Just don’t do anything other than copy to the clipboard or you will break the undo sequence and lose the ability to Redo your way back to the present.
David,
Yes, but that raises a wish item for V6. If you add to your selection, the command line history updates to “2 surfaces added to selection” (or whatever you added). It would be really nice if it also re-listed a new summary of the current selection; “2 surfaces added to selection. Currently selected: 5 polysurfaces, 4 surfaces and 25 curves”
I also wouldn’t mind more detail in the summary, particularly regarding whether items are open, closed, valid, invalid, or nonmanifold; “2 closed polysurfaces, 1 closed invalid polysurface, 3 closed curves and 7 open curves added to selection”. That would make a really quick way to check objects as you work with them.
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Thank you Mark and David. The gumball scale handles not being completely in view definitely does help, but I don’t know if I would go so far as to say “dead giveaway”, just because it’s a bit subtle and if you’re clicking away with bleary eyes (pretty sure this is a common eye condition for the biz, right?) it can go unnoticed quite easily. I’m glad to know about the RedoMultiple command - that’s one I’ve never tried (unless it’s the same thing as hitting Control-y over and over?), but I’m still going to nominate some sort of explicit warning when you’re about to delete something you don’t see as another wish item for V6.