Hello all,
I am learning Grasshopper and I have downloaded a multitude of plugins (maybe that was a bad decision…)
I have some tabs in my ‘component palettes’ menu with only one component…
Is there a way to move those components to the ‘User’ palette, to reduce the number of tabs in the menu?
Thank you for your time.
There is no easy solution to achieve that.
You already said it. Only choose the plugins useful for your work. Using a massive amount of plugins is not only a big mess, you also never know what’s inside. The more plugins, the greater the vector of weird bugs, performance hits and security risks.
Thank you Tom for your answer. I get your point, however, I would like to experiment with the available plugins.
I am a Maya user. In Maya there is a ‘custom’ shelf where one can put the tools one is using most.
I think it would be a good idea to have something similar in Grasshopper also, and ways to customize the palettes.
My 2 cents.
Thanks, again.
You can only pick specific components you want to use from the installed plugins and create your own buttons in your own tab.
Thank you, Ivelin, much appreciated.
You are right. Every program has bad concepts and its natural to compare it to other systems. I think it would even better to only activate plugins if needed. You can trigger this by moving plugins into the plugin folder manually. But its not intuitive nor practical.
The problem is you can live with it and find workarounds or you wait until the developer overworks this (if this ever will happen). So “complaining” (in a positive way) is not helpful.
In my experience, the more I learn, the less I need to rely on additional plugins. Sure its not practical to reinvent the wheel, but many plugins just bring in very simple functionality. Those who are relevant are not needed for every kind of work. So if you work with surfaces, the great mesh-based plugins like dendro, mesh+ or weaverbird are simply irrelevant. I think you should distinguish between playing around and setting up a working environment. So a workaround is adding or removing plugins depending on what you are trying to do. Maybe even two different installations could be possible. Don’t know if this works with Rhino… but just saying.
Thank you, Tom. For the time being I am playing…
I am interested in using Grasshopper for art, this is why I have this exploratory approach.
Well same as me .Its natural to try. In the end its “just” visual programming. Sticking prewritten codeblocks together. If you are not able to code, its a good idea to know what’s there, because you have to live with that limitation. But still … after testing a plugin you should decide if you need it or not, because its beneficial to reduce plugin usage to a minimum.
