I’m interested in the extensive usage of VA GH Styles. One of the reasons is because I hate when Grasshopper Canvas is overloaded with the components for multiple unrelated objects… tabbing between different GH files is also not ideal, because only one file can be previewed at one time (e.g. you don’t see Custom Preview from one GH file if you switch to another).
In my opinion, some things during creating, testing, and using GH Styles need to be streamlined.
Nonetheless, adding “intelligence” to objects is cool!
There are some usability problems/inconveniences I mentioned in other threads.
list
(to edit and add links later)
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multiple objects per input slot
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lock objects from recomputing during multiple input changes
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Sub-panel annoyance
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Slow placing and moving
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Remove disablet components from the input/output during GH Styles wizard
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Alphabetical or other ways of sorting of the Inputs in the Panel
Here, I wanted to highlight that reusing GH Styles and changing their inputs can be a real struggle.
Troubleshooting GH Styles can be very monotonous and even frustrating at times. Right now there is a too-long path, too many clicking to be made to edit GH Style Definition and check if it’s working. Especially painful if very often the outcome is not as I expected it to be.
- If I don’t have the GH definition opened already, this is how the whole process of reloading looks.
Unreal Engine is a very feature-rich program but accessing some logic of this Third Person Character is very fast and easy. It must be easily accessible because of how many quick tests user is doing during game-making.
- How changing inputs for this particular definition look in grasshopper, pretty straightforward and quick. This shows the ease of testing stuff in different conditions*
- Very frustrating when placing a new VA Object and something goes wrong during changing inputs. Object disappears.
- Moving GH styles is an odd process… - I will touch on it in a separate topic (about Linking and Embedding inputs)
Copying VA GH Styles Objects from place to place is awkward. Fact that they update output after every input change doesn’t help in this case.
Please consider how much easier it would be if all those curve inputs would be embedded. I could just simply move/copy VA Object wherever I want, all inputs would be working correctly and I could just edit them on the new copy.
GH Style with specified in definition insertion point
GH Style without specified in definition insertion point
- Force some objects to auto-update
It would be very helpful in many cases. I read on the VA website, that objects do not update automatically because it can be computationally heavy and I understand that, but there should be some toggle for specific objects to force „auto-update” on them.
I had some experiments using the „Geometry Pipeline” component inside VA GH Style and it was interesting. The slab I made could „listen” if there is some geometry (with e.g. specified user text or other selection rules) for which it needs to prepare a hole or automatically merge it in itself. But of course, I had to use Update manually.
Playing with a lot of windows and “Linked” Curve Input which affects them is a good example where an auto-update would be handy.
Maybe Grasshopper files that are making VA GH Styles could also be linked, embedded, linked and embedded.
You know when it really hurts?
When in some cases your VA GH Style doesn’t work as expected, and you got a bunch of inputs.
You got to go back to Grasshopper to fix it but to do that you need to set all the input values the same as they were in the problematic VA Object.
Ideally, I would want just to quickly jump from VA Object to the GH definition where I got the same input values and debug my definition.
So if given GH Definition is used in many VA Objects, what we (I) may need are input components that are resembling parameters of the edited instance in every jump from VA Object → Underlying GH definition.
I hope that makes sense… Please tell me if somewhere I wasn’t clear enough or talked nonsense.
