First of all congratulations on the SubD tools, fantastic, Rhino 7 will be a really HUGE leap forward!
I have the latest WIP and have been experimenting with it in the past two days the SubD toolset
Some thoughts and suggestions on what might be improved in my opinon:
A“Select SubD control points” button is necessary, so that, for example you can select SubD control points in a shaded viewport with a normal selection window without displacing the entire objet
A “Select SubD Edge” button is necessary to avoid the need to subselect with CTR+Shift.
A “Select SubD face” button is necessary to avoid the need to subselect with CTR+Shift.
Suggestion 3) would make the “Delete SubD Face” button irrelevant and to be eliminated (just delete a face or faces with the Del button on the computer’s keyboard)
A Thicken command would be great
A button for the command “_SUbDDisplayToggle” is badly needed
The “append to SubD” and “single SubD face “ buttons seem confusing and redundant (a bug is that both point to the same help when F1 is clicked)-> suggestion: Just one “append SubD face” button: left click append just one face, right click append multiple faces
7.1) When in box mode, during the append face operation, the face should be previewed in box mode and not smooth mode.
To separate them from the rest, maybe the SubD tool buttons not blue (color selectable by user maybe ?)
I thought _subDDisplayToggle defaulted to the Home key.
Agree very much about item 7 on your list. I stopped using Append because it slowed down my machine when I used it on large SubD surfaces.
The Single SubD face command should toggle it’s view mode along with everything else. And all it should take to create a single subD face that joins up to whatever it’s near is to create it using vertex snap. There should be an append? yes/no option, so a user can decide to join the new face automatically upon exiting the command, or to join later using _Join.
This, by the way, would not be redundant to the Fill SubD hole command because single face allows for partially filling a hole and for drawing multi-faced SubDs using guide points and guide lines.
Thanks this is filed as RH-54247 and I added your vote to the request. In the meantime, you can use Selection Filters using Sub-Object controls. It’s not as smooth or easy as what you’re suggesting of course.
I see your point but also think it’s good to have the icon in the SubD toolbar.
OffsetSubD will do that if the Solid option is used. If you don’t see the icon on your SubD toolbar, run ToolbarReset and restart.
Tab will do this.
The Append SubD icon is really just a macro of 3DFace. I have filed a request (RH-56619) that the settings be sticky so you don’t have to pick multiple faces or append each time. In the meantime, it would be possible to make macros to hook up two uses on one button.
I don’t think it was ever configurable in the Keyboard settings unless I’m mistaken. We used it after user requests that this would be similar to their other workflows. My understanding is that it will stay as is, it could have also been an Fkey for instance but Tab was more universally desired and I think it’s better for cross platform use.
Do you mean like one key runs a command without having to press Enter? I don’t recall that being discussed, sounds dangerous
Single key commands have been mentioned as part of discussions about SubD because multiple competitors use them for subD. Specifically it’s been brought up around toggling sub object selection: Clayoo uses single hotkeys to toggle between object, face, edge and vertex selection. If I recall correctly, tsplines and maybe blender did too.
A hotkey toggle on-off command is part of these implementations. Obviously necessary for rhino, where typed command are a key part of the program.
Also, if hotkeys, even with an on/off toggle, are deemed too risky, could we still maybe get a few more keys available for shortcuts in v7? Like, is there any reason not to allow tilde, period, comma, and semicolon to be used with ctl, alt and shift?
In trying to speed up my drawing, I’ve started to run out of shortcuts. Partly because I’m using a lot of them, and partly because for mnemonic purposes I try to have them attached to letters that make sense in some way - “S” for split and sweep and sweep2, for example. Or for “cap” I use ctl K because C was taken.
Adding a whole new object type with SubD means I’ll be adding more shortcuts. And there’s only so much I can put into a middle mouse menu before it’s too dense to see it all.
I agree with 7. above. Append is pretty tricky. I usually like to use a black or very dark background and when using _appendface, since it always switches the subD to black wireframe I can’t see anything. I’m sure there is a way to change the color of this wireframe, but I haven’t found it and am using a grey background as a work around. But, in any case, the interaction of append needs some help in how it works. Maybe the subD should display as ghosted, with the control volume overlaid so you can see where you are, and maybe wires shouldn’t be moving in realtime so as not to be as confusing? Just a thought. I forget how TSpines does this, but it seemed less jumpy to me.
Just replying to #6. Isn’t the TAB key the quick key for this? Maybe that come out in a newer build from your post?
Really enjoying SubD otherwise!
I added your comments to an open report related to this… RH-55749. I have personally found an orange tinted ghosted display mode useful when reverse engineering. Attached is my display mode ‘RevEng’ if you’d like to try it. You can use SetObjectDisplayMode to apply the mode to just the SubD. Append will still set the SubD to wireframe so that needs to be addressed still in the above item but it’s still useful for moving control points of the SubD. RevEng.ini (12.9 KB)
I have the same problem with the black wireframe preview in _Append.
I use a black background, so the wireframe is completely invisible.
Simple fix: the preview wireframe shouldn’t be black. It should be the “feedback” color set in the appearance options. Default for that color is black. Because I use a black background, I set it to yellow in Rhino 6, so my gumball handles don’t disappear when I mouseover them.
Right now, in the WIP, my only available workaround is to switch to rendered view or my own customized version of technical view.
