Rhino WIP Feature: Icon redesign

[Zaxxon (Zaxxon77)]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

But honestly, even though I like the Rhino 9 WIP, you have to admit the whole thing could use a serious glow-up. Rhino is insanely powerful, yet the interface is starting to look like it time-traveled here straight from the 90s. With everything it can do, it deserves a proper makeover, like taking an old Mustang and turning it into something you’d actually brag about.

Maybe - but I think there’s a lot to love about Rhino’s UI for how considered it has been and how it has not simply fallen in line with all the various latest design trends.

Say what you will about ‘90’s UI conventions - but all those beveled edges and drop shadows were massive usability facilitators in terms of subtly indicating the affordances provided in an applications interface. (Not to mention the way that natively OS implemented UI elements tend to be just a wee bit more responsive). IMO the whole flat-design trend of the last decade+ has been a travesty for interface design that we only now seem to be finally turning a corner away from with the new-crop designerati beginning to rediscover some of the old methods and reasons why.

I am looking forward to seeing what the UI will turn out to be like though - have been seeing many improvements in the WIP that indicate a lot of well thought out work happening behind the scenes.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I can’t see how making the Rhino icons more difficult to read could help with moving the UI “out of the 90s”.

Rhino’s customizability is unmatched across all CAD programs, which gives the users the ability to modify the UI in almost all aspects. One of Rhino’s strengths is having the option to arrange many toolbars and icons for a quick and convenient access. Just because other CAD programs have far less icons that look fancy due to their large size, does not mean that they offer a better UI than Rhino. They simply don’t have the huge amount of tools that Rhino offers.

Rhino has 10 times more commands for navigation of the camera and the lens length than Solidworks, for example. Obviously, it needs more icons. It’s self-explanatory. The same goes for the modeling and editing tools, too. Not to mention that Rhino is no longer limited to NURBS, so the mesh tools and SubD tools require even more icons and toolbars. Plus drafting, layer management, etc. Many long time Rhino users have a ton of super useful custom macros assigned to new custom icons, too. All of these factors set the course of Rhino’s UI, such like the need to show as much icons as possible (for those who mainly use icons instead of aliases or key combinations), which ultimately leads to smaller icons (than some of the competition) and tabs that give a quick access to extra toolbars.

Also, it’s important to mention that Rhino offers a real-time coordinate for the mouse pointer position, quick layer management at the bottom, memory usage, Project, Gumball, Ortho, Osnap, World/Cplane, number of selected objects, and lots of other useful information. All of these are directly rendered on the screen simultaneously. No need to go through many sub-menus and waste time, unlike some of the major CAD programs that only show very few icons and everything else is hidden and slow to reach.

[CADARTZ]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

Grasshopper is essentially a plugin inside Rhino

makes total sense why grasshopper is deciding the icon direction for Rhino…

Up is down and down is up

clearly I come from another dimension that has collided with another timeline here.

[CADARTZ]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

But honestly, even though I like the Rhino 9 WIP, you have to admit the whole thing could use a serious glow-up. Rhino is insanely powerful, yet the interface is starting to look like it time-traveled here straight from the 90s. With everything it can do, it deserves a proper makeover, like taking an old Mustang and turning it into something you’d actually brag about.

There is an old timeless saying “if it aint broke don’t fix it”

so we going with the old mustang to the dodge hellcat equivalent formula? Beautiful to watch exciting when you press the gas pedal, but a nightmare when you blow the engine and the cost of repairs starts creeping in?

Definitely brag material we go from functional to fashion

Notes to self: for the meme chat gallery, a rhinoceros putting on makeup and a dress image.

[M_Thorez (Maxime Thorez)]

Personally, so far I love the redesign of the UI (having been a bit disappointed by R8), I looks more pastel and colorful, very pleasing to the eye

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

The proposed new icons from your earlier post (mainly black and white, some dark blue here and there, almost full absence of colours, far less details, lack of outlines, general flat look) are the total opposite of the colourful GUI of Grasshopper.

Also, note that Grasshopper has a bunch of primary icons (16 by default) with a hexagonal shape that are 90% black. That does not mean that the entire Rhino UI should follow the same style. The majority of the rest icons on the top main toolbar in Grasshopper are very colourful and mainly square, shaped like a medium gray button with a strong black outline, which is another element that can’t be implemented as an icon design language in Rhino where the majority of icons are non-square shapes.

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The funny thing is that Grasshopper’s geometry creation and modification icons are designed to fit a medium gray background (RGB 160, 160, 164), hence they are made of thick black lines and strong outline with offset shadow, plus orange fill colour (typically RGB 255, 195, 0) instead of Rhino’s classic blue (typically RGB 147, 167, 252).

RGB 255, 195, 0:

RGB 147, 167, 252:

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Here is the interesting part. I use a noticeably lighter gray (RGB 190, 190, 190) for the background of my toolbars, which some people in the past called “too dark”. Well, GH’s background is much darker, yet it’s considered the most appropriate and “readable” by the developers and many users. I call this a biased opinion, because the darker gray background in GH makes reading the text and most icons (especially those with no orange fill, such like the curves) really hard to read.

Default Grasshopper:

My proposal:

Note: The above image is edited in Paint NET, hence it’s not a perfect example due to the limitations of this program’s tools to properly replace the colours. There is some pixelation letf that’s not easy to remove with Paint NET. Also, the offset shadows of the GH icons must be lighter, but the limitations of the program will not let me make that in a feasible way. Lighter shadows will make my proposed image much better looking.

When I proposed the neutral gray RGB 190, 190, 190 to be a default background colour in Rhino several years ago, some developers said that it’s inappropriate due to its “darkness”. Yet, somehow the much darker background in Grasshopper (RGB 160, 160, 164) is considered “light enough” to be readable. The latter really don’t work well with the black text in GH.

RGB 190, 190, 190:

RGB 160, 160, 164:

[altamiro.aj]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

With everything it can do, it deserves a proper makeover

there are at least two dozen other stuff that needed fixing or improvement before the UI and a dozen more that would make Rhino relevant on newer markets as well, the UI makeover would be an awesome selling point in Rhino10 (RhinoX?) not on 9.

[Biskiwit]

people from different fields might need different tools to be improved but we all need a snappy ui and a good user experience. This is also the first thing a beginner has to get used to when learning the software.

[Emma_Louise_Boulben (Emma Louise)]

People are starting to realise how big of a shift GH2 really is. Now that you can shape the UI to match your own taste, Grasshopper inside Rhino feels way more personal and expressive than before. If this level of flexibility carries fully into Rhino, that’s a real win, and honestly, it feels like we’re already halfway there. And with GH2’s clean interface, it’s hard not to wonder why Rhino hasn’t taken a cue from it yet… or if they’re saving something big for Rhino 10. It even brings up the question a lot of people are asking lately: what matters more now, Rhino or Grasshopper?

[davide76]

Let’s not be heretical: Grasshopper’s icons are horrible! Even the hexagonal shape is ugly…

[Gijs (Gijs de Zwart)]

@davide76

Let’s not be heretical: Grasshopper’s icons are horrible! Even the hexagonal shape is ugly…

So far I only have seen you mentioning that everything is terrible. If you provide feedback try being constructive, even if it is not your personal taste. Things like ‘terrible’ and ‘ugly’ and ‘unwatchable’ give very little clues about what works and what not.

[Holo]

I disagree on the personal “horrible” definition.
I find them easy to read because of icon design (content), and contrast and dimensions within the icons, therefore they are quick to locate and thus practically good looking. I am not a fan of overly aesthetic pleasing UI’s. But they must be as pleasing as possible withing it’s function. The hexagonal shape I see not point in, but it doesn’t remove any functionality so I don’t mind it.

I do mind that aesthetics don’t draw too much focus away from what’s being designed. So overly colorful UI’s I find disturbing in a subtle way that colors can draw attention or cause false visual harmonies (or disharmonies) with what I design in the program. Therefore I am a fan of color neutral’ish GUI’s. And the ability to go FullScreen or hide panels when going deeply into evaluation of the design. Grasshopper for me is for construction and not for design evaluation and therefore I am less concerned about visual disharmony there than in Rhino’s main GUI.

But that’s just me and how I work with design though, so use if for what it’s worth.

[PowerShape (MR_Rhino)]

Grasshopper stands out with its refined icons and user interface, and I hope Rhino’s interface can be inspired by some of these ideas .

[davide76]

Any software interface is like a business card. Rhino’s is essential and pleasant, neither too basic nor too refined, aesthetically pleasing, somewhere in between (the only criticism, in my opinion, is the light blue color chosen for the surfaces and volumes category; perhaps the lime color too…). Otherwise, everything else is fine.

The icons could just use more contrast; they should be more defined. I have to say that, in my personal opinion, the colors of the Wip icons look nicer and more defined on a dark background (preferably black), otherwise they look a bit washed out on a gray background.

I personally don’t like Grasshopper icons at all. I’ve seen better (basic, I mean) around.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Those Grasshopper icons are way more difficult to read than the icons of Rhino, because of 3 reasons:

1. They are black and white, hence they carry less visual information. The colours enable the usage of the same icon with different colours for their unique task, for example the “Save” icon could be green, red, blue etc; or the “Join” icon is much more readable due to the dual tone of the two pieces inside. This is impossible with a black and white icon. Icons that should render both, input geometry and output geometry, such like “Duplicate edge” or “Sweep 1 rail”, also take a negative hit with having only white on a black background;

2. They follow exactly the same hexagonal shape that confuse the human eyes that everything is the same. Unless the user pays a close attention to the icons to distinguish them from each other. The beauty of the classic Rhino icons is that they have their own shape and a transparent background. That factor alone improves the readability and memorization of the icons;

3. They would take too much space from the toolbars due to the hexagonal shape being larger than the square blank space for the icons of Rhino. Are you ready for 50% thicker toolbars and seeing far fewer icons just because they are hexagonal to look “more expressive” for no reason? Or, if you keep the overall size the same, the hexagonal black background of the icons will force the use of considerably smaller actual graphics elements inside, which makes the readability worse.

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I’m bad at doing UI design, but here is a little experiment with a hexagonal grid ending with a subtle gradient. Check the Main toolbar on the left side. Looks fancy, but in reality takes half an icon more space than the original Rhino 7 UI. I much prefer the clean look of the original UI with no grid at all. Open the PNG image inside the RAR file to see the real quality. The forum converts the images to JPG and that makes the quality worse.

I also tried with black and white hexagonal icons, but it looked insanely horrible…

Шестоъгълници.rar (1.0 MB)

[altamiro.aj]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

It even brings up the question a lot of people are asking lately: what matters more now, Rhino or Grasshopper?

From my point of view, there is no grasshopper without rhino, rhino problems and solutions all carry out to grasshopper, grasshopper is a different way to model in Rhino.

People love to compare Rhino to Solid modelers while speaking about parametric solutions, GH is the ultimate, non destructive, parametric solution, that McNeel can’t sell very well because of the separated windows and heavy look on the node programming style, making it look like two different things when in true, GH is a rhino plugin with a new way of doing stuff.

I know I am oversimplifying a lot of it because I don’t truly know how the programing behind it all works, but there are a lot, and I say a lot, of badly implemented plugins for GH that rely on the user typing inputs on text or sliders or anything like that, that in true are just that, input boxes and drop down menus.

What prevents me from creating a tree like solid modelers and just having grasshopper nodes being show and text with little icons on the side and conecting stuff by selecting on rhino viewport instead of having to select from a list programming style?

I hope that Rhino 10(Rhino X) work on unifying more GH and Rhino instead of separating them more. To unlock RhinoGH true potential market and bring more users and solutions in.

[CADARTZ]

@Emma_Louise_Boulben

what matters more now, Rhino or Grasshopper?

Am i missing some development im not aware of?

I don’t mean to be rude but it’s such a strange thing to read

Rhino is the base primary software grasshopper is a secondary plugin for it

Then there are other topics about making Rhino look like grasshopper icons why it even dictates the direction when it makes more sense the other way around I still can’t wrap my head around that idea

Please someone explain this phenomena?

[Emma_Louise_Boulben (Emma Louise)]

The focus of this discussion is the user interface, so let us keep that at the centre. Everyone here already knows that Rhino is a solid modeler powered by a robust NURBS engine, the same engine that drives Grasshopper. Grasshopper is essentially the ultimate non destructive parametric environment built on record history, and we are all well aware of that, so no need for any lectures.

The real point is to explore a unified UI for both tools. Right now, it feels like two separate development paths heading in different directions, especially with GH2. By the way, I would love to see GH2 integrated as soon as possible, it offers far more capability than GH1 and treats modern processors with a lot more respect.

Grasshopper inside Rhino is not just a small plugin. It is what makes Rhino stand out from every other CAD platform out there. It is the equivalent of dropping a V8 into your car engine, suddenly everything goes faster, louder, and a little more fun. Still, you have to think before hitting the gas. Algorithms are not the easiest workflow, but they are unquestionably the future of CAD, unless you feel like hand writing everything in C# or Python like it is the digital equivalent of knitting your own socks.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

While Grasshopper comes as a plug-in integrated into Rhino, both programs use a totally different approach to build the geometry. They have a very different UI for a reason. Rhino was and is targeted mainly to NURBS modeling for more than two decades, along with SubD in the last few years when it was added to the program.

The NURBS tools require a substantially greater range of commands and icons, hence their number is what drives the general look of the UI: LMB and RMB commands, smaller icon size (compared to some competitors with fewer commands) to include as much directly clickable icons as possible, lots of additional toolbars due to the multi-purpose of Rhino (NURBS modeling, SubD modeling, mesh modeling, curve creation, Boolean operations, drafting, rendering, texture mapping, materials, layer management, surface analysis, object selection etc). Many of these are absent from Grasshopper and most CAD programs.

I can give you Solidworks as an example of a really bad UI design. Most of its important tools are hidden, so the user is forced to click on some large icon, which then opens an expanding panel to choose a more specific command. For example, the fillet tool. The user does not have a direct access to the chamfer tool or the corner blend tool. He or she is forced to click on the fillet icon first, then wait a bit to get an access to the chamfer or blend. Those 3 tools are NOT accessible at the same time! Only one of them could be visible at a time (unless the user customizes the toolbars), which is inconvenient in SW compared to Rhino. The same goes for most surfacing tools that are hidden behind fewer larger icons. This so-called “cleaner icon look” adds an unwanted layer of complexity, hence the workflow feels a sluggish compared to Rhino’s direct approach with dedicated icons for the different types of edge treatment: fillet, chamfer, blend.

Also, Rhino simply has a much greater variety of curve and surface creation tools that most CAD programs lack. I have tried various CAD programs during the years and Rhino is substantially better when it comes to camera navigation and ability to observe the geometry from any angle in a convenient way. Both, Solidworks and Alias are inconvenient in that regard.