Rhino WIP Feature: Icon redesign

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

@CADARTZ just posted a screen-shot of Solidworks in another topic, which reminded me that some people praised it for having a “futuristic UI” due to the limited amount of icons. Meanwhile, they wrote some negative words about Rhino’s overly-crowded toolbars with much more icons that “confuse the new users”. Well, as you can see, the “futuristic UI” has super large top toolbar buttons consisting difficult to read small icons that consume a lot of space just for one tool at a time (literally double the height of the Rhino icons that support both, LMB and RMB function), whereas the additional icons are accessible via holding these to open a sub-toolbar. Solidworks and other CAD programs are praised for having bad optimization of the toolbar space with huge top icons and sub-toolbars, while Rhino is criticized for optimizing the space with easy to read icons that not only have sub-toolbars, but also can consist two command into a single icon. This is a clear example of double standards and biased opinions.

Also, keep in mind that Rhino has a huge amount of icons, because it’s the “Swiss knife of CAD programs” and supports all main geometry types (NURBS, SubD, 3d meshes, point clouds), as well as: drafting, texture mapping, materials, lighting, rendering, analysis, UDT, transformations, CPlanes, the best viewport manipulation and 3d mouse support in the industry, robust layer system, a broad file export options, highly customizable display modes, selection filter, Grasshopper and so on. Plus, the new Rhino iterations also support auto-hide side panels at either side, which is a further optimization of the screen space that most other CAD programs lack.

I have 64 icons on the Standard toolbar (customized) that consist additional 59 commands due to the RMB functionality, plus 3 more icons that are hidden on the right side behind a double arrow for quick access due to the lack of space. That makes a total of 126 commands for a convenient single-click access in just one toolbar. For comparison, Solidworks has just 17 commands in the standard toolbar that take a bit more space that Rhino, which itself (in my customized Rhino 7) has 123+3 commands, along with 15 extra tabs consisting hundreds of extra icons (not counting the sub-toolbars). Solidworks also has several icons on the status bar (Save, Open file, Home, Print, Select, Options etc).

The only thing that I like in Solidworks’ UI is the Save, Open and some other icons being placed on the title bar on the top, so they are always visible. Rhino has these main icons placed in the “Standard” toolbar only, so switching to any other tab will hide them. That alone stops many Rhino users from taking advantage of the top toolbar tabs.
The “Menu” bar also could be optimized by making it (optionally) accessible via some arrow icon on the title bar. That approach is commonly used in most web browsers.

[AlW]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

The only thing that I like in Solidworks’ UI is the Save, Open and some other icons being placed on the title bar on the top, so they are always visible. Rhino has these main icons placed in the “Standard” toolbar only, so switching to any other tab will hide them.

Indeed. This is something I have wondered about for years since it was introduced in Microsoft Office apps and it made a whole lot of sense to me. Just the other day I was checking to see how much space was available in the other (non-standard) toolbars and it seemed to me there was plenty of room to add the “save” and “print” icons at the left of every top toolbar in a uniform location so that they would always be available no matter which toolbar was in use. Maybe there is another icon or two that people would find useful this way too.

How hard could it be to make this a new standard for Rhino? Who in the Rhino user world would find it job-stoppingly unreasonable?

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I mostly use the “Undo”, “Redo”, “Copy”, “Paste”, “Select all” and “Unhide selected” icons hundreds of times per day, plus maybe 100 times per day the “Save”, “Layers” and “Properties” icons, and a 1-5 times per day the “Open”, “New” and “Cut” icons.

I think that the following icons must be always visible in the TITLE BAR:
New, Open, Save, Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, Select all, Unhide selected, Layers, Properties.

People who don’t use a 3d mouse will also want to include a few extra icons for viewport navigation via the regular mouse:
Pan, Rotate, Zoom dynamic, Zoom selected, Zoom all, Maximize viewport (switching between a single and 4 viewports).

[CADARTZ]

“Futuristic”

I call it “limitedandextrastepsannoyance -istic”

Try other software people Rhino is not as bad if you gain more perspective on whats available out there.

Good in a couple of things but man some stuff really makes my teeth grind sometimes in solidworks…

[UAS-Design]

The colours and harmonisation of Rhino UI and Grasshopper has also been discussed here earlier. Attached are a few current screenshot as food for thought:

Hide/Show in Rhino with light bulb icon:

Hide/Show in Grasshopper1:

States Grasshopper2:

The colours for Surfaces and SubD appear to be petrol in Grasshopper2:

[UAS-Design]

A few thoughts on this from me:

In many software programmes, show/hide is represented by an eye. In some, it is simply represented by a dot (depending on the application, black/white is often sufficient). Attached is a screenshot from Affinity Publisher 2 as an example of the dot and the padlock.

A light bulb can symbolise invention. Or it could also be misunderstood as render lighting.
Nevertheless, the light bulb icon is much better than the blindfold icon from Grasshopper1. So if we stick with the light bulb icon, we only need to think about the colour coding and whether yellow is necessary. Until now, yellow has been used to indicate an active selection, at least in Rhino. In Grasshopper2, only text is used for the “visible state” and no icon is used; instead, a cyan colour is used. why?

I think this should be well thought out and then a consistent graphic style and colour coding should be applied throughout all areas of the software.

This would also make it easier for beginners to learn the software.

I really like the grey and, when selected, yellow shading in Grasshopper2. And it makes sense to apply this to the icons as well.
For surfaces, I (personally) would prefer blue (indigo) instead of the new cyan/petrol colour.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

@UAS-Design

Hide/Show in Grasshopper1:

That particular icon is used in Rhino for the ! _SetRedrawOn and ! _SetRedrawOff commands.

---

BUG report: @marika_almgren
The mouse tooltips for LMB buttons (no RMB command assigned) in Rhino 7 have a proper black outline. However, mouse tooltips for buttons that include both, LMB and RMB commands, lack a portion the bottom outline just below the letters. Was that fixed in Rhino 9 WIP?
From what I see, the issue is caused by the lesser amount of pixels below the RMB command in the mouse tooltips.

[Vanessa (Vanessa Steeg)]

@Holo @Rhino_Bulgaria @skysurfer Those suggestions make sense to me personally as well. Let me discuss it again with the team and see if we can try it out.

[UAS-Design]

„Zoom selected (LMB & RMB)“ together with „Select all“ must always be there

[UAS-Design]

In this Vimeo video Icon Redesign | New in Rhino WIP , Marika Almgren says that the Open Color palette (open-source color scheme) optimized for the user interface was selected: Open Color

That’s understandable, but it doesn’t explain why blue was chosen for the NURBS and Polysurface tools. I would say that the standard color in earlier versions of Rhino is more similar to the indigo color palette. I would suggest leaving it at that. “Never change a running system”.

blue could then be assigned to the SubD tools:

I think that would be good.

[skysurfer]

Indigo for coherence with older version and Blue for the SubD.

I like this proposal!

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

The SubD icons must have a higher contrast. The SubD selection icons, especially the one below the black wrench is extremely difficult to read by my colour-blind eyes. The selection colour (green maybe) the SubD edges is too indistinguishable from the blue. I would use bright yellow instead.

[UAS-Design]

Please do not judge my proposal at this level of detail; it was just a quick test with the Hue Fader (hue/saturation) in the cyan tones. My suggestion was color coding:
Grape = Meshes | Indigo = NURBS | Blue = SubD, instead of the current proposal by McNeel.

I think McNeel could also find solutions for icons with good contrast in this color scheme.
Each color always has a lightness value Open Color

Another logic could be Grape = Meshes, Violet = SubD, and Indigo = NURBS. Because SubD is applied to a low-resolution polygon mesh.

[davide76]

I don’t understand why they didn’t use the original Rhino blue and replace it with this horrible Smurf blue!

[AlW]

I have the same color vision characteristics as Bobi, though probably not as severe. At first glance I saw no perceivable difference between the 4 spectra you show. The differences in intensity across each row are obvious. With some study I can pick out differences down the columns.

Since the point of using different colors to characterize icons is to do it at a glance, this particular choice of colors wouldn’t do a thing for me except possibly mislead me.

There are most certainly similar arrangements in the red and green parts of the spectrum that would be equally ineffective for me (and Bobi) yet very helpful for people with “normal” color vision.

I think for those of us who have these color perception characteristics (called by those with the more prevalent characteristics “color blind”) find developer inattention to us as disrespectful as if they were deliberately leaving red-headed people out of their consideration.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I see Violet 7 and Indigo 7 as the same colour. They both look like the most true blue according to my eyes. I suppose that this sounds very wrong to all the people with a normal vision.

Here is what I see:
Grape 0 and Grape 1: Gray
Grape 2, Grape 3 and Grape 4: Light blue
Grape 5 and Grape 6: Something between blue and violet
Grape 7, Grape 8 and Grape 9: Violet

Violet 0 and Violet 1: Gray
Indigo 0 and Indigo 1: Gray

Every other shade of Violet and Indigo: Different shades of blue

Blue 0 and Blue 1: Gray
Every other shade of Blue: Slightly greenish blue

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

The real issue with all these icon redesigns and inclusion of lime green and other uncommon “exotic” colours (bad contrast and bad for the colour-blind people) is that the developers who are NOT active full-time NURBS modelers think that the actual NURBS modelers will benefit from using uncommon colours that are supposedly better suited to distinguish the different categories of tools (NURBS, SubD, Meshes, Modification etc), as if these are all mixed together into a giant single toolbar in a complete mess (which is not the case).

It’s a well known fact that even most men with normal vision still see a lesser amount of colours than women. This is something that the female developers of the Rhino UI must take into account.

After all the changes in Rhino 9 WIP:

• Nearly 80% of the icons now have a much reduced contrast (a combination of washed-out outlines and fill colours) that adds tiredness to the eyes and forces me to look at them for a longer period of time and from a closer distance (making my work slower, too);
• Nearly all lime green icons are super confusing for the colour-blind people (I see some of these as green, others as yellow, others as orange - depending on the nearby colours and size of the elements inside the icon), and the medium green outline does not help either;
• Some icons even have a mix of 2 or 3 colours that are perceived as nearly identical colours by colour-blind people;
• Some icons have red or green on top of blue object that lead to an extremely low contrast and vision artifacts due to mixing “bad” colours for those who are colour-blind (like those icons used to select GREEN SubD edges that I marked in my image above). I suppose that the latter is “Select creases”, but I’m not sure, because I use Rhino 7 and I can’t find such an icon there.

[Zaxxon (Zaxxon77)]

@UAS-Design

…

I would suggest leaving it at that. “Never change a running system”.

blue could then be assigned to the SubD tools:

I think that would be good.

Totally - seconding this idea - the “indigo” of the standard Rhino tools is a major aspect of the brand identity, and the UI neurotechnology.

Changes to core sense familiarity have impacts on conscious and sub-conscious levels. The familiar hue serves as an anchor to well-established memory-palace effects.

[CADARTZ]

no variations presented unfortunately

They should try Indigo and ultramarine blue variations

[CADARTZ]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

Nearly 80% of the icons now have a much reduced contrast (a combination of washed-out outlines and fill colours) that adds tiredness to the eyes and forces me to look at the for a longer period of time and from a closer distance (making my work slower, too);

I keep saying this we don’t make physical tools uncomfortable for the hands to use

why do this for the eyes which is one of the most important part for us to even use this software tool

Better clear icons+less fatigue= MORE PRODUCTIVITY

washed out icons+more fatigue= LESS PRODUCTIVITY

And I’m just a hobbyist earning 0 with Rhino you as a professional making a living from this saying similar things should raise some concerns! Lol