What are your favorite aliases, macros, or UI tweaks in Rhino that make your life easier, especially when teaching new students or students who are coming from other software?
Let’s share small tweaks that make a big difference.
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From the top of my head:
- Switch to 1 view instead of 4 views
- Turn on cursor tooltip for showing the distance
- Turn on nudge for arrow keys
- Turn on gumball
- Put the selection filter somewhere available at hand
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Show what the PLANAR button does.
Many users get lost just because they struggle having flat section
Second GUMBALL ON
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Stay focus on their design, by using ISOLATE and the WINDOWS LAYOUT, to have limited panel to the exercice tabs, it helps me to avoid the student to be lost with to much icons on screen, and stay focus on the tools he had to learn… step by step it will be more complex.
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Nice but how do you twaek students computer?
I find very important to encourage remapping some commands on the F keys, as, by default, they come with not so useful commands:
These are some of those I recommend to students, so that they can shadow me when I explain:
• F1 Isolate (‘_Isolate)
• F3 Unisolate (‘_Unisolate)
• F4 sub-objects toggle (NoEcho '-SelectionFilter _subobjects _toggle _enter)
• F6 project toggle (’_ProjectOsnap _toggle)
• F7 planar toggle (‘_Planar)
• F8 lockswap (’_lockswap)
Especially, project & planar toggles one next to each other are very useful!
and these basic for getting into a 1view modeling style (like sketch-up)
CTRL+SHIFT+S: '_Zoom _Selected (for zooming on selection)
CTRL+SHIFT+T: '_SetView _World _Top (topview)
CTRL+SHIFT+F: '_SetView _World _Front (Frontview)
CTRL+SHIFT+R: '_SetView _World _Right (Rightview)
Etc etc…
For UI, I mostly tend to get rid of the sidebars when not needed with these shortcuts:
CTRL+ALT+1: _NoEcho '_ToggleLeftSidebar
CTRL+ALT+2: _NoEcho '_ToggleRightSidebar
I noticed some students coming from 2D software tend to ask for guides, so these aliases
AG: '_AddGuide
RG: '_RemoveGuide
For those like me who came from a SketchUp workflow, based on groups/components:
G: '_group
B: '_block
ATG: '_AddToGroup
RFG: '_RemoveFromGroup
I found this very useful when you have many layers in your file, mostly inherited from some Municipality CAD drawings. after selecting an object in your file:
HGHG: '_HighlightObjectLayers
Other:
• SETD: '_SetDimensionLayer is very useful too to keep things organized
• Nudging is important for some people I found out.
• I also find it very useful to teach two hidden snaps, between and percent & add them to aliases, but I let any student to set theirs’s.
• CTRL+B: _NoEcho _Properties
(about this alias: does anybody know how to set this alias in order to make the Properties: Object panel specifically to pop out? )
I am very curious on other teacher’s methodologies/considerations!
Bie
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- english interface for all - also for german speaking students
- mac users - place 3 containers to the right (command history, properties, layers)
- pc users - make commandline 3 lines high, 2 containers to the right (properties, layers)
- commandline usage / input for all commands that are not available with one click in the standard UI layout. ( this is also handy for documentation / remote teaching / remote support)
- force them to have the left hand on the keyboard and not under the table in their pocket
- settings
- drag selected object only
- rotate relative to view for product design
- automatics points on → False / Off
- use a standard layer set-up and do all on / off s with the layers, i also do this to have easier transfer to implicit modelling software
- “guides” for a custom helpers - mostly rectangles and lines
- “constr” for curves that are construct dependancies
- “crvs” only curves that are used to create surfaces (similar to a sketch)
- “srf” for initial surfaces
- “Rx” for fillet related stuff… R8 for fillet with Radius 8
- “Hairdryer” the final object with its name
- … much more
@carla.sologuren
what i really would love to see is a “vanilla rhino best practice” … in this forum the users have so many special wishes, macros, ui settings - and it s nice that the developers try to suit them - but there should be a best practice recommendation. I would be in to participate in develop those.
kind regards - tom
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Tab for locking direction and Alt to drag-select within a set of objects were the two big ones when I was starting out.
The selection menu can be slow/frustrating to use so using sellast & selprev to select the objects you’re working on instead makes everything go a lot smoother.
Shift+Crtl to select sub-objects
Zoom selected to re-orientate/re-focus the viewport
Home/End keys to go back/forwards through your viewport movements (useful for pasting objects that end up somewhere random)
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@skysurfer I use the manager of layout toolbars, so I save some UI , save and place them in a shared directory and the student load the UI from the folder… very easy to manage
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does this work for mac and windows ?
@carla.sologuren
you might want to check this topic as well:
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First things I ask users to do:
- Middle Mouse Button = Popup this Toolbar:
default.Object Snap - Click and drag =
Drag selected objects onlyturned on- Control point drag threshold: 25 pixels
- Object drag threshold: 25 pixels
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That would be great @Tom_P. I’m trying to find some common ground with this.
Interesting observation since I’m going back to solidworks recently
Rhino is much more difficult i find
what aspect are you referring to ?
I would say learning but also what the Software can do
I feel like I’m falling behind sometimes and that I only know 30-40% of Rhino
Rhino is getting more complex
I like the word “application” with describes (at least in german “Anwendung”) a certain layer of abstraction / interface above the technology.
I think Rhino is not major when it comes to question, wether technology is accessible easily. - i always wished there where at least 2 categories of commands:
(1) easy access
(1 -a) i once wrote about “meta-commands” (from a teachers perspektive) - why do we need 10 different extrudeXXX commands, why do we have glue, merge, weld, stitch, … Those commands should abstract the different object types.
(1-b) i always wanted command suggestions that react on the pre-selection. so if you select curves first and start type boolean, curveBoolean should be the only valid suggestions, as BooleanDifference does not work on curves.
I think Solidworks or others put a huge amount into this fine-tuning.
its not only implicit modelling, its also implicit commands: the user tells what he wants, the command translates to the correct technology / algorithm in the back.
(2) deep tec
for all the nerds and people that dive deeper into the technology.
all the current rhino commands try to expose as much as possible of the underlaying technology - this makes rhino really powerful - but requires a huge amount of technical understanding, many commands / options / …
but I think this topic was not about wishes, but about established tips and tricks …
i have one:
Do not post important wishes/bugs/questions at Friday Afternoon / Evening CET/MET in this forum - as many hobby users will post on the weekend and get more attention on Monday then the stuff from your classroom on Friday.
(which is really sad, as I teach a lot on Fridays).
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Agreed i got the same impression
We can also see this as an observation to give the perspective to new users
I would say that the commands being explicit is actually a benefit, getting from A to B in Rhino can be thought of as a language exercise. Maybe something to try with your students is pair them up so one person operates Rhino and the other directs them verbally to draw something. Simplifying or grouping the commands wouldn’t make the process simpler - you still need to specify (even to yourself) what you want to do, and the commands seem logical with that, at least to me.
Well said
This is also quite important when you have a job that requires alot of communication or have alot of steps
Personally i use this method to understand things like CNC machines it’s easier to remember when you understand what you are doing rather than pressing buttons from memory
it’s sort of like a dialogue with yourself and also makes it understandable when explaining to others that don’t know the topic so much
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