Let’s wake this discussion up again. @bobkoll@davew have reported that there is a problem with the current Picture command.
The workflow that is best for John Niebergal and other teachers is to use BackGroundBitmap Attach.
Therefore you can have the image visible in only one viewpot. And not in another.
A solution for them would be to have a “hide in viewport” and “show in viewport” for a model viewport.
Using layouts as a workaround is too complicated to be a good option.)
@dale Is this possible to have a “hide in viewport” and “show in viewport” for a model viewport?
@pascal Should it be added to only work for a Picture, not a curve, surface or solid, for example.
Or is there a better idea?
================================
Email Notes
"While at the Kelso workshop John N. used background bitmap to trace an image . I suggested that pictureframe was better as you have more control over the image (visibility, scaling , ETC,)
John said bitmap had an advantage because you could have the bitmap show in one view port and not the other by having two TOP VEWs.
John uses Background Bitmap ONLY. Many teachers/students learning this skill each day. If Background Bitmap is going to be part of Rhino in V6 and beyond, I don’t see an issue.
It would be nice to be able to control Pic Frame visibility per viewport. [maybe already available in Rhino without creating a Layout; show us]
How difficult would it be to have a hide in view (similar to Hide in detail command) I could see where it would be nice to have items hid in a view yet visible in another for comparison and alignment value as well as when tracing an image."
+1 on those command ideas Mary, It would be helpful for object properties to list all the viewports to make it simple to see which ones the selection is displayed in. I’m thinking check boxes like in named views to make it easy to keep track of the visibility per view settings.
Hi @JNieb check out this post for the download link to use the WIP. http://discourse.mcneel.com/t/welcome-to-serengeti/9612
Try the Picture command which is the new PictureFrame and hopefully background bitmap as well if we get it right. You can have the WIP installed alongside Rhino 5.
I bet it would be easy. But I’m not sure it would be very discoverable.
I guess my question for @JNieb is this: do you want to have a picture visible in only one viewport because that is what Rhino has done since 1995, or because there’s a problem caused by having the picture visible in all the viewports?
At McNeel, our default reaction to a request is to add yet another command, or yet another option. I think this makes Rhino just a little more complex and a little harder to use every time. I’m resisting the temptation to just add another command - but rather to understand the workflow you’re using, and how we can accommodate that workflow in our design.
Current picture insert command goes against established Rhino UI conventions. Shift adds constraints to a motion or scale operation. If you are moving points and hit shift you constrain the movements to an axis. If you are gumball scaling an object hitting Shift scales all axes proportionately.
This convention is inverted in the new Picture command- It comes in proportionately locked and the Shift key is used to break the constraint.
Hi Thomas - I noticed that as well, and was not sure what to think about it. Eventually I decided I see the value in constraining the aspect ratio by default, but then how else do you allow un-constrained placement?
To clarify - initial placement of the picture can easily just focus on placing the image and proportionately scaling the image. There are plenty of tools for orientation and non proportional scaling elsewhere in the program. perhaps disable the non proportional scaling on picture creation
I also agree. Scale/ScaleNU/Scale1D/Scale2D, Rotate and Shear are operations I typically need to use on imported boat plans. I occasionally also use CageEdit. Adding these operations as “options” to Picture just complicates the command and does not add any capability to Rhino.
Hi,
Why did McNeel change the shift operation? Now it’s opposite of the way it was, doesn’t make sense to me.
I think a hide in view should be an option, this could be very useful. Many times I only want to see the plan image in a plan view and not in perspective or other view where it obscures the model. The ability to specify a viewport option would be really nice the picture-frame viewport options could be in the properties area and be similar to the clipping plane viewport options.
RM