Point editor alert / EdgeContinuity

RH-56094 is fixed in the latest WIP

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Has there been any thoughts from the developers around making edge pairs easier to select?

For example:

continuity

If the above can’t be accomplished, at least don’t force users to click twice (yes, we know it is a pair, but the usability of taking that literally is just an RSI nightmate).

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fully agree with @eobet that the way it is implemented now in Rhino is very user unfriendly. When selecting and edge, I don’t care which of the two I select first, just select one and while we’re at it, select the other that was nearest to where my mouse clicked too! In fact I just want it to work like shown in @eobet’s video.

ps: the labels for distance always show when selecting the distance radio button even when the label for distance is ticked off. The tangency and curvature work as expected.

Edit:if I make a blend surface to another surface, then add an edge pair, of the surface and the blend surface, but now delete the blend surface and create a new blend surface to replace it, the original edge of the surface is still part of (an invisible) edge pair. When I then try to add this edge to a the new pair, it will fail.
probably a difficult description, so I made a video:

Furthermore, it is not very clear which edge pairs are active, so when I add another edge pair, and I would select an edge pair that is already an active pair, I get no feedback whatsoever that this edge pair is already part of the active pairs.

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Bug: when there is already a edge pair or multiple edge pairs, after closing the EdgecContinuity tool and running the command again, it should pop up the dialog instead of asking for a new edge pair. Right now if you happened to have selected already all edge pairs you cannot bring up the dialog anymore after closing it.

Another observation: increasing the density of the deviation lines makes the viewport slow very quickly

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I see that, thanks - actually any previously selected pair cannot be used to bring up the dialog.

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-56864

-Pascal

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RH-56864 is fixed in the latest WIP

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Is it fair to bump this once per month? :slight_smile:

@pascal mentioned that my block complaints were 20 years too late, so I don’t want to be late on this. :wink:

Edge pairs must not be two operations. It must be a single operation, and ideally box drag selection should be supported to add any number of edge pairs in one operation! You will create repetetive strain injuries otherwise, and I’m not joking on that.

(And speaking of RSI, it would actually be nice to be able to hold down the buttons on the MoveUVN tool and have them “tick” at a reasonable interval so you don’t have to click/drag around as much for the adjustments either…)

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@eobet so you want window select for edge pairs for the EdgeContinuity command?
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-58787

(Re: MoveUVN, please start a new thread. This one is about EdgeContinuity. It’s really difficult for us to track many different, unrelated concepts in a single thread. I see they are related by “repetitive stress” - but having that be a top-level thread topic is too broad.)

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Thank you, yes that’s exactly it!

This will be partially fixed in the next WIP. You’ll be able to pick an edge pair with a window or crossing, but picking overlapping edges with a single pick will have to wait for another time (or another typist).

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The box selection doesn’t seem to work very well. First edge pair I try to select across just gets ignored, the second says “cannot use” and only the third ever shows up…

This is in V7 SR7. The file is here:

continuitysurfaces.3dm (187.2 KB)

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I believe the “cannot use” one was due to the simultaneous selection of more than 2 edges. Also, to allow _EdgeContinuity to report the on all 3 edge pairs, the edge of the left surface needs to be split at the intersection with the other surfaces.

You can use this script to more quickly select multiple edge pairs:
rhinopython/xBatchSelectFor_EdgeContinuity.py at master · CADacombs/rhinopython · GitHub

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Rhino should be able to detect connecting edges automatically.
That way we would have to just select the surfaces that we want to analyse.
Alternatively there should be an “all objects” button.

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Sorry, I ment to say “additionally” instead of “alternatively”.

I have two proposals how to improve the “Edge continuity” tool:

  1. Put the numeric markers near the middle of the edges. The current implementation positions them at the end of an edge (if the distance is equal along the entire length), resulting into an inability to read the numbers where a single surface edge is next to couple of other surface edges.

  2. Add an option for a single click on a surface to automatically detect any nearby surfaces whose edges are within a certain amount of distance from the picked surface (1 mm should be enough). For example, if I click on the purple surface in the image below and adjacent surfaces 1, 3, 4 and 5 are located in less than 1 mm distance from the former, while surface 2 is at 1,27 mm away from it, then “Edge continuity” should detect that and turn on the numeric markers on surfaces 1, 3, 4 and 5. Since surface 2 is located too far away from the purple surface, it will not be included in the “Edge continuity” analysis by default, unless it’s eventually manually clicked and added.
    Even better would be to add a new slider to adjust the autodetect distance at any given moment. That particular slider would be handy to quickly check if some nearby surfaces are at certain distance from the target surface.

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I would find this very useful as well.

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Everything @Rhino_Bulgaria said.

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Proposal #3. Add a button called “Place marker” (or “Set marker”?) to manually place a numerical marker along the edge, with the usual ability to snap to middle, knot, point, end etc. The idea behind that marker is to always stay fixed there (unless turned off manually), no matter what’s the distance and whether there is a shorter distance between the input edges somewhere else. The user should be allowed to place as many numerical markers as he/she wants. This option will be very handy while trying to figure out where and how to adjust the surface(s), in order to make the gap in-between tighter.

Upon each pressing of the “Place marker” button, the Command line should display two new options:

3.1. By clicking on the “Remove marker” option the user could pick and remove existing marker(s) if necessary;

3.2. “Number of markers=1” (default is 1) is used in two ways:
a) If the number is 1, then the numerical marker will be automatically placed at the middle between two edges after hitting the Enter key or the RMB. However, the user must be also able to place the single marker along the edges (or along the shorter of the two edges, if one of them is much longer and shared with a 3rd surface) via the mouse and the LMB.
b) If the number is 2 or greater, then Rhino adds the numerical markers where the shorter of the two edges is virtually divided into equal lengths (in a similar fashion like the “Divide” command that adds new points along the edge). For example, if the number is 5, Rhino will divide the edge into 4 lengths and will place 3 numerical markers at 25%, 50% and 75% along the length of the shorter edge, plus two numerical markers at the start and the end of the latter.

P.S. The inspiration for that idea came after I tried the “Edge continuity” tool on the model from the following video and it was not possible to keep the numerical marker at the desired position to further minimize the gap via the “Move UVN” tool.

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Thanks, y’all, I’ll add your suggestions to the heap.\

RH-65146 EdgeContinuity: Autodetect nearby edges

@Rhino_Bulgaria - as far as I can see the numeric readout is placed at the location of max deviation.

-Pascal

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Cool. :slight_smile: