[History] - Feature requests: query edit & history visualiser

One of the things in Rhino that is a bit tedious to access is the history of commands, because you have to remember know which command created a specific surface (Fillet, Sweep, MatchSrf, BlendSrf, etc.). In Alias there is a tool called “Query edit” which highlights all surfaces with history. By picking any particular surface, it pops up the options dialog of the tool that created that particular surface. This is a demonstration with a swept & lofted surface picked with the Query edit tool: (https://vimeo.com/441298627) I would like to see a similar tool in Rhino, rather than going into a specific command and hit “edit”, we could have a tool that allows you to edit any history based operations.

Then there’s the new history visualiser in Alias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM5LTFBr8AE which captures history in a node based editor. Consider how powerful this could be in Rhino: the conceptual design could be modelled the usual way, while doing so, Rhino writes Grasshopper nodes in the background for curves, surfaces, etc. Once the conceptual design modelling is finished, there would already be a grasshopper script which can be tweaked with minimal effort to iterate on the design. Rather than inputting curves (like Alias’ History Visualiser), point inputs with XYZ coordinates could (optionally) be fed into the curve nodes. So I would really like to see Rhino and Grasshopper function in both directions, rather than Grasshoppper driving Rhino only.

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You can use selparents and selchildren to select objects that have history associaated with them. But I do agree that something more visual maybe wouldn’t go amiss.

The power of query edit is that it is unaffected by the command that created the resulting surface. It opens up the command’s dialog so you can edit the inputs and see the changes take place. It is far from a visual indication — though nice to have — it’s main trait is to not have to think about how a surface was created. Do you remember if you lofted, swept or blended a particular surface further downstream? Even if you deleted some input curves since you work of the surface and the deletion happened a few weeks ago when you last worked on it? Or how about a coworker who modeled some parts? That’s where it comes in handy.

a Custom Shading mode that colors things based on history would be really cool. Even a basic 5-color screen for:

  • color 1: no history
  • color 2: parent
  • color 3: child
  • color 4: parent and child (a child of another input could also be a parent of other outputs)
  • color 5: Selected history. You select an object, all its linked objects (parent/children) also have a ‘selected family’ color, that override their unselected color.

G

Also don’t forget the option to Lock Children, if you’re more concerned that you’re going to move stuff which breaks history.

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Interesting you bring that up @gustojunk . In 8 years using Rhino, I have never managed to successfully see the colour ‘By Parent’ do anything useful for me. But maybe that’s because it’s something that only pertains to blocks, maybe. (not something I use)

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Yes, or even some kind of isolation mode (knock the transparency value of everything not selected back 50/75%) - hey, maybe something like that could be possible now we have transparency in the coours of objects and so on.