Rhino has confusing UI! Toolbars need reorganization!

My insanity continues! I managed to extract all possible macros and put them in html table. So now I have list of all 1304 default macros that can be assigned to menu or toolbar icon. Its all organized so I can have a nice overview of all macros with appropriate macro id, bitmap, and a script macro executes.

But now I just quit doing this as I don’t have time for this really. I was using this as a reference: http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/index.htm#seealso/sak_curve.htm%3FTocPath%3DCommands|By%20function|_____9

Some of the macros are not listed even in this documentation. For example there is “_Polyline” command that draws a polyline, and there is “_Lines” command that draws a polyline! The only difference is that “_Polyline” draws joined curves, and “_Lines” makes then exploaded. Thats how you get three tools, Line, Line segments and Polyline. Line draws only single lines. Line segments draws exploaded polylines. Polyline draws joined polylines. What bothers me that Line segments aka. _Lines is not listed in documentation.

Anyways @Brenda nailed it. Rhino has the best UI and UX I have seen, but they have deceivingly extensive tool-set. Its not that Rhino is not powerful, it is, but on top of that they make confusion with toolbars and tools you can select from three different toolbars, and some tools are only available through menu, others through toolbars, and some of them are nowhere to be found… its just too confusing those Rhino toolbars.

I conclude this post and won’t bother with it anymore, dunno what will I do, I guess I will just remove all the toolbars from my workspace, and use menus to see whats available. And for the tools that are not listed on the menu… well… I don’t know, It will be as if they don’t exist for me!

Good luck everyone!

Attn: @brian in case you haven’t been following this thread. Especially Sky Daddy’s last post.
Something to put some thought and attention on for V7?

Even though we all live with Rhino the way it is, I doubt there are very many who don’t agree this is valid criticism. Nobody actually prefers a messy workshop to a neat, well organized one. Well, almost nobody.

Yes, it is:

I don’t see it here under “Drawing Lines and Curves”:
http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/index.htm#seealso/sak_curve.htm%3FTocPath%3DCommands|By%20function|_____9

Can you post a link where you found it?

Hit F1 and type “lines” in the search box…

Found it here: http://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/index.htm#commands/lines.htm%3FTocPath%3DCommands|Alphabetical|L|_____13

So its listed if you look for commands by alphabetical order, but if you try to find a command ordered by function, its not under “Curve”, “Curve from Objects” and “Curve tools” categories. Where is it then ordered by function? Will try to find it now.

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Hey guys, I just have the need to say that I’m not trying to bring Rhino down. Rhino is amazing CAD software. And I’m one of you now :slight_smile:. Will be using and already am using Rhino as my goto CAD tool. Its just amazing how much different fields Rhino hits. When modeling in Rhino I dont feel constrained, by constraints haha, and yet you can use ‘record history’ to use Rhino as a parametric tool. And I dont even want to mention Grasshoper as I didnt played with it alot, but from what I saw, its a really powerful tool.

User experience for me is top notch in Rhino, it feels good using it, feels rewarding. Makes me turn Rhino on and play with it and explore every minute of my free time. And the underlying system that powers menus and toolbars is powerful. Really smart guys working on this, I would bet my money on Rhino any day.

The only issue I have with Rhino is that Toolbar organization is really confusing. And its really hard to get an overview of what Rhino can do when some tools are only in toolbar, some are only on menus. And when you can access the some tools through toolbar, and from sidebar and from some dropdown toolbar. And then you remmember a tool in sidebar, switch tabs and you get new tools in sidebar and get lost. Thats the issue I have. Toolbars organization.

I started creating my own workspace, will upload it once I get done. Its called cLean.rui hahahha!

  • no dropdown (2nd layer) toolbars
  • only ‘raw’ commands, for example, I only add ‘Rectangle tool’, and not ‘Rectangle around curve’ and other tools derived from Rectangle. I can setup options clicking on command, and avoid poluting toolbars. When I click Rectangle I can see in command that it can go around curve, be perpendicular, I can draw it with 3 points etc…
  • sidebar is only for editing or tools that are usable on both curves, surfaces, solids… like join, expload, trim, split, group, groups, blocks etc… and sidebar does not change with changing tabs. That adds confusion like… you remmember a tool in a sidebar and then can’t find it in different tab, then you have to change tab to get that tool.

Today I was making a script that generates toolbars in a way… it would fetch all commands from that documentation ordered by function, and generate .rui file creating toolbars with function name and adding commands on its own. It would basicly build toolbars as they are on that docs ordered by function. Then I figured out that Lines command is not listed and lost it haha!

Anyways, Rhino rocks, its just I really feel those toolbars need better organization.

Cheers!

I made some progress organizing toolbars so I just wanna share it with you:

Most of the work is done as far as organizing goes, I need to add Dimensions, Visibility, Selection and Mesh toolbars. And then place them in the workspace.

You can see here what I was talking about, for example look at “Solid” toolbars.
I have three toolbars:
Solids - drawing basic solid shapes
Solid tools - editing solid shapes
Solid extrude - creating shapes from curves / surfaces
Once I combine all three toolbars in one group / toolbar, I will have all tools for solids one click away, and a clear overview what I can do with solids if I get lost and need to find a tool I don’t know about.

This is really hard work, I renamed and organized over 400 macro items. Deleted lots of them. For example extrusion macros, there are 4 basic extrude commands for extruding curves, ExtrudeCrv, ExtrudeCrvAlongCrv, ExtrudeCrvTapered and ExtrudeCrvToPoint. And same set of extrude commands for extruding surfaces. And with those 4 commands you can do everything, but there are also many macros like “Extrude face” or “Extrude face to a boundary” that do the same thing as those basic commands but just add confusion, there is like 20 extrusion tools that can be replaced with just those four basic as they are derived from them.

And also for curve drawing, you have “Line” command, and then “Line: Angled”, “Line: Angled from midpoint”, “Line: Bisector from midpoint” etc… It just adds huge confusion to a new guy like me that things those are all different commands, and its like you can just use “Line” and click on command to chose what you need.

And then there are tools that are useful that can’t be find on toolbar or menu or under a tab you would be looking for them.

Its like having 5 hammers with different colors for hammering different nails, but they are all the same and you can just use one. Not a good example but I hope you get the point.

Anyways will continue editing these commands and add whats missing, reorganize those a little bit more and change icons order and will probably upload that workspace somewhere if someone will be interested.

Those default macros are unorganized, there are so many duplicate macros, or macros that have no command under “script” tag, this seriously needs organization.

I guess devs were just creating new tools and were just adding them and now after many years it got messy.

This is really hard work just clicking all day, I edited 400+ icons and added them to a category, it did gave me a better overview what can be done with curves, surfaces, solids and meshes. Thats something that should be visible from menus first time you open Rhino, hope it will change. So when a new guy comes and opens curves tab he can see all the ways he can draw a line.

See ya!

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Now I’m confused…

Why?