Bug 1: In Rhino 8, it’s very difficult to select a text object in the viewport by clicking on it, unless it’s really close to the camera. Window selection, on the other hand, works fine.
It is super easy to select a text object in Rhino 7 by clicking on it.
Bug 2: While trying to edit a text object, I figured out that it’s impossible to do so, because the content is literally missing in the corresponding field of the Properties panel. Again, Rhino 7 works perfectly fine in this regard.
I’m seeing this working in 8.4 as expected
what version of rhino are you using?
unless I’m missing something?
I use Rhino 8 Evaluation (8.3.23345.6001, 2023-12-11).
Edit: I just updated it to the latest service release candidate, which is (8.3.23360.13001, 2023-12-26). The text is finally visible inside the Properties panel, however, inability to select the text in the viewport is still present. For example, I can’t select this text from close-up (only windows selection works). I can also select it from a long distance. On the previous version the bug appeared in the reverse way, which means that I was unable to select the text from a long distance, but close-up selection worked. Not sure why that behaviour flipped now in the new version.
Unable to select the text.3dm (44.9 KB)
Selection of your text in closeup works fine here…
Also from far away…
8.3.23360.13001, 2023-12-26
And in 8.3.23354.9001, 2023-12-20
As seen in the video, this particular bug is related to the “Dolly zoom” settings in a Perspective viewport. The issue activates when the value of “Dolly zoom” is below 130.
There is no issue in the orthogonal views, though.
P.S.: The 4K video is still being processed by YouTube, but should be visible in about a hour.
Hi Bobi,
I still cannot reproduce this. AFAIK the “dolly zoom value” is just the lens length. I’ve tried dolly zooming to all sorts of values, both by mouse “control”* in the viewport and by typing a value on the command line. I’ve gone from a lens length shorter than is possible with a physical 180 degree fisheye lens to a lens length that is so long you’d have to mount such a physical telephoto on concrete to get a steady image (and you’d probably still be defeated by heat haze). At no time have I been unable to select text.
There has to be something more at play on your system. Could you paste a screen shot of the properties panel for the perspective viewport at a point where you cannot select the text, so we can see all the positional and lens data?
Regards
Jeremy
* Dragging the mouse in the viewport is supposed to adjust the lens length in 5mm steps. I don’t see that: the increments can be thousands of mm or fractions of a mm and there is no numeric feedback while dragging, either at the tooltip, in the viewport properties, or on the command line.
Sure, here are two screen-shots where I see a difference:
I can’t select from here and any shorter distance. However, I can select again from extremely close distance:
I can select from here and any larger distance:
Thanks for the screenshots. Setting camera and target to match the one where you cannot select, I still can:
Could you update to the latest SRC? If that doesn’t fix it, could you try temporarily closing all the floating panels? (Grasping at straws here, but it is a difference between our systems.)
I updated Rhino 8 to Version 8 SR4 (8.4.23364.14001, 2023-12-30) and closed all floating windows, but that didn’t fixed the issue, hence I still can’t select the text when the camera is closer to it.
The interesting part is that when I build a plane on the same level as the text, the Selection menu appears each time upon clicking on the letters. This means that Rhino 8 detects the existence of the text geometry, as it should. However, once I hide the plane, I no longer can select the text at a certain distance.
Also, if I move the plane far below the text, this somehow fixes the issue and I can select the text from any distance. Looks like the issue is caused by the automatic point of rotation of my 3d mouse.
Odd. Do you have any filters on?
No, I don’t. But I think about turning off the 3d mouse driver to see if that will make any difference.
Edit: There is no difference when I turn off the 3d mouse driver an disconnect the 3d mouse from the USB port prior running Rhino 8.
I don’t have a 3d mouse currently connected to the laptop I’m using, so worth trying. When I get back to my desk I’ll try your file on a machine that does.
Hi Bobi,
I just tried your settings on my desktop, which has a 3d mouse attached, and I get the selection problem like you, whilst camera and target match your positions.
I find that if I then toggle the gumball button in the status bar, I can make the selection. If I deselect then I have to toggle again before I can make it again. It doesn’t matter if the gumball is on or off, a single toggle to the opposite state clears the blockage for one selection. It doesn’t matter what the gumball Align option is set to. It doesn’t matter if smooth or snappy dragging is selected.
Secondly, if I put a bounding box around the text, that completely removes the block so I can select the text by clicking on it without needing to toggle the gumball. Also, if I click on the bounding box then I get the selection option for bounding box or text. If I delete the bounding box then the original inability to click on the text to select it returns and I need to toggle again.
Hopefully that adds to the picture so someone from McNeel can take a look at this.
Regards
Jeremy
Wow, you did a wonderful job with figuring out the issue, at least on your machine. 
However, I still have that bug, no matter what’s the state of the Gumball.
I tried so many things and changed nearly all options in the Rhino Options panel one by one, in order to figure out what causes the bug, but seems like something else affects the selection.
to be clear, have you tried this with a standard 3 button mouse? That seems to be the only difference in our set ups and I cannot repro the issue here.
when you test with the 3 button mouse, please go to tools>options>mouse>reset defaults so we are comparing like to like.
these are my default mouse settings for reference
I did reset the Mouse settings, but the bug is still present in my version of Rhino 8 (8.4.23364.14001, 2023-12-30).
Not sure if my mouse is considered standard 3-button mouse, though. I use Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum, which has plenty of customizable buttons. I turned off the mouse driver to disable the customization on all buttons. However, the bug with inability to select the text remains.
ok… one last ask… any chance you have a 2nd computer you can try this on?
My gut feeling is we are looking at a specific hardware or system issue that is going to be very hard to track down… I have 3 machines here and I cannot replicate this behaviour on any of them. I really want to help squish this if it’s a bug but I’m having very little success replicating it so I can get it in front of our dev team-
can you post your systeminfo just to see if anything jumps out?
I have a laptop and tomorrow I will try Rhino 8 there, too.
