Tabs in RhinoWIP

You might have discovered that macOS Sierra (10.12) has this nice new tab feature. I use tabs a lot - in the browser, in Terminal, in Xcode - and now in Rhino. With the latest RhinoWIP, we’ve made some changes to the behavior of tabs, and we’d like you to test them out.

Defaults
The default tab behavior of macOS is to open new tabs only when you are in a full-screened application. Rhino respects your macOS System Preferences. If Rhino is not full-screened, you can navigate to Window > Merge All Windows and Rhino will gather up child windows - like Layouts and the Material Editor - into a single window with tabs. Notice that - if you have multiple models open - Rhino will gather each into their own window with tabs.

Personally, I like tabs all the time. In macOS, navigate to System Preferences > Dock > Prefer tabs when opening documents and set it to Always.

Now - when you open a child window like Layouts or the Material Editor - it will automatically get a new tab.

Shortcuts
I also use keyboard shortcuts when I can…and I switch tabs a lot.

The official macOS default shortcut combo for tab switching is
controlshifttab and controltab

If you are like me, you have
shift[ and shift]
hard-wired into your muscle memory.

Luckily, you can set up whatever you like in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts

I Voted For Tabs!
With the above tweaks to settings, I can get tabs working just like I want in Rhino: when I open Layouts and the Material Editor, I get a new tab and I can switch between them with my favorite keyboard shortcuts…

Please let us know what you think.

7 Likes

this is great :slight_smile: , and I didn’t have to do add new keyboard shortcuts in preferences, will make things much smoother when working between a model and a layout :slight_smile: , is it possible to also open a another model as a new tab ?

well i think the following, and i hope nobody minds thats i am getting a bit critical here, that place is crucial and does not need to be waisted:

the reason i hate tabs is because they take a substantial amount of space away, seen as in Nr. 3 on the diagram which i made around a quick screenshot from Daniels movie --> only 2 tabs are open containing only 2 short words or lines still they cover the whole width of the screen.

talking about wasting area now generally i also find that Nr. 1 in the diagram could be eradicated completely, not only Rhino has this problem but many other applications as well take it for granted that this should be an acceptable loss of space which usually contains only one tiny little title but using a whole bar length for this. there are many applications which have done this aside, not only in full screen. others even have reintroduced this mind boggling waist again like it would be needed.

yes sure that can be avoided in rhino by going to full screen, just full screen has this terrible issue as some may be bothered with also, that its not possible to quickly navigate between several applications without those annoying and delaying blend over animations which you just cant switch off not matter how deep as you search with no terminal trick nothing, apple got really bad in that matter.

ok back to the topic, and now more Rhino specific, Nr. 2 has at least a few words and yes you can switch this off but in the current state, its wenn shown still quite a waist of area.

Nr. 4 i did not manage to hide this, at least for me and maybe for others, completely obsolete feature. i mean for clicking on some views having 4-5 words displayed and again using the whole width of the screen. i am sure many use it… but at least let me switch it away.

Nr. 5 deals with a similar issue here for a few coordinates and a history which could be nicely integrated to the sidebar again the whole width of the screen is waisted.

now if you take all those together and see what i am talking about we soon have nothing to work on anymore… sure those with 30 inch screens can laugh, but thats still no reason not to use all given space even though i can understand the idea that less is more but not like that…,

which brings me back to the tabs. i rather have two full sized windows without loss of area behind each other which i switch with “cmd >” for window switch or the equivalent for your language, than having those monsters block my screen.

ranting out, pls think about it.

if you’re using macOS Sierra, you can do this (in any application now).

in the View menu, you’ll have ‘Show tab bar’… if that’s on and you open a new model (or previously saved model), it will open in a new tab.

also, the tab bar has a plus sign on it so you can push that and a new model opens in a new tab… or, if you drag&drop a .3dm from finder into the rhino window, this file will open in a new tab.

thats not happening for me ?? no + button in the tab bar, and if I open a new or saved model it opens in a new window (yes running Sierra)

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Can you send a screen shot. I have Sierra here at work. Works for me.

I had something weird happening a few weeks ago and it went away with a Rhino restart.

I get tabs if i want layouts, and material editor, but no + button, and if I open a new model it opens in a new window

What happens if you have 2 Rhino windows open and you “Merge All Windows” ?

Mine is greyed out because i have tabs active.

Also System preferences / Dock is set like @dan suggests in the first post …

merge all windows is greyed out too ???

Do you have 2 Rhino windows open?

yes, 2 different models

I don’t know. Seems like either a Rhino restart or an OS restart?

Well i guess we wait and see if more people cannot use this feature.

My apologies, i was using Rhino 5 not WIP. I see that now with the WIP.

Hi @dan, even with Sys Prefs / Dock set. No tabs here either. No OS restart, but I did close Rhino5.2 and opened a fresh WIP.

«Randy

yep, just checked the WIP and for whatever reasons, the macOS tab features aren’t working as i described previously in this thread… they do work in the regular rhino for mac.

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The tabs are for child windows only and multiple docs will not be collected in tabs. If you got that to work regardless, I’d like to know how.

it’s a system wide feature in macOS Sierra and not application/developer specific.
if you have sierra installed, the official Rhino for Mac version will allow you to collect multiple docs in tabs as being described in this thread.
it’s no longer working in conjunction with the latest WIP however.

Open regular rhino for mac, 2 separate main windows in Sierra. Then got to Window in the menu and then select merge all windows. I have been doing this for about 2 weeks, reg & WIP Rhino for Mac.

I only tried this in the WIP after coming across this topic, have just tried it in the regular version, it seems to work the opposite way to the WIP, I can have 2 models open in tabs, but if i try layouts it pops a separate window open ??

Is this the new workflow. No main windows in tabs, but Layouts & Material Editor would be in tabs. I hope these are options because I prefer main windows tabs and if I decide to use material editor or Layouts I can put them on my 2nd monitor.

well, the tab functionality in layout etc have been implemented by mcneel developers and it’s only available in the latest WIP…
tabbing the whole documents is an apple feature and it’s been available since Sierra.

it appears that the two functionalities are interfering with each other somehow.