I need help! I so much want to like Rhino 6

Starting an alias with an underscore is not allowed - I assume because of the English translation thing. Don’t know about anything else. There are certain limitations on what you can pass to the command line, because of the variety of different things it has to interpret. Maybe even more complicated for V6, as you can actually finally do math directly in the command line - and I love that improvement…

No, I am talking about command names like “IB_Import”. Doesn’t work…

Works as an alias here… don’t know about a compiled command.

I tried compiling a plugin again and I cannot install it, doesn’t matter how the command is called. I use the Rhino5 script compiler. Can you compile a script and load that plugin in Rhino 6?

Hi Tobias, I completely understand your point of view and concern. I’ve been involved in the WIP and using V6 pretty much exclusively for several years now. I feel like in every release of Rhino we made two steps forward and one step back: We win some new functionality but we also lose some, especially in the form of customized plugins, scripts, and 3rd. party products that stop working.

My Rhino 6 big losses:

VSR modeling and some plugins like Peter tools and Asuni’s dynamic display (http://www.asuni.com/portfolio/dynamic-display-rhino/) which it was buggy at times but when it worked it was very useful to see clipping sections that are not just a flat plane.

Also another huge disappointment is BoxEdit edit. It’s extremely slow and buggy now in V6. And McNeel doesn’t not seem to give in enough priority to fit it.

My Rhino 6 big wins:

For me it has been a massive improvement in the overall quality of how Rhino ‘feels’. I can work with massive files now in a way that Rhino 5 did ok, but struggled. Also the way everything looks in any display mode, with high antialiasing is fantastic, including the new Artic display mode and the way technical view looks now.

Also the BlendSRF tool in V6 works a lot better in my opinion. Especially hot it allows you to add/remove interactive sections and change the influence of continuity in each section by dragging control points of each section individually.

Quality of Step import/export also a lot better from a geometry standpoint. Still sucks that you cannot seamlessly import/export assemblies<>rhino layers. There’s a hack from Pascal to to blocks to layer when importing, but we have not found a workable way to export layers as assemblies. that was working at some point in V6 with a script but it also broke.

Something to keep in mind about WIPs and Rhino development.

You mentioned snapshots, and Snapshots is ok. I think you are right that it has missed the mark in some areas. For you is worksession, for me in named positions. But of course in both case we both probably have not found the time to address what’s wrong with them; and the problem with McNeel is that we have to stop doing our work to do their work of explaining how to getting a tool right. That on itself is frustrating because it’s not very efficient for us. Analogy: I never go to a restaurant where I have to look at my plate, roll my eyes, get up and walk to the kitchen and teach the chef how to cook and present something that delights me. That’s how I feel we have to deal with McNeel. :smirk:

In summary: I do have V5 and V6 installed in my machines. I run only V6, because besides all the quantifiable differences between the two V6 makes my day working with Rhino overall nicer. And that matters a lot.

I very rarely copy/paste something to V5 when I want to do a VSR or Tsplines operation, but in general I don’t miss those much (I use Modo for Subd, but if I didn’t that would be a big loss too I guess).

I hope this helps,

Gustavo

I think you can, but I have no idea really. someone else like @Jarek who uses Rhinoscript might want to respond…

I only script using Python now, and since compiling a command/plug-in is positively painful with that, I gave up trying. I just keep the scripts in a folder and access them with aliases.

The website might get confusing but €200 is price of an upgrade from V-Ray 2. Perpetual licence.

Maybe you have to follow a link to a dealer in the NL.

Jonas

Ok, thanks Jonas for that link. That does make things a lot better!

Peters tools is available for v6, but it’s not a plugin anymore - it’s now a group of scripts. (I don’t know of a way to simply compile scripts into a v6 plugin, so I’m just going to leave them in script form.)

https://wiki.mcneel.com/people/peterharris

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Hi Gustavo,

Actually I am not sooo enthusiastic about the new display. Up to now it makes things more difficult for me. Mye big problem are bump maps. I cannot find any lighting scheme which doesn’t “highlight” the bump maps:

V6 (Default Lighting):

V5 (Default Lighting):

If Someone can point me to a solution for this problem it would be a big step for me using V6.

Many people mention the speed of the new display. I must say I don’t notice much of it, BUT that might be because I use a very old card: GTX 260. It works fine for me and my files. The new display might make use of modern powerful cards, which is a good thing for everybody who invested in a pro card.

I also have a problem with the line thickness in V6. To my eyes V5 looks more pleasing and detailed. I know there’s a test command for V6 to tackle this but why going through whatever lengths while V5 is looking good…?

One thing I really like is the Arctic mode!

Indeed. It’s the reason why I just didn’t bother to download a WIP every week just to play the “what’s changed game”. If at least there would be proper documentation about the changes…

Me too I noticed several improvements, especially in fillets and booleans. Shell works much better… it’s not that there has nothing happened, but still it’s hard to believe that this took whopping 5 years.

There must be more than that

Big problem for me. That’s serious a deal breaker

hi @Tobias,

For RhinoScripts, transitioning from V5 to V6 should be relatively painless. Many compiled rhp files for V5 will just install OK on V6, and if not, it should be a matter of recompiling them and all should work fine.
( Going from V4 to V5 was much bigger pain with scripts having to be able to deal with Extrusion object types and new layer naming system - no such hurdles in V5->V6).
Also, I use many compiled commands with underscore in the middle of the name in V5 and V6 - not sure why you say it’s a problem.

In general over here we are a bit like you with reluctance to jump into V6 full-speed; I usually would wait for 4-5 Service Releases to iron-out all the major problems that still hang around and that could jeopardize fast-paced, deadline-critical work. So now we are in the “overlap” time using V5 for production but doing some things in V6 and converting the workflow and reporting problems, that do get fixed in V6 Service Releases (well, some of them).

V6 is definitely a good step forward with a few small steps back here and there. For me, the list of ‘why upgrade’ could be like this:

  1. 100’s of small tweaks - this is the ‘evolution’ that I enjoy the most - many tools got improved just a bit, but that makes a big difference on a day-to-day work
  2. Faster display of heavy models
  3. Arctic mode, or in general nice quality Skylight shadows in any display mode
  4. Snapping to mesh edges/near/mid points
  5. Make2D improved, plus working with meshes
  6. Cycles (even though it is a still evolving project)
  7. Snapshots (same as above - we need to tell the developers what still doesn’t work well here)
  8. both Python and RhinoScript got some more interesting methods and improvements

hth,

–jarek

Tobias, I think you can “save as” a file to v5 from V6. That part shouldn’t hold you up.
Like someone already mentioned, try V6 for a trial. See how much you can do with it.
There are more history enabled commands. I am not a power user, so not too knowledgeable. I do like the way extend surface works now in V6.
Like you said 5 years of development should account for a lot. I upgraded partly to support further development . —- Mark

You have finally put into words what I have felt for decades, but could not adaquately describe.

HI Jarek,

This is not the case here. An hour ago I did another simple test. I compiled the following script:

Sub PluginTest()
msgbox “works”
End Sub
Call PluginTest

I named the script “TNTest.rvb” (command name) and compiled it into a plugin named “TNTP.rhp” using the current script compiler. The resulting plugin won’t load in Rhino 6. Not with drag & drop nor through the Options > Plug-in’s > Install route.

what I am doing wrong

Yes, I know very much that this will make a difference in day to day work, but I am facing serious problems on other issues which just make me stop using V6 (and discover the small goodies)

Hi Mark,

This is ideed a great enhancement. Being able to extend (and retract!) surfaces while keeping the whole controlpoint structure is very nice!

hi Tobias, can you post your test plugin here?

There you go:
TNTP.rhp (6.5 KB)