After using grasshopper for a while I have recently started using unreal engine, and one feature that their blueprints system (node based coding) has is really streamlined. When you can drag a pin off a node, and then drop it onto a blank spot on the canvas it triggers the search menu to open. This becomes the main way of placing nodes, and involves a lot less clicking.
For myself I find this a really intuitive way of working from a thought process point of view, make a slider for a value, and then drag it out and just let go to open up the search window while thinking about what operation to perform next, type out a few letters until it appears, hit enter and the slider is already hooked up to the relevant pin on the node. Obviously sometimes it wont be the right pin, but working like that has a nice flow to it.
If this could be incorporated within grasshopper that would be great,
On large projects with many nodes I sometimes find myself pulling a wire far across a definition and then plugging it into an empty input on a nearby component.
I think this feature, as described by @s3139338, would be a nice addition
Axon widget allows you this type of graphic search with several modes (by frequency, by category and random) and also directly from the canvas, without having to take out any cable. It’s one of my plugins I’ve used the most.
What would you say is the most obvious guess as to which parameter to connect? Most similar data type? Most similar access (item/twig/tree) level? Most similar tooltip text? All of the above? Personal user history?
yeah, that’s the thing. I think it could be quite simple- the top most pin of the correct datatype, but there could be other layers too, if there are multiple pins for a matching datatype some sort of user history could be useful but I’m not sure how that would get recorded.
The datatype of the pin being dragged out could also be used to filter search results, limiting results to nodes that could be connected, and or are commonly connected to the previous node.