Hello,
I think R8 has made some great improvements to layers (particularly the search functionality) yet I believe that adding support for Tags to object properties would be a great new feature.
Collaborative or multi-user AEC files can get… messy… sometimes despite everyone’s best efforts and the ability to quickly add, remove, or create new Tags to organize objects in the Rhino document really would be great.
Grasshopper does now have this ability to get and set tags via the Content Information node which is great!
I’m naively assuming this means that there is some kind of underlying API method handling this and that same API could (potentially) be extended to Rhino? Unless this is part of the new Model Objects containers in GH and therefore GH specific?
Either way it would be great to have this feature in addition to user text.
Alternatively, I may code a solution that leverages user text and just creates a key called “Tags” and then the Value field could read like “solid wood furniture, FFE, chair, Living Room” and the script could prompt a little dialogue in the viewport that allows you to add to this list.
This would be less elegant and having more refined control over a “tagging system” in Rhino would be preferred IMO.
Here’s a quick UI mockup of what I think this could look like and work like:
-A new Rhino command called “Tag” would be added
-User could Right Click on any object and choose “Tag” or “Tag Group”
-User could enter command line “Tag”
-A dialogue UI would pop-up in the viewport floating to the upper right of where a right click occurs or slightly to the upper right of the objects bounding box center (if Tag was run from commandline)
-User could start typing anything and hit enter to tag the object.
-User could add multiple tags at once by typing with commas such as “Tag1, Another tag, Yet Another Tag” and hitting enter
-A new sub panel would exist in the Object Properties sub panels called “Tags” where a user could drag and drop “Ungrouped” Tags into new “parent” Tag Groups, add new tags easily, or remove existing tags.
-User could assign a color to each Tag Group (optional)
-User could collapse or expand Tag Groups
-By default, unless grouped via “Tag Group” command or Dragging & Dropping Tag into Tag Group in UI, all Tags would be set to “Ungrouped” by default.
-User could Search in tags much like the way Search works for User Text
-Subpanel would also have a button for “Match Tags”
-Users could Select By Tag, Group By Tag, Ungroup By Tag, etc. (new Rhino workflow use cases)
Not only would this new feature empower users to have additional filtering, sorting, and management of data and information but this could open up new workflow opportunities such as hybridized layer based modeling augmented with Tags, Tag only workflows (where no layers are needed), etc.
This could also assist users working in complex files where they may not be allowed or want to change layer structure of items but would still like to add their own rules to filter objects against (similar to selection sets but more powerful as they could apply additional rules to said objects or expose to grasshopper for additional logic, such as (get overall dimensions of all objects tagged “dining room” and “furniture”)
I’d love to know other users thoughts and the developers’ thoughts as well of course.
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Thank you all!