RhinoGuides Document Usertext Format

G’day,

Is it wise to have Guides defined/stored in Document User Text, and what is the format?

It looks like:
xA1,y1A1,zA1 xA2,yA2,zA2 1 xB1,tB1,zB1 xB2,yB2,zB2 1

where A#,B#,… define the guide origin and vector
and " 1 " is used as a delimiter.

image

Nick - we don’t mind you storing guides in the user text. Whether it’s wise or which format is rather up to you to decide, no? I’m clearly missing the bigger picture here.
-wim

G’day @wim,

This is the first time I’ve used Guides. I didn’t create the document user text, Rhino did. I assumed this was how Rhino was storing them. To test this theory I created a dummy one by appending to the existing user text as per format above and it successfully added a new Guide.

Guides are the only Rhino geometry that are stored in usertext, and I questions whether this is wise. For example, I don’t want less experienced users deleting the RhinoGuides user text where they would otherwise leave the Guide geometry alone.

cheers,
Nick

No @Ncik , I recently found BoxEdit pivot settings there. (They were stored against a GUID-based key, so it took detective work to figure out what they were). Who knows what else may be out there…

I agree that storing this stuff in plain sight is poor practice, especially when it is not made clear what it relates to. If McNeel are going down this road then please use the hidden entry feature. Better yet @wim , don’t go there!

Regards
Jeremy

Hey all - this is a bug, thanks for the report - these are apparently being added without the hider prefix, is my guess (prefix with a “.” to hide a key)
@Trav - this is not expected, correct, guides etc visible?

RH-63782 Boxedit: Document User text is visible
RH-63781 Guides: Shows in document user text

-Pascal

prefix with a “.” to hide a key

Is this an official thing? I’ve had cases where I debate whether to use user text, to let something be easily accessible to people, but then also did not like to scare other people with weird stuff cluttering up their object properties for no apparent reason, and this “hiding” makes it seem like I could maybe have my cake & eat it too.

yep…

https://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/7/help/en-us/index.htm#commands/setdocumentusertext.htm#(null)

-Pascal

1 Like

Ah, great, thanks!

Yep, those entries should be prefixed with a dot “.” to hide them from the UI