Rotate with Gumball wish

[PodoTools (Erik Hondebrink)]

A few years ago I wished for another behaviour of Gumball during rotation.
I still often leave Gumball and switch to Rotate when rotating objects, and my wish still exist:
Being able to adjust the length of the rotating arm BEFORE the object starts to move.

I like the improvements that made for Gumball since 2021, it would be great if this wish could be fulfilled too.

Wish Gumball rotate

When I want to rotate something very precisely with the gumball, I want to create a long “tiller” for the gumball rotater by dragging it away from the gumball. But while doing that my object starts rotating before I reach the desired lenght of my “tiller”. That makes it hard to see a small difference between the original and the rotated position. So most of the time I end op using the rotate command, that allows me to define the lenght of the tiller before anything rotates, or I enter a numb…

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

Hi Erik - if you are looking for more precision in rotating, you might try setting DragStrength

-Pascal

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Or perhaps the TestSuperGumball command?

New Gumball is devastatingly bad. Here are some proposals how to fix it

I propose to add the following test command in Rhino 7: TestSuperGumball It will activate (you guessed it right)… the new Super Gumball which has extra Drag strength handles! [Super Gumball 2] [Super Gumball 3] [Super Gumball 4]

[PodoTools (Erik Hondebrink)]

That does work, but it asks for too many clicks to be practical. Every time I rotate I need a different “drag strenght”. The rotate command only needs one extra click and works great and intuïtive, and gives you the opportunity to pick the end of the rotation arm (and adjust the view) without displaying a moving copy of the object.
I can also use the rotational arm as a guiding line, without getting the view blocked by the preview of the rotated object.
This delay of displaying the rotation until I have picked the end (and direction!) of the rotation arm is what I want for gumball.

.

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

Hi Erik I guess I don’t completely understand - if the Rotate command works well, use that. I can’t quite see what would be better by making the gumball more complicated.

Meantime, maybe some aliases for drag strength might help

-_Dragstrength 50 _Enter
-_Dragstrength 25 _Enter
-_Dragstrength 100 _Enter

-Pascal

[PodoTools (Erik Hondebrink)]

Thanks for the tip about the aliases, but that does not give me the adjustable rotation arm with an end that I can pick anywhere I want (like in _Rotate), before anything rotates.
So I will keep switching between Gumball and _Rotate.
I hope in the future Gumball gets the option of having such an adjustable rotation arm, but I understand that it will complicate things unnecessarily when there is not enough need for this.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

In a better World, one could simply hold the mouse pointer over the rotation arc of the Gumball for 2-3 seconds to show or hide the extra handle for precise rotation. No need to press any icon or run an additional command to do that.

In fact, some peograms already allow such a precise secondary functionality. For example, one viseos on YouTube by holding the mouse pointer on the time bar. Or holding the finger over a video thumbnail in the gallery of some phone brands such like “Samsung”. They both bring an extra presice time bar (sort of “Drag strength” in Rhino).