Feature Request: Improvements to Most Recently Used Toolbar

[James_Richters]

I really like the Most Rececently Used Tool Bar. I’ve been using it for a while and I would like to have 2 options for it:

1. a way to change the number of items in the toolbar. It seems to store the last 20, but I would like 35 or 40.

2. Using the buttons on the MRU toolbar does not put them back into the beginning of the toolbar, so what happens is that if I use a few buttons here and there for some odds and ends, but then use the MRU toolbar for my main workflow, never selecting from the original toolbar, the buttons I used the most from MRU end up falling off the fastest, because I keep using them from the MRU, and they keep moving down the list… even though I’ve been using them a lot, and the buttons I pushed only once are still there ahead of the ones I use all the time. If there was the option to include buttons used from the MRU itself and put them back in at the beginning, then those seldom used buttons would be the ones to fall off first, because the buttons being used regularly would keep being moved to the front.

[AlW]

@James_Richters

Using the buttons on the MRU toolbar does not put them back into the beginning of the toolbar, so what happens is that if I use a few buttons here and there for some odds and ends, but then use the MRU toolbar for my main workflow, never selecting from the original toolbar, the buttons I used the most from MRU end up falling off the fastest, because I keep using them from the MRU, and they keep moving down the list… even though I’ve been using them a lot, and the buttons I pushed only once are still there ahead of the ones I use all the time. If there was the option to include buttons used from the MRU itself and put them back in at the beginning, then those seldom used buttons would be the ones to fall off first, because the buttons being used regularly would keep being moved to the front.

This seems as well thought out as if the Apollo spacecraft was rolled out to the launchpad with the pointy end at the bottom.

[James_Richters]

@AlW I guess I didn’t explain that very well.

I’m just wanting it to represent the Most Recently Used tools. The problem is that it that only considers tools used if they are used from toolbars other than the MRU toolbar.

The way it is, you can push one of the buttons in the MRU toolbar 1000 times and it will still end up at the end of the list and fall off when you get too many items in it, even though there are buttons that don’t fall off that you only pushed once.

All I am trying to say is that if when you click on a button in the MRU toolbar itself, it was repositioned to the beginning of the MRU toolbar, as if you pushed it from its native toolbar, then the things you use the most would always be at the beginning of the MRU and will never fall off.

This would make the MRU truly show the “Most Recently Used” buttons, regardless of if they were pushed from the MRU or the original toolbar.

Right now, it is really the “Most Recently Used buttons from their original toolbars” but it does not represent what buttons you use the most, if you use buttons from the MRU more often than their original toolbars.

I have my MRU arranged Horizontally:

every time I use a button from a toolbar other than the MRU, they all shift to the right and the new one is added on the left. here it is after using 3 other toolbar buttons

you can see the ‘Move’ button that used to be on the far right is gone now. even if I pushed it 100 times between after I used the ‘Rectangular Plane’ now I have to go find it again and it will be back on the left.

but if buttons I pushed in the MRU itself were repositioned back to the left of the toolbar, the same as when I push them from the original toolbar, then what you use the most would always be there.

for example, if I push the ExtendSurface from the MRU tool bar, it should be moved to the left:

note that I had to push the ExtendSurface button from the Surface toolbar to get it to move to the left… Pushing it from the MRU itself should have also done this, that way what you use the most will always be at the beginning, even if you push a bunch of buttons to fix something, then go back to your normal workflow, the MRU will truly represent what is Most Recently Used… no matter where you used it from.

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

Hi James - V8/WIP allows the number to be set-

And the most recently used goes to the top of the pile.

-Pascal

[James_Richters]

Hi @Pascal ,

That sounds great! I saw the setting you circled in V8/WIP but I don’t see the MRU toolbar, how can I turn that on? I can’t find the other toolbar settings like V7 had, like being able to load my own toolbar files.

in 7 we had 2 checkboxes, one for the sidebar and one for most recently used, but in 8 I only see a checkbox for sidebar. I thought having a number higher than 0 in maximum recent buttons would enable the most recent toolbar, but it doesn’t.

Edit: I found it… it’s just called Recently Used now

It does put selections from recently used back in the top of the queue, which is great, however I think it would be MUCH better if you MOVED the used button to the beginning of the list, right now, it’s making a copy of it at the beginning of the list, that is going to make it nearly useless, because every time you click a button in the Recently Used toolbar, you will get another copy, so if you do the same operation 15 times in a row, you won’t have any other buttons left.

Say I need to edit a bunch of blocks one after he other, and use the recently used tool bar for the button… now it looks like this:

It should just MOVE it to the beginning. There were never duplicate buttons in the MRU before, and that is DEFINATLY preferable! having more than one button is useless and makes it unable to be used as intended.
If you push buttons from original toolbars it works as expected and puts only the most recent one at the beginning, removing the pervious copy, but it doesn’t remove it if it got there by pressing a button on the recently used toolbar. It also only removes one of the copies, not all of them if you use a button from a toolbar that already ended up with multiple copies

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

Hi James - I have not used this with thirty buttons but I suspect that will go away once you have used thirty commands.

-Pascal

[norbert_geelen]

Very good.
Surprisingly, the MRU toolbar is central to my Rhino workflow

[James_Richters]

@pascal

Hi James - I have not used this with thirty buttons but I suspect that will go away once you have used thirty commands.

It doesn’t matter how many commands you have. I put it back to 10. then I used 10 different commands so now I have 10 different things in my Recently used toolbar

Say I want to draw 9 spheres and I want to use the recently used toolbar itself for the button…
each time I use the sphere button from the recently used toolbar, I get ANOTHER sphere button at the beginning. It should just MOVE the one that is there to the beginning, not make another one, because now I have 9 sphere buttons and if I want another box, I have 8 useless sphere buttons and zero box buttons left on my recently used toolbar.

There should NEVER be duplicate buttons on the recently used Toolbar. It does work correctly if you use the buttons from their original toolbars but using them from the Recently Used toolbar creates duplicates.

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

I see it now… (I was getting my command repeats from the normal toolbar before- duh) that is a bug, thanks for pointing it out.
RH-73272 Toolbar: MRU duplicates

-Pascal

[DanBayn]

This feature request seems a lot like this issue:

WIP MRU toolbar issue with repeat icons

I noticed that the MRU toolbar will continue to add icons, even if the icon is already there. In V7 it would only show up once. I think that would be the preferred behaviour. [image] Thanks, Dan