There’s been a long running request for better indicators of the U and V directions on a surface. In the Rhino WIP we’ve made it so when control points are turned on for surfaces we draw two arrows near the origin (0,0) control point. These curves are are generated from surface ISO curves and have U and V drawn at their respective ends.
This is meant to help with tools like MoveUVN, SoftTransform UV weighting, and others where the surface direction plays an important role. The goal is that these indicators are useful even if not perfect in all scenarios. They were chosen to be displayed on the interior of the surface to not obscure edges in scenarios like analyzing continuity between edges.
Colors are pulled from the Rhino.Options.Appearance.DirectionArrowColorU and Rhino.Options.Appearance.DirectionArrowColorV advanced settings. These are the same colors used in the Dir command.
Also, to enhance the readability of the surface we’ve began drawing weighted control points as diamonds.
Finally. These were requested for so long. I remember asking for these since the Rhino 5 and Rhino 6 times. I hope that the X/Y direction indicators will also show while running any command that’s related to them, such like “Rebuild”, “Rebuild UV”, “Direction”, “Change degree” etc
Great progress here. This kind of visual indicator opens the door to faster interaction methods—Gumball-style flip handles, small circular icons for U/V/W reversal, and quick visual feedback when flipping. Add auto-detection of inconsistent directions and some UV workflow awareness, and managing surface direction becomes much smoother and more immediate.
And please, add a color, or other indication when the weight of a control point doesn’t have a value of ‘1’.
After all, the rational part of the NURBS abbreviation is the ability to control the weight.
As I am not a fan of adjusting the weight and add more control points when I need more control, I think it is a missing part of Rhino that there’s no visual feedback.
So it would be nice that when I show the control points of an object, I can notice that I, or someone else adjusting the weight as a specific control point.
Either use a different colour, or render square control points when the weight is not the default value of 1, and round control points if the value is 1.
However, that may cause a confusion with the control points of surfaces and arcs of degree 2, because their default point weight is some random value.
@Gerard@Rhino_Bulgaria These appear to request a separate function than the surface direction indicators. Perhaps a topic for a new thread.
A visual indicator of where control points have weights other than 1, including revolved surfaces, would be very useful when selecting the degree and number of control points of adjoining surfaces.
Yes, a dedicated topic regarding the indication of control point weight would be welcome. Perhaps these should be classified as “default” and “modified” rather than “default” and “other than a value of 1”, in order to avoid the misleading indication for the control point weight of degree 2 arcs and surfaces.
Let us know what you think of this. If the change is welcome we’ll start wiring up some additional display options for styles other than this diamond shape.
P.S. What happens if the surface is trimmed and only the middle portion is visible? Like a circular piece that takes the middle of the surface? Or the portion opposite of the U/V indicator?
Trying to get these indicators drawn on only the active portion of the surface seems like a fools errand to me. The surface can be trimmed in any whacky way. I use a version of the surface shrunk back to the bounds of the outer loop. I think this gets the arrows in the right ballpark. This shrunk surface I’ve outlined in red. You can see how the first row is dropped and the indicators move closer to the active portion of the surface.
