There is one huge inconvenience while having “Grid snap” active and adjusting the handles of several tools that use handles, such like “Blend surface”, “Blend curve” etc. This is especially evident on handles that are not parallel to the CPlane axes where the “Grid snap” is no longer at each unit and instead snaps to some random distance depending on the angle of inclination of the handle. This bug or bad decision affects the majority of modeling cases, because most users work with curved surfaces and curves, but it also affects all straight surfaces and lines that are inclined.
I have been asking for a fix since the Rhino 6 years. Will Rhino 9 finally have it done properly, or the inconvenience is still present there? I think that the ideal solution is to add a new tickbox in the options named “Apply to handles”. Turning it off will disable the grid snap for the handles. Turning it on will keep the current behaviour.
Since I work on precise objects for manufacturing, I keep the “Grid snap” on all the time. I need it 99,9% of the time, except for when I adjust the aforementioned handles, hence I’m forced to turn off the setting every time I adjust handles. It’s especially inconvenient while using a 3d mouse.
I use the F9 key to enable/disable the grid snap, but the issue is that I’m forced to do that quite often (literally every time I build a “Blend surface”, “Blend curve” etc). The current implementation of grid snap is a highly unwanted behavior while adjusting the handles of certain commands.
For example, other tools such like “Sweep 2 rails” ignore the grid snap while adding a slash, and this is the right decision. But trying to adjust the handles of “Blend surface” is a real pain, because grid snap is super aggressive and counteracts the smooth and precise movement of the mouse pointer.
I just tried this suggestion. It does just half of the job, because it still requires an additional key press to return the previous state of the Grid snap. Is there any way to force “Grid snap on” upon exiting the “Blend surface” command? I tried with “Multipause” and some other commonly used macro commands, but I can’t replicate the real press of the “Enter” key followed by the “Esc” key.
That goes beyond my scripting knowledge…it’s times like this I miss @pascal most…
personally I have snap mapped to an alias and simply hit it on and off as needed. with v9 you could add to that to a one key alias and have it be a little easier to access.
What about implementing a simulation of pressing keyboard keys inside command macros in Rhino 9 or Rhino 10? The main issue now is that the grid snap can’t be returned to its previous state when I try your macro. This is now possible by running the “Blend command” with your macro, then pressing Enter and Esc (Enter to run the last command and then Esc to cancel it).
Such command macro would look like !_BlendSrf Snap Multipause Enter Esc
P.S.: I wish that there was a powerful command like ! _BringPascalBack.