Rhino 6 Wishlist - Gumball "Align to View" Mode

i wish to see Rhino’s gumball to provide a “view” drag option similar to the T-Splines plugin.

currently i have to switch between the t-splines translate tool just so i can use the camera as my drag plane. not so much a problem, but would be nice to just use Rhino’s amazing gumball

currently there’s only c-plane, object, and world, no view mode

does anyone else agree?

1 Like

Hi Jean - for now, you can sort of do this as a ‘two stage’ workaround with CPlane View and then reset the gumball (in the white ‘bunnytail’ menu.).

-Pascal

+1 for that suggestion…that’s a winner!

-k

Okay, so let me see if I’m getting this straight. Lets say you like keeping your cplanes exact to the world coordinates. You would like to update the new position in your current view, or your named view or something.
I’m just wondering if I’m understanding the topic correctly.

  1. if you are using world coordinate cplane, and you would like to rotate the gumball in some way or another for a particular object. You would change rotate the cplane to have you(z axis) looking at the object with the new cplane, and where you would like to change the gumball rotation to.
  2. Then while you are in the cplane, click on the gumball manipulator white bubble/circle that has dotted lines, for a menu, where reset gumball is, and choose reset gumball.
  3. Then undo cplane change to get back to wherever you were and like working and the gumball will be in the new position.

Is this what you guys were talking about? I was way off on the bunnytail menu, eventually figured it out.

I am kinda stupid, the name of the thread is align to view. ANywho, the work around is probably the easiest and fastest way to rotate it how you like it, once you learn where it is aligned to an object to be able to know where you like specific parts of the gumball in relation to objects your workin on. Thanks for bringing up the topic Jean. This will help me out, to keep the gumball uniform in where the controls are. It is a powerful tool, and takes some practice to make use of all its solid power.

ok i’ll try to explain

if you have the t-splines plugin… there’s a View Drag Mode. you can translate based on the camera view. it has no relation to the c plane or world orientation. it’s perfect for me to move exactly where i want it to go w/o relying on the XYZ. it relies only on how you are viewing it. the gumball doesn’t rotate when you do.

Rhino only has an object, c plane, and world.

i hope this made sense

This is a good idea. Very useful when setting up a scene for rendering for example.

1 Like

there is a “view” dragmode… have you tried that?

type dragmode in the command line, then pick view. now all your translations are relative to the viewport.

may get you what you need-

I like this macro for forcing the gumball for selected objects to the view plane and the center of the view, regardless of where the selected objects are.

_CPlane _View 
_GumballAlignment _CPlane 
_RelocateGumball 0 1,0,0 0,1,0
_CPLane _Previous

And this one to force the gumball to the center of the current view but not change its orientation:

_CPlane _View 
_GumballAlignment _CPlane 
_RelocateGumball 0 _Enter
_CPLane _Previous

V6:

_CPlane _View
_GumballAlignment _CPlane
_GumballReset
_GumballRelocate 0 _Enter
_CPLane _Undo

-Pascal

Hi Pascal,
Good script! Something like this i think could be good to add in the Gumball settings along with Cplane, Object, World, so it would work without the need of changing the Cplane all the time.

P.S. _CPLane _Previous doesn’t exist in V6.

Right! In V6 it’s

CPlane Undo

-Pascal

1 Like

I would also like a clear “Align to View” menu option along the cplane, world and object.

In the mean time (5 years after the topic was created), does this “dragmode” command have a menu icon somewhere?

I had to Google this again, so this time I made a button from your Macro.

But I get “unknown command” on RelocateGumball as well in 6.16 now… (which I think also makes the _CPlane Undo not fire)

Go to the “Point edit” toolbar and look for the “Set drag mode” icon. Click on it for a couple of seconds and it will expand a new toolbar with 6 icons called “Drag mode”. From there, you can click on the desired icon (the last one is “Set Drag mode to view”) or copy it by dragging straight to some of your existing toolbars (hold Ctrl + left mouse button).

The text command of that icon is “! _DragMode _View” (without the commas). To reset the moving to World coordinates, you need the “! _DragMode _World” command.

I’m absolutely using that, but I don’t know how I can scale and rotate with it.

I do know how to scale and rotate with the gumball, though.

“GumballRelocate” in V6. Editing above…

_CPlane _View 
_GumballAlignment _CPlane
_GumballReset 
_GumballRelocate 0 _Enter
_CPlane _Undo

-Pascal

1 Like

“Scale 1D” and “Scale 3D” are very intuitive commands. For rotating of objects, there are two other very well made commands: “Rotate” and “Rotate 3D”. The only downside of “Rotate 3D” is that it will not let you keep the axis (unless you choose to make copies and then delete the ones you don’t want) while you try different angles, so the user is forced to redo the manual picking of the axis again. A “Use last axis” option would be welcome.

image

=)

To adjust contiually after an axis has been set:

*_Rotate3D _Pause _UseLastAxis

-Pascal

1 Like

Now, this makes me feel stupid. :smiley: It was there for the whole time, and I was blind enough not to see it and instead used to pick the axis manually every time… Thank you for the reminder! :slight_smile:

PS: Could this functionality (but named something like “Use last 3 points”) be implemented for the “Orient objects: 3 points” command, too? It’s very annoying if a wrong point is picked or if the mouse button is pressed accidentally. This is especially frustrating when the original object (the 3 reference points) is far away from the target area (the 3 target points). Also, an “Undo” option in the command line will help to avoid mistakenly placed point during the command. I have seen “Undo” in some other commands (such like “Add slash” in “Sweep 2 rails” or “Add shapes” in “Blend surface”) and it proved to be a time saver.

I’m glad even veterans fail to discover features with Rhino. :slight_smile:

The confusing thing for me as a beginner is that some (to me) seemingly basic features don’t exist in Rhino, so you assume that many other convenient features don’t exist either.

Thanks, @Pascal, that last macro worked perfectly!

The thing about me being not aware of the “UseLastAxis” option is that it’s not shown at the first time of use of the “Rotate 3D” command (there is a very obvious reason for that). It only appears after the command is ran again. This is why I never looked at the command prompt as I thought I can’t expect anything new to appear there. Obviously, it would be too funny to have a reminder such like “The next time you run this command it will offer you an additional option to use the last axis”. :smiley: If it had a “Remember last axis=Yes/No” option, that would be easier to notice. But I’m glad that I learned something new. :slight_smile:

PS: Can’t wait for Rhino to utilize assembly tools based on mating objects via hinges, ball joints, cylinder shafts etc, like those in SolidWorks. They would be extremely useful for testing car suspensions, architectural buildings, elevators, and any other mechanical stuff.
“Ledas Rhino assembly” (“Driving dimensions”) has a step into the right direction, but it has many limitations and the UI was not user-friendly at all. “Bongo” is also very un-intuitive and with limited capabilities compared to the assemblies of SW.

1 Like