Hi all,
I’m an industrial designer with seven years rhino experience,I mainly use rhino in concept development phase.
Here are some of my personal expectations,hope you guys think they are useful for rhino.
UI/UX part
gumball
named gumball axis location,with a shortcut select menu.
maybe like this
shorten mouse move distance
command line options and onsnap options are far away from mouse’s modeling operation hot spot(screen’s central area) ,so we must move our mouse quite long distance very often.that would break my modeling concentration slightly.I think maybe pop up a pie menu when you execute a command could make it easier.in fact I’d prefer a marking menu.
move and direction pick
Extrude direction need you to pick up two point to specifying. It would be better if I can specify direction by select line and edge object or just click the world axis icon’s xyz arrow.
Move along specified direction,when you pick up two pt or crv not parallel to your direction,it moves based on your input’s projection distance.
select and edit
Double click a polysrf (near surface middle area)to enter its sub object selection mode. Just like edit a block instance, every other objects fade into see through and non-selectable mode.
Double click a polysrf (near edge or corner area)to enable solid control points.
Double click blank area to escape.
Plus A dedicate button and indicator to switch between normal selection mode and sub object mode.
Double click a crv or srf to enable CP.near srf corner enable solidPT.
middle mouse popup menu or context menu:
a context menu based on your selection states(sel or non),and current selected object’s property.
a more customizable middle button popup menu:
flexible layout can be pie shape or cascading or gesture and whatever.
can have an info panel to display some custom info or from a plugin.
can have a function area,so user can bring the selection filter or onsnap options to the popup menu,or even a mini command line prompt.
plugins can access popup menu.
I know this may looks a little mess,this just my raw idea,the layout can be arranged more nice and clean.
I’m not sure what you mean here, can you please use more words?
There used to be a toolbar called OSnap that worked well for this, combined with the setting in Tools->Options->Mouse for middle-mouse button behavior. However, I don’t see it anymore. @pascal - ideas here?
Unfortunately marking menus are patented by Autodesk so we can’t use them.
@mikko has been making some changes here. The first round is for curve editing - if you select a curve in Rhino WIP, the control points turn on automatically. This could get extended to other object types, too. What do you think of the curve editing version so far?
It’s still there, it’s called “Object Snap” You can use, for example,
_PopUpToolbar "Object Snap"
on a F-key, or put assign to the middle muse button in Options > Mouse. I like the most recently used menu on the MMB because you can assign permanent entries that always appear at the top of the list of recent conmands - you could put the PopUpToolbar macro in there.
I thought I’d heard there was some question about just how restricted this is- it seems to me there are applications that managed to implement something similar- unfortunately, I cannot actually think of any off hand. SolidWorks has a very truncated version, I suppose, for view selection but I don’t think that has enough in it for this discussion.
Do you happen to know the patent number(s) ? It seems most of the basic marking menu concepts have been around for decades, so it might be interesting to see just exactly what is patented in this realm and how long the patents have left to run. Might expire before you can get something working
After all, the whole concept behind the patent system is to provide inventors an incentive to reveal their ideas in exchange for a LIMITED period of exclusive rights.
Not to forget, they are meant to advance progress by enabling others to find ways to circumvent them. That’s why only specific result, not processes and ideas or generic solutions are patentable. But that idea was perverted by software patents long ago…
I have updated my post with an illustration.hope it’s helpful.
cool,I’m putting this on my middle mouse popup.thx
I’m concern select and enable crv cv edit with single click may conflict to some rhino’s existing feature.the most obvious case is “long press and snap drag” a crv. When a crv and a surface edge are at the same position,and I want a long press drag,I must first select the crv the long press the crv end to snap drag.if not rhino will popup a selection list to prevent my snap drag.
i’m afraid if select crv then enable its CV,I will no longer be able to snap drag a crv with one end overlap with other objects.
snap drag is a very handy feature,I use it very often,I don’t wanna lose it.
and UG/NX also have a similar pie menu works like marking menu,mouse hover on objects pre-selected,right mouse drag down the hide the object,hover over blank area right drag down to switch to wireframe display.
if I remember correctly,space claim utilize a mouse gesture and works like a marking menu.
IMHO Ultimately,marking menu is something like a gesture shortcut with step by step guide.once the user familiar with the gesture step they no longer need to wait the guide to popup,so maybe we can make some kinds of gesture shortcut instead of a the patent described marking menu.
This turns up a lot of interesting reading. There’s a number of patents in this area, some near expiration and some fairly new, and when you read the claims you kind of wonder how they will fare in the new patent environment. Here’s an interesting article:
There’s also a link in it to another article on the same subject by Vox Media’s Tim Lee.
The real problem is that it takes $3-5 million (plus+3 years of your life) to find out no matter which side of a patent fight you are on (win or lose). We would rather let the big boys sort things out. Once everything is clear then we will consider doing something. Meanwhile we are just going to wait.
That Supreme Court ruling just gave the lawyers something new to fight about. I don’t think it means anything yet. We’ll know more in 5-10 years.
But perhaps it could change your assessment of the risk of being sued on any given item you’d like to include in Rhino. Maybe it can broaden your view of available innovations you might like to develop.
