I would like to start a discussion what should be the priorities for V9.
I included all the most pressing points in my opinion which I find doable until next major release. Many of the points have been notoriously asked before by other users too.
Robustness and bugs fixing
V9 has to come out bulletproof unlike V8
Rhino is supposed to be mature professional CAD, there is no room for child diseases anymore
Fix long standing bugs and make Rhino more robust and reliable
Clean up and and refinement
achieve consistency and logic throughout commands, make an audit and think of terms listed below:
all commands should respect work with current cplane and not world (cap surface UVs for example)
all surface-like objects should react to same commands (for example two hatches should be joinable/trimmable/splitable like two surfaces)
merging should have sub-options if cylindrical or spherical surfaces should be merged
simplify should have more options (in my mind simplify could work for curves and polysurfaces with more suboptions what to do because its purpose is basically to cleanup and simplify geometry)
another example for consistency are detail views frames which should simply behave like other curves with possibly adding kinks, trimmable, …
commands should work for all geometry types (for example intersection of iplane with mesh should generate intersecting curve, now it does not work)
Introduce Model origin which is some kind of special virtual cplane so that one can work far from origin but under the hood big coordinates are just to be shifted small coordinates
Improve fillets and other basic operations to become better and more reliable
Come up with replacement for patch command which is obsolete
Drafting
Absolutely a must to finally bring special linetypes supporting .sxh like in Autocad
Overhaul of text editor with rich text editation possibilities
Significant enhancement of annotations (new dimensions for elevations, smart dimension, new units for angles like gradians, much more control over what linetypes do to the appearance of dimensions, dimension for curve length, just look at Autocad please or contact me for help)
Named section styles
Improvement of clipping planes, technical views, more control over linetypes, weights, colors, …
Blocks
Enough has been said just implement features from New Block Plugin natively
Include lights to blocks
Export/import
Ifc import export
SKP export improvements like SKP import which had been previously improved
Layout to DWG
Utilities and analysis
Planarity check like in Acapulco plugin
Slope analysis of polysurfaces and meshes in degrees, % or 1:x in respect to either world or current cplane
Some special object to bring excel tables, pdfs into Rhino
Miscellaneous
Key/values need third column which is Units
Selection appearance should be optionally nicer like in Blender for instance (only outline, …)
in Rhino PDF driver just bring a slider to control compression rate for raster images, now you can control only dpi
This is a good list. Agreed to most of it (wich is the part I know of).
We could now debate whether wishlists like this make sense or not, because they don’t go into details a lot. I think they do, exactly because of that - it’s about getting an overview.
And actually also to vent some…
Facepalm stuff:
Selection of hatches should not be 100% yellow (forchrissake…)
Viewport safe frames should always fill the viewport, proportionally (shouldn’t be cut off when too wide).
All the glitches with the new (and very welcome) UI fixed. Unified, consistent, and every last dialog box supporting dark theme.
Modelling stuff:
Constraints in curve editing: keeping the corner angles intact when moving a curve segement (works for surfaces already). Super useful little feature, known from Archicad.
Grouping/hiding possible inside blocks, lights inside blocks of course
Deleting layers with option to also delete block content, recursively
Drafting stuff:
Polygonal Detail views
Draw order improvements in layouts - images should be able to partake (they don’t, because they are always nurbs planes, and nurbs don’t)
A robust 3d->2d engine (SuperduperMake2D), which delivers a smart block that can be placed on layouts. Should also do hatches (not only section hatches) derived from object’s colors, and drop shadows.
Section drawings and SuperduperMake2D unified.
Global colors, save/loadable as color sets
Details connectable to Snapshots. Change the snapshot - all connected Details follow.
More:
Worksessions - should support layer states
Useless layer panel refreshes removed from every command
…
In my opinion, it would be extremely important to integrate the assembly of parts/components as in other CAD programs. For example by constraining blocks. Similar to this Bongo video:
only not with the focus on animation, but on assembling.
I would like to see the implementation of dynamic block. And what I most missing is a better layout management as an architect the need of manage a lot of Details, Sections etc. is important. organizing those in a Folder structure would be great. Maybe something like this-
I also vote for assembly of parts with inverse kinematics, such like the one implemented in Solidworks.
The user must be able to save unlimited number of positions based on set values via the Assembly panel. For example, making a list with 5 different positions of a car suspension that could be engaged by pressing on the list. Similar to what the NamedPositions can do.
Might I add - vastly improved Mesh operations. Mesh modeling is so important & it’s understandably subordinated in Rhino. I know Rhino is a Nurbs Modeler, but a good majority of 3d modeling and visualization emphasize on having a Mesh output; and Rhino 8 Mesh improvements , to be honest, really isn’t a big leap as advertised. It’s still sooooo slow!. I’ve made a thread specifically requesting way faster Mesh Boolean operations using new breakthrough technology and it would be nice if Mcneel can implement that.
I really hope that Rhino continues to remain an industry-agnostic tool. and I think every industry will benefit from “Advanced Parametrics” these are set if tools that serves everyone:
1- Constraints
2- Reporting Attributes (XYZ, Cplane distances, UVW) can be reported per object.) these are meant to serve the opposite of constraints.
3- Smart Blocks (contains both Constraints and Reporting Attributes)
4- Tabulation (Properties / Attributes / Userobjects) can be tabulated in a table (outside Grasshopper)
Another Feature for V9 would be Better Layout Management.
1- Layouts can be grouped into packages.
2- Layout will include Page Number + Page Name
3- Both Page Number & Page Name can be tabulated into a Page index table. (You can add Revision Date, Revision Number, Description, Author …etc.)
