R6: Dynamic 3DGridSnap-planes at mouse position

Short version:

Little brother "Grid Snap" exist, but why doesn't its 
big brother "3DGrid Snap" exist as well?

What if…?
Referring to the thread “R6: Project Curve against Curve” ( R6: Project Curve against Curve ) I started thinking that it would be useful with Osnap supporting “dynamic grid planes” in 3D x,y,z space where all 3 planes are shown on keypress (say CTRL + # key) while in line-command mode, as to provide with a “grid cage” occurring only on demand (or like Ortho, hide on demand).

3 planes, on demand
I mean not a full “cage” to be displayed (although also that could be useful at times, perhaps) only grid planes X, Y, Z intersecting at the last point clicked, and/or, at current (grid snap) mouse position (grid snap planes’ lock & move/follow-behavior could use many of existing guides’ behavior, like Smarttrack etc).

Snappy 3D curves
Such a dynamic “grid cage” would be very useful drawing 3D curves with Osnap in 3D space for later NetworkSrf:ing, etc. Next point in the curve could be found and guided to in 3D space, preferably also by momentarily locking the grid display in one or two directions (a kind of a “3D Ortho”) guiding for the point in 3D space.

Out of the box
I realize that I could draw my own “grid cage” (as in an example provided by pascal), but supporting only one CPlane for “Grid Snap” out of the box for a tool designed for drawing in 3D is… well, it begs for a “3DGrid Snap” mode as well. :slight_smile:

Generic
3DGrid Snap would not fall in the category “special case” but just like existing Grid Snap it would be a generic tool, different only in that it would be impractical to have 3 intersecting (transparent) planes visible all the time.

Hi Rolf,
I think this request is ahead of it’s interface time but who knows what McNeel can do.
I and others have made similar requests in the past. I do second this request and wish that we could get even more 2d grid types in addition to the 3d grid you request.

Grasshopper has a radial grid and hex grid and I’ve found it’s really easy to generate 3d grids to any extent with Grasshopper, the bigger problem is using them but the clipping plane helps. I also remember and hunted down the file of a 3d dynamic symmetry grid I constructed a while back.

Inspired by your post I cooked up a few grids in Grasshopper and did some test modeling and it really is pretty cool but again the grid gets in the way sometimes but there are many cool things about working this way.
I guess for a workaround we could
1.create grids
2.save them to file
3. script import of the file/s with orient 3 point to place and scale grid.
4. Clipping plane or that could be saved in the grid file and made active.
RM
dynamicGrid003.3dm (233.7 KB)

Very interesting! I guess that what would make most sense as a first step towards the perfect gridification is to have a key-combination that temporarily hides (or toggles) a selected object (in this case, the grid).

I’ll try your Dynamic Grid and see how far one can go with that.

// Rolf