Here is an alternative proposal for Super Gumball, this time utilizing smart dragging that activates the currently set drag strength by simply dragging the mouse pointer away from the active Gumball handle.
It would be nice if the user is given the ability to adjust the settings for “Angle of activation” and “Distance of activation”. This way, the secondary dragging functionality could be activated according to the taste of the individual users. For example, a setting with 10 degrees for “Angle of activation” and 150 pixels for “Distance of activation” will ensure that the secondary drag strength mode will not be activated by accident by most users.
I already proposed that long time ago, but since we are closer to the release of Rhino 9 at some point, I thought that it would be nice to remind the developers about that and hopefully it will be taken into consideration before it’s too late.
The same “drag-away-from-the-handle” functionality could be implemented to other tools, such like the sliders for “Blend surface” (to enable ultra detailed fine adjustment with the mouse pointer), the new “Surface fillet” in Rhino 8, and so on. Currently, it’s extremely difficult or even impossible to use the sliders for fine adjustment, because the numerical amount there suddenly jumps from one rough number to another. The idea is to implement a variable drag strength for the sliders based on the distance of the mouse pointer (in a normal direction) from the active slider that’s dragged parallel to the latter.
No need to press the current individual buttons that heavily limit the range of slider adjustment.
P.S. A similar approach is used in most videos on YouTube, where you can hold the mouse pointer on the time slider, then drag it towards up, then it activates a fine adjustment of the time line and you can continue to move the mouse pointer sideways, parallel to the slider.
Rough time adjustment (sort of drag strength 100):
Fine time adjustment frame by frame (sort of drag strength 2%):
