I hear you, Mitch, and I’m glad the snaps work for you.
My position remains, though. Add to the mix the Planar and Ortho toggles (in various combinations of being on/off) and snapping becomes more complex than is needed, in my opinion, with lots of mousing involved for changes when things don’t work out as desired.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the snaps “don’t” work or “can’t” work as they are. I’m merely suggesting that they could work a whole lot more easily and intuitively—especially, it seems to me, if hotkeys could be dynamically used (as is the case in PowerCADD, who handle snaps better than any other program I’ve encountered). Seasoned Rhino users will possibly have deciphered the nuances required as things are (and I’m not convinced of this based on many conversations I’ve had with others about rhino snaps); however, the reality is that new users are often baffled by snaps/ortho/planar in their totality.
I realize the inherent difficulty of questioning existing methods to those intimately acquainted with existing software. Often it is what we have become (ab)used to that makes existing methods seem immutable. I’m as guilty as the rest in this! However, in the quest for new users, constant improvement (and McNeel has a very good track record here!) is rewarded in the marketplace. As such, there is value in always considering if better ways can be realized. And a valuable way to identify areas for improvement is if frustrations are sought, expressed, and given a degree of consideration without too much defending of the existing solutions. (Again, McNeel has a good record here, too). That’s really my main goal here. Just relaying reactions from teaching Rhino to over 100 students and my own personal observations.
Case in point is that when I proposed The Gumball to Bob several years ago, he directed me to McNeel’s lead programmer. The reaction from more than a few McNeel folks was, “Why in the world would anyone EVER use something like that?” A few weeks later, and to my great surprise, I received a beta Gumball to test-drive. The rest is history, as they say. (And thank you again, McNeel not only for The Gumball, but doing even more with it than was thought possible!!!)
I’d agree that snaps are one of the weakest areas of Rhino per se, be that on OS X or Windows. McNeel could definitely learn a trick or two from the seamless user experience provided by ‘construction lines’ in Michael Gibson’s MoI. Such a pleasurable experience and so much more predictable than SmartTrack. I often find myself drafting ideas in MoI and then copy/pasting them into Rhino for refinement because MoI is so much quicker for roughing out ideas and this is mainly made possible by the way that both ‘construction lines’ and the associated object snapping works.
Hi David- in Windows at least, osnaps are all available at the command line, either as ‘one-shots’ or as persistent, for those that can be persistent (i.e. sets the check box in the dialog) You can asssign to hotkeys/aliases to taste- Checking the mac… the osnaps seem to work- you can look in the Object Snap tool palette for the macros (Rhinoceros menu > Commands > Customize to get at the button macros and assign keyboard shortcuts. Does that help at all?
I personally hadn’t realised that you can affect Osnaps through the command line and this is a huge help. Often I only want to temporarily disable a particular Osnap so the Alt key modifier is a tad sledgehammer like for my needs. Just tested this on OS X and it works too.
Definitely a step in the right direction although I still believe that the way snapping/constructions guides work within Rhino could be improved at some point. I realise this is beyond the scope of the OS X beta but I thought it worth raising anyway.
Thanks, Pascal. I’ve not played with MacRhino’s customizing keyboard commands. Slick interface, btw!
Short answer—Yes, this “Hotkey Hack” is of some help. It leans in a better direction, but I don’t think it’s “there” yet. There are a few issues (SmartTrack no longer seems to work right and one then needs hotkeys for all desired snaps, among these) and I’m not sure if this can be made to work seamlessly without extensive experimentation. If so, I could imagine creating new hotkeys as part of the default and listing them in parentheses next to each type of snap.
For Hotkeys, as I understand it, existing modifiers must be used (rather than just a letter, which is my preference since one can use non-lefthanded characters if not tied to a Control key on a laptop) and these are things like Control / Option (Alt) / Command / or F keys. Shift can also be added to the modifiers but will not stand on its own.
Command = already pretty well populated, so character assignment is limited (and intuitive characters for left hand use are largely gone) Option (Alt) = Because this turns snaps on and off, unless disabled (somehow?) seems to be out of the question. Seems like a bit of a waste of a lot of potential hotkeys for a simple on/off toggle for all snaps. (Do people really turn snaps off a lot? I hardly ever do this) Control = Viable and the one I chose for testing. Could probably throw in Shift to double the potentials. (note: I used the non-persistent snaps in my tests.)
Returning to SmartTrack, this is “almost” a good solution, but not “there” yet. And there is a lot I don’t agree with about how this tool “works”. To wit:
The user seems to need to have at least one snap enabled to start drawing a line amid other lines, SmartTrack will then give you a
bunch (read: waaaaay too many) other snap options that are not
specifically “checked” for the second point. Pick only Endsnap and
SmartTrack and try it. You’ll see what I mean.
Curiously, if no snap options are selected initially, other than SmartTrack, it gives you zero feedback for the second point. Why are
the mess of snap options not visible now?
SmartTrack is simply waaaay too hyperactive to be highly useful. Maybe another approach on SmartTrack is to allow users to just turn off the feedback for OnOrtho type snaps and show only main snaps related to the geometry at hand as a default? In addition, allow the option for users to turn on or off the type of snaps they want to see. (and maybe this is possible currently, I dunno… don’t see this ability).
Jon, thanks for adding your voice to the snap-fest here! Improving snaps would be a welcome step forward for Rhino… if it’s possible! Will have to try MoI’s snaps. Am downloading a trial and will check it out.
Jon, thanks for adding your voice to the snap-fest here! Improving snaps would be a welcome step forward for Rhino… > if it’s possible! wink Will have to try MoI’s snaps. Am downloading a trial and will check it out.
No problem. One of the great things about using MoI in tandem with Rhino is that you can cut & paste between the two apps (MoI uses open .3dm as its file format) so there’s no need for import & export dialogs.
I played with MoI’s snaps and I will say, they are indeed impressive! Very peaceful, powerful, and intuitive. This is the kind of simplicity that I wish for Rhino’s snaps.
The only (slight) weakness is that one has to mouse to the bottom of the screen to turn snaps on/off if they can’t get the snaps they desire. Would also like to add hotkeys, as expressed above. But, to be honest, MoI’s snaps work so well, there is minimal toggling necessary.
For those interested in viewing a quick “snap” demo, here is the link to download it (89 seconds, 5.4 Meg. .MOV format).
If you want to play with MoI’s snaps, the download is here.
Much as I love working in MoI, I definitely see it as a complementary product to Rhino as it lacks many of Rhino’s ‘power user’ features. But with the simplicity of the cut and paste workflow between the two apps they make perfect bedfellows
Hello,
do you plan to integrate material definition for layers soon? This is the key feature for me.
And also some way to navigate rhino to textures folder to make possilbe to open same file from my windows and keep textures running. I often switch between Mac OS X and Windows 8 boot, but priority is to stay on OS X most of the time of my workflow and working with textures and mapping is critical.
This one is on the list as MR-682 for future reference but I’m not sure when it will be implemented.
I’m not sure how it works with bootcamped Windows 8 but I believe with Windows 7 you could navigate to the Windows partition from OSX to access files. This is something to research on an Apple forum though to know for sure. Using Windows 7 x64, I am able to navigate to the bootcamp partition through the texture file browser when creating a material in Mac Rhino.
Thank you for the information. Question is, if it is possible to say to rhino where to search textures. I have all the textures in folder on C: and If I open some model created on WIN in MAC OS X, the textures are not working and I am supposed to redefine all the paths of particular textures of all materials to make them working. Is there some way to set this path to texture folder for whole Rhino system? (add to library)
Rhino 8 needs a new ARCHITECTURAL tab with a draw on face tool and a press/pull tool to create SOLIDS similar to Trimble’s Sketchup software. Sketchup is the easiest software to use in the Architectural arena. A draw on face tool and a Push/Pull tool similar to Sketchup would appeal to a great many Sketchup users who would gladly switch to Rhino 8 if it had such a tab with those tools. Sketchup software is currently only available on a subscription plan and it doesn’t have the same capacity to create large complex models like Rhino. Sketchup crashes a lot. I know a lot of people who would rather buy a perpetual license if Rhino software was more user friendly like Trimble’s Sketchup software.
Will have to try MoI’s snaps. Am downloading a trial and will check it out.