Purpose of GH Canvas Border?

I’ve been wondering: What would be the ‘right’ or ‘efficient’ use of the Border on the GH canvas?

I personally use it to separate the components into “Active” - ones that are being used - placed on the inside and “Reference” - ones that are placed outside(Top/left) of the border. I also use it to store Global Constants for the document (also linked via hidden wires)

Is this the intended use? How do you use the Canvas Border?

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Kaushik LS
Chennai, IN

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Hi,

I guess it is meant to be sort of a visual aid to not get lost on the otherwise seemingly infinite and monotone canvas. The top left canvas border is sort of a reference point.

I tend to put everything within the border, but I imagine that there probably is no prescribed way of dealing with it. I’ve seen some folks doing similar things to what you describe above, meaning neatly organizing variables and constants (sliders, panels, etc.) outside the left border though.

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Hi @diff-arch, Thank you for your reply.

That’s a good way to describe it. Do you think having Artboard-styled(Illustrator / Photoshop reference) Canvases would be useful to organise scripts better? Or, do groups and clusters do the same thing(visually)?

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Kaushik LS
Chennai, IN

I don’t think so, because artboards in these apps are pretty much meant to have a finite, predefined size and be used like their real world counterparts. You know that your poster is gonna be A3, so you define an A3 canvas, because this restriction is imposed if you want to print the poster later.
In Grasshopper, such restrictions are irrelevant in most cases, and there are other multi-level, organisational tools that are a better fit for stucturing your nodes/definition.

I guess so yes. Clusters let you define different levels, nested canvases/definitions so to speak. Groups let you highlight and/or cluster relevant nodes together visually.
Simple things like turning the wire display faint or invisible should also indicate a more clear divisions between different, connected groups, as should the spacing/white space between groups on the canvas.

Practically, it comes down to what you personally prefer.

Yes, without the border starting a new file always felt like being lost in a Finnish snowstorm.

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Yeah, I realised that as soon as I typed it. Grouping helps solve the problem of having infinitely large space -visually, by making color-coding.possible.

I guess the grids are a part of Border Control then.

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Kaushik LS
Chennai, IN

I think this question is about personal preferences.
As the compass widget always shows where is the start/corner of the canvas I use this point to separate different parts of the definition.
I usually place main inputs and UI nodes to the left from the vertical line,
the main logic - to the right,
old version, if I assume I could need it again - over the horizontal line
and notes, external files data, something important or reusable -upper the canvas start/corner.

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