This thread is a side offshoot from the Rhino 8 interface compared to 5 on the Mac.
This post is aimed at helping navigation of part of the Rhino Options choices and specifically the first Option - Annotation. Gijs de Zwart kindly asked me to elaborate on this in the thread on the Mac UI and UX. I am coming at it more from a product design direction and mechanical/engineering drawing angle rather than architectural or say animation perspective.
Rhino is very good at getting to altering settings generally and mostly they are laid out after a single click, maybe two. Virtrually all the drop down menu commands have only one flyout ie first or second level to find a command . Further options are on the command line. For those that have used command line CAD systems this is pretty intuitive. If you come from a newer system ticking muliple options in boxes to get to your command it will feel a bit alien. However I think the Rhino approach is more logical. I’m going to ignore the toolbar/icon to menu ie graphic to text debate right now.
However the Annotation Styles one is a bit messy. Bear with me. Firstly you double click to open the Styles already created (or not). Then you have to double click again on the style to reveal a precis diagram with dimensions (model space, scale and text height) and no fewer than 8 variations to change. This requires all 8 to be opened individually and set. I may have missed a trick that opens all of them at once, forgive me if that is the case.
Why 8 choices, as far as I can see Font could be included in Text? and Arrows could include Leaders?. Sadly I think it is Windows that requires Styles for a couple of tolerance dimensions as they were not required at all in some old DOS programs. Visual C++ and OOP Microsoft style. These are not going to change but lets be honest you may require 3 or 4 Tolerance setups on a mechanical design drawing. A pain compared to being able to alter just one individual dimension, without creating a style, and yes this has been possible with some systems. Could always explode but again a pain.
I would prefer that all these options are open by default and closed/minimised by the user.
Perhaps an additional ‘Edit All’ Button next to the ‘Edit’ button would give this option.
I’m not entirely sure that ‘Annotation’ really indicates the options included. Hard to find a single word, maybe ‘Annotation and Dims’ . I like the idea of setting all these parameters in one go, but it should remain quick to create a duplicate style with say a certain tolerance or as has been introduced in Ver 7 the current scale factor. Personally I leave models at 1:1 and scale the paper drawing blank(s) along with text. It’s worked fine on small injection mouldings to railway carriages and everything in between.
