Hello,
I’m working on a modeling aid concept that is sort of a hybrid between the Gumball and Revit Temporary Dimensions.
Here’s what the Revit temp dimensions look like:
Here’s a video of my concept (so far):
Both in Revit and Rhino Gumball you can click on the dimension/gumball arrow and manually type a dimension.
The object will then move this amount (in Rhino) and in Revit will move the object the distance from subtracting the current dimension length and the new entered value.
I want to be able to click on one my concept temp dimensions, type in a value such as 1’ or 20 3/8" and then have the object move in that direction. I already have the script logic for parsing the value information into model units. So I just would subtract the current dimension - the new dimension to get the move distance.
Before I go down a rabbit hole of Mouse Click event handlers and such I wanted to check if there’s any API methods I can call that influence the gumball movement or if this just needs to be handled with good 'ol fashion vector math and .Move command?
The reason for this is I find it very annoying to place objects in Rhino when working on architectural drawings and while I am NO Revit fan, I do like the ease of use this feature brings of just typing in a dimension instead of needing to check the current distance and then do the math of what you need to move by.
As always, any idea are appreciated and thank you for your help!
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Hi,
It’s unbelievable that I found only one topic (yours) about Revit-like dimensions in Rhino. I came from software like AutoCAD, then discovered Revit with its amazing dimension system, and now I can’t work without it. It’s crazy that you need to offset distances or draw lines just to place elements correctly.
Where is your project now? Are you still developing this amazing idea?
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Hi @Krzysztof5 ,
This is tabled for right now but still “in the works” when I have time to chip away at it.
More recently I started digging into the gumball itself, seeing what methods are available that influence the movement, rotation, and scale of objects.
In other words, when you click on each part of a gumball it’s calling a specific function.
a. I’m thinking about exploiting the gumball by making a custom gumball at each of the temporary dimension centers.
b. a different approach is creating actual dimension stringer objects and then letting the user type in a new value in the command line, and then having that dimension stringer update and move the object
c. the third option is to wait for R9 constraints as in R8 Wip, dimensions could be set to “driving” meaning when you updated the value of a linear dimension for example, it would move the object that was attached to it.
Currently, I’m “waiting” to see if constraints will be the the fundamental driver of this or not.
Thanks for your interest and I’m open to any ideas, API methods, or other solutions one can think of to make it a good User Experience.
I haven’t known that this feature exists in Rhino 8. It’s a good direction, and the ideal approach would be to create dimensions that are attached to objects, similar to Revit. I don’t know much about Revit’s API, but I often use RIR, and it seems that every object in Revit is built with reference edges and points. The hosting feature in Revit is really great; moving an object also moves its ‘children’.
Anyway, it would be great if I could just set a dimension in Rhino from one geometry to another and move one of them by changing the value of the dimension set between them. If these features start popping up, maybe we should see what else is going to happen.
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