I’m starting to learn Rhino, and I get a lot of tips about interesting commands to type in to that little DOS like command prompt, but since I think we’ve progressed a bit since the 1980s, I’d like to put those commands into my own toolbar.
How do I do that? It would be nice if I could just drag from the that text field onto a toolbar, because I just tried editing the middle-click pop up toolbar, and that seemed very convoluted (having to type your own command and draw your own icon).
The more obvious way would be to keep using the terminal but assign aliases to the commands you use more often. Go to Options->Aliases
A single letter or two I found to be faster workflow than buttons. Since pressing enter, space or right-click does the same thing you can accelerate your workflow via the muscle memory.
Icons:
Most commands already have icons if you want new buttons or you want to mess up your toolbars use shift+drag to move the buttons from one toolbar to another. And ctrl+drag to copy the button. Although, since you are new I suggest working as it is.
You can just right-click on any toolbar blank space and choose “New Button”, which will give you a blank button. Shift+right click on that, and it will open the editor. Copy/paste your macro into the text box; if you hit the “edit” button next to the icon image in the upper right corner, you will open the icon editor. You can draw directly in there, or use the “screen grab” function to grab something on your screen - those are pixel for pixel though - or, from the icon editor file menu, you can import a bitmap image of any size and it will be scaled.
Please for the love of god edit your answer to say “control+drag” instead. I had to reset my Rhino UI after I made the horrible mistake of moving icons, when I just wanted to add a custom toolbar of my own!
Aliases is what I will probably move to after I’ve learned things. Right now, I just want to create a toolbar of “useful stuff that works for me that I’ve found”.
Almost all commands have toolbar buttons already. Check the Help (F1):
There are a few that don’t but generally those are the more obscure commands.
It’s not convoluted at all, it allows you to create your own toolbars and buttons with custom macros or scripts and/or images. These pages are somewhat old, but the principle is still the same.
If all you want to do is create a new toolbar with a collection of existing buttons, Go to Options>Toolbars, from the Edit menu select “New toolbar” and give it a name. Then start copying buttons into it. Don’t forget to save your workspace under a new name (other than “Default”) to avoid the risk of it getting overwritten at some point. https://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/saveyourworkspace
Right, but I can’t drag from that list of commands to my new toolbar, can I?
So let’s say I learned about ExtrudeCrvAlongCrv on this forum. I have no idea where to find it in the menus, or even if it has an icon. Since you say most of the functions have icons, how do I get ExtrudeCrvAlongCrv on a new toolbar with its proper icon?
Note the “Toolbar” section that tells you in what toolbar(s) the icon is located. (in this case there are 4 copies in 4 different places). Open one of those and ctrl+drag (make sure the “Copy” tooltip lights up) the button into your new toolbar.
You can also use the Workspace Editor located under Options>Toolbars>Tools>WorkspaceEditor - but I find it a bit cumbersome to work from that myself.
I do see a “save as” and “import toolbars” menu items in the Rhino Toolbar Options panel, though. I just need to remember to bring those with me (but I’m used to it from Alias, where I have everything customized and always bring the prefs file).
Well, it is possible to do without disturbing your colleague’s workspace. Just create a new “Scheme” for yourself and remember to start Rhino from the customized desktop icon that represents your scheme.
There was some discussion in the past that Yak might be able to manage user’s customized toolbar files and customized configurations (i.e. making the concept of schemes portable), but I don’t know where we are on that…
