Transfer custom V8 workspace to another computer

Helvetosaur · January 15, 2024, 6:34pm

…state of affairs today? So now that I have more or less (painfully) finished setting up my V8 workspace on one computer, what is the best way to transfer it to another? I have a modified default library and a custom .rui - and of course a custom window layout, but that is less important than getting all the toolbars correctly transferred over.

I guess I should add that the recent experience of saving a .rui and having it all go pear-shaped makes me wary - that is to say if I don’t save the .rui, when I transfer it to another computer will it be out of date? And if I do save it, then I will probably have to fix a bunch of stuff on both computers?

Question #2 - can one transfer all or part of a Windows Rhino workspace to Mac Rhino now?

Question #3 - in my V8 ‘settings’ folder under Scheme_Default I see this:

The highlighted ones are from yesterday - the others seem to be from old tests I did awhile back. Can I safely delete those? For a settings transfer to another computer, should I copy over all the highlighted ones? There is also one file from yesterday in the ‘workspaces’ folder…

pascal · January 16, 2024, 4:11pm

Hi Mitch - I think I would start with exporting window layouts and import/restore these on the second machine. Any extrernal RUI files as well.
Scheme default should have these as far as I can tell

-Pascal

Helvetosaur · January 18, 2024, 4:11pm

Hi Pascal,

So here is the result of my attempt…

Note I’m going from a laptop with a 4K screen to a desktop with 2x 4K screens - but I run Rhino on one of those. They both have the same 3840 x 2160 resolution and the icon size is set to 24 on both, but the laptop is 15.4" at 225% scaling and the desktop screens are 27" at 150%. So the icons you see in the images below take up more relative space in the laptop window than they do in the desktop window, but that is a secondary point.

This is what the laptop looks like:

Left side is a modified default toolbar, top and bottom are custom toolbars that reside in an .rui. In the top and bottom toolbars there are a lot of custom flyouts (not shown flown out) that are either text or image+text.

First, I exported the current window layout from the laptop as an .rhw and also the custom .rui using the ExportRuiFile command. I also copied the Scheme_Default folder as well as the settings-Scheme__Default.xml and window_positions-Scheme__Default.xml files.

With Rhino closed, I replaced the original settings folders in the desktop with the ones copied from the laptop, and added the exported .rui to the UI folder. I then opened Rhino on the desktop and first restored the .rhw. That did not open the custom .rui though, so I got this:

It’s missing all the custom toolbars top and bottom of course, because they are in the .rui.

(That pesky RPC toolbar you see keeps coming back occasionally, don’t know how to get rid of it - the plug-in is disabled in Options. But that’s a minor detail)

So next, I went to Window>Toolbars and File>Open and opened the custom .rui.

That in fact populated my custom upper and lower toolbars, so I was hopeful. But the good news unfortunately did not last long… In most of of the custom flyouts (all located in the .rui) that are set to both images and text have lost their icons. And one or two the macros themselves have gone missing.

On top of that, three toolbars (upper right) that were specifically redone with new V8 vector icons on the laptop have their old fuzzy bitmap icons back again.

A good half day’s work to fix all that I think.

This all points back to the horrible mess that the macro libraries are still in, and the fact that saving an .rui is a currently very broken (including ExportRuiFile). I’m sure one of my “mistakes” early on was to import a V7 .rui and then try to use/fix some of those elements in V8. With 20/20 hindsight I would not recommend doing that to anyone currently, the only “safe” procedure is to recreate everything from scratch.