Rhino 8 Development

[luca4 (Luca)]

Yes, you are right! I’ ve seen this already in some post but it’s actually in Rhino help here.
I consider it anyway more like a workaround than a real command.
Not so straightforward if there are many details in your layout.
Thanks anyway for the hint!

[stevebaer]

It is a workaround and is not a true implementation of non-rectangular details.

[cadmaster]

I wonder can the Rhino 8 be just Rhino 7 with NO NEW features, but almost bug free with refined and optimized commands? This grow and expand mantra is getting contra productive in many ways.

[Jarek]

That would be a hard sell from marketing stanpoint but I would happily pay double the upgrade price for that.

[laborda (Joaquin Laborda)]

You may be tired of this kind of comment but I would be happy with V5 (and plugins) + how V7 uses GPU.
If I have to be specific

• Most VSR Features

• Create Symmetry / Align to symmetry plane ( I use it all the time) we have reflect and symmetry now that are related to these features, but they don’t solve the same problem completely.

• Trim convert/ VSR Split Surface (Killer tool)

• Control point modeling ( changes degree quickly, extrapolate, smooth, move row, points, fallof and retopo snap, among others). We have some of this features but all scattered in different places that make the workflow terribly slower.
  Some in Move UVN, some in the gumball, extend, others choosing the drag mode…

• Rebuild curves and surfaces with curvature, arc lengths or original distribution.

• Global Matching Analysis ( we have now something in V7, but it’s not mature enough)

There are some other tools to mention, I could make a quick video if needed.

I would remove some tools from rhino that had no development for decades and give a low quality result like surface from network, and patch and integrate XNurbs.
I promised myself to stop buying plugins that replace important tools, and may cause problems in the future.

• SubD, Naturally I would love a toolset that matches the level of T-Splines tools with some features from Modo. Like: Merge points by tolerance, match subd to nurbs, retopo modeling, Increase/decrees selection.

• package GH definitions A little dream would be, a way to make grasshopper magic more accessible to people that don’t want to learn it. I use to work with scripts created by experts from this community and although GH is an enormous step forward as language to code with a visual interface, this is not what I want to focus on at the moment. But I think that there might be a way to integrate definitions with just the elements to be selected and for example some sliders.

• Resume Mesh2 mesher that would benefit my next wish.

• Better tools for unwrapping and editing the UVeditor.

• Copy paste from V7 to V5

• Some Direct polysurface editing (like synchronous technology, fusion, creo, spaceclaim…) What we have works for simple architecture, but it brakes with just a single hole in a cylinder wall.

[gustojunk (Gustavo Fontana)]

Excellent points by @laborda here. I agree with all of it, the most puzzling of all for me is the solid editing of simple prismatic stuff.

@laborda

Some Direct polysurface editing (like synchronous technology, fusion, creo, spaceclaim…) What we have works for simple architecture, but it brakes with just a single hole in a cylinder wall.

SolidEditing is a part of Rhino continues to be completely broken. Even for the simplest of things like planar surfaces and extrusion-type surfaces. Even VC barely-funded and silly iPad modeling-playground apps have solved this.

1.I just tested this problem:

Moving solid points of polysurfaces creates bad surfaces

Hi all, I bumped into another one. And on simple geometry, please check file. Moving the vertical edge that I marked with a line will destroy 2 surfaces of the polysurface. Same thing if i use solidpton or i just grab the edge with ctrl+shift+click and move it. [image] [image] EDGE MOVE BUG.3dm (76.9 KB)

still here:

2. this one reported by me in 2016:

Who would like to see SpaceClaim forum here given its been nuked at Ansys?

similar story here. I stopped paying subscription in 2015. I still find it useful to: import parasolids make direct edits to extend volumes/move faces in simple geometry (something that Rhino is not very good at, especially if surfaces are tapered or have curvature, even degree-2 and extrusion-like transforms) remove fillets and holes that extend across edges of patch boundaries here’s an example of #2 (@rajaa @brian, you might want to take a look at this) where I think a solidpts edit should…

…still broken:

The worse part of this? Rhino doesn’t even have a designed and programmed feedback mechanism routine that at least says: “Sorry I just turned some of your degree-1 and degree-2 surfaces into higher degree and much higher density surfaces. Also your planar surfaces are not longer planar”

G

[Eugen]

Dear McNeel developers, thank you for creating that great piece of software that Rhino is!
My wish: may it prosper and grow and become capable of doing more and more of the work the other apps in our architectural office are still used for (AutoCAD for oldschool 2D plan-drawing - ugh!, Revit when new projects enter the actual construction phase, Adobe stuff for layouting/graphics (I’d prefer Affinity)).
Rhino sits somewhat in the middle and is used for design studies, competitions, rendering, and juggling CAD data of all sorts. Together with VisualArq it can do a little / a lot of pretty much everything - but that overlap could become bigger. It’s not perfect, but still it’s a joy to work with it (much more than with what Autode$k feeds us).
However, here’s my greedy wishlist for R8/9/10… (bigger things first):

• User Interface (meaning everything outside the viewports - toolbars, panels):
  Rework it over time using the same GUI library as Grasshopper (Windows forms, right?). No more glitches with re-arranged/jittery toolbars.
  All UI colors customizable (dark theme)
  Save/load UI layouts (Cinema4D does this right)
  Context-sensitive keyboard shortcuts (example: CTRL-A over a viewport: select all objects, CTRL-A over the layer panel: select all Layers)

• Layouts (much has been suggested):
  Correct z-sorting / draw order support for everything that can be placed on a layout, including overlapping Details, hatches, surfaces, annotations… stuff inside Details…
  Make2D placeable on a layout, as an updateable, dynamic block, supporting hatches

• Parametric modelling:
  Better history - one that does not break so easily, is editable in some GH-like graphic panel, and where the commands’ parameters still can be accessed (E.g. why is there a control point-like handle on an Extrusion, but no way to set it numerically later on, and why does the history have to break moving it?)

• Blocks (yay!):
  Get rid of those nasty recursive deletion problems!
  Support for lights
  Dockable, non-modal BlockManager
  Dynamic Blocks, powered by Grasshopper (see VisualArq Elements)
  BlockEdit: Set Base Point plus orientation
  Add a command to create a new, unique block from an existing one without exploding/reblocking.

• BoxEdit:
  Immediate and correct update when something is selected
  Support for components - When something shows a Gumball, BoxEdit should support editing it!

• Grasshopper:
  Update for the GH panel in the main UI - or maybe ditch it and replace it with dynamic GH blocks that have their parameters exposed in the Properties panel.

• Layer panel:
  Solo layer icon or keyshort (maybe ALT-LMB). Multiple layers can be solo-ed, and their original state is remembered.
  Better drag&drop support, just like in the R7 Named Views and Layer States panels - up/down arrows should become obsolete.

• Viewport safe frame:
  Always the full size of the safe frame (showing the render resolution aspect ratio) should be visible in a VP - those left/right arrows that are shown when the frame is cut off don’t make any sense!
  We work with Enscape3D a lot - it’s a brilliant renderer, but the way it is synced with the Rhino viewport is really stupid. This could improve if Rhino had better support for that safe frame.

• Gumball
  Numeric 2D-scale
  Could Groups remember their Gumball location?

• R7 Color panel update
  Color wheel AND sliders shown together

Thank you!!

[ThS (Thomas)]

It would be very useful, if Rhino could get an Object Manager (Outliner) like it was developed as an experimental plugin for Rhino4 some years ago.

I often work with large Rhino files with thousands of objects on many layers. It’s very hard to look for an object that is hidden, when you don’t know on which layer (some are turned “off”, some are turned “on”) it is placed. Seeing which objects are members of a group or block is another missing feature that an object manager could enable.
This object manager could also be very handy to organize the file structure by dragging and dropping parts or groups from one layer to another.

[cutj]

That is the most important feature that needs added for me.

[petumatr]

Here I must concur. I would gladly pay double the price if the software was fast, responsible, bug-free and optimized. Ultimately, the time spent on hardly responsive files, layouts, bugs and finding workaround is most likely costing even more… But I will try to remain an optimist.

[a_faze]

My list:

• The ability to mirror detail views in paperspace to easily create things like reflected ceiling plans
• Asset library
• Automatic leader lines for dimensions that are too small to have the numbers sit on the dimension line
• Ability to output any display mode as a vector or hybrid of vector and raster.

I’ve switched from using Sketchup to Rhino fulltime and these have been the things I’ve been missing the most.

[Jonathan_Hutchinson (Jonathan)]

@luca4

Sync of Preferences/Shortcuts/Plugins between multiple PC’s (i.e Workstation + Laptop / Home + Office, etc…) useful also for backup / migration to new computer.

+1 to that. Total nightmare at the moment still I find.

[TomTom (Tom)]

I think Rhino 8 should make a clear statement on what it actually is! My impression is that it slightly lost focus. It seems to me that it the strategy has been to (directly and indirectly) open it up for new markets (Apple support, Rhino Inside, Open Nurbs and Rhino Compute)

While this was actually a smart move to bring Rhino computational strengths on the market, it is also a high risk to get lost in complexity. If you just think on what Arm support and depreciated OpenGL (on Mac) will alone cause of an extra effort, chances are high Rhino 8 won’t bring much innovation, due to firefighting all the way.

I guess as an Allrounder, the average is optimum! But at some point it needs to stay competitive when it comes to its initial purpose. Which is surface modelling!

Sub-D was a great improvement and should definitely being improved during the next versions, but McNeel should not forget to improve traditional surface tools.
However, Sub-D, variational surface and all the other magic tools of the last couple of months, are not the holy grail of modelling. I bet the majority of modelling things are still traditional.

In today’s Rhino there are tons of tools in creating surfaces but too few to actually control and evaluate the interaction of surfaces. I think in this forum are dozens of missing feature threads explaining things in detail, but McNeel should just have a look at it’s direct modelling competitors. Alone the topic of blending and matching is huge. Just looking at the legacy VSR Plugin reveals what had been possible. Also the topic of reverse engineering or topology optimisation (smoothing, crowning etc) has room for improvement. Yet another topic is cp reduction. One of the major issues of Rhino is its generous creation of control vertices for many common operations. This will always cause endless effort in refitting all the time. A lightweight topology almost always guarantees all the automation tools to work better, so there is somehow a win-win…

[norbert_geelen]

My wishes:

• more high quality surface modeling functions (as laid out in @laborda s post above and in many threads about surface modeling)
• sort out the mess that is the whole panels/viewports/toolbar-situation (countlessly complained about by many people over various versions of rhino)
• easy to save, backup and transfer preferences and UI customizations (already mentioned in this thread, repeated for emphasis)

To say it in the words of a disgruntled Mancunian (though probably not a cad user):
So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

be happy for that… its what keeps us from getting sued for violating patents and copyrights.

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

Another thing I’d like to add to the list… marking menus-

alias had them for decades , their patent has expired, GH has a version of them, and blender has them.

they are awesome, and I want them.

[norbert_geelen]

Could elaborate a bit what marking menus do?

[theoutside (Kyle Houchens)]

Demo of Marking Menus

[phcreates (peter harris)]

Oh, I loved marking menus! Those were super-fast.

[norbert_geelen]

Ah okay. I didn’t remember the name “marking menu” for this kind of menu.
I agree that these are super helpful.
One of the few UI elements of fusion 360 (to give another example) that I miss in Rhino.
Using a cintiq display I could use the wacom driver to use these kind of menus, but they are not performing that well and mapping Rhino commands to its buttons is a bit cumbersome.

So I am all for native marking menus in Rhino!