Unified VA Styles dialog

Hello!
I’d like to propose a central, non-modal, dockable dialog/property panel for all Visual Arq related settings and properties.
Similar to that project browser and properties panel on the left side in Autodesk Revit.
I find it quite uncomfortable to have all the style dialogs on different, modal windows. I’d prefer one central hub for all of it.

Anyway, VA is a great, reliable tool!
Thanks!
Best regards
Eugen

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Hi @Eugen,
The current modal VisualARQ dialogs are those for editing the object styles, those when inserting new objects, and the VisualARQ object properties dialog that has the same options than the VisualARQ Properties section (in the Rhino Properties Panel).

Would you like all them were non-modal or just one of them specifically, like the styles dialog as you mention?

Hi Francesc! Thanks for the reply!

Basically, modal dialogs are a thing to avoid in modern user interfaces. Is there any good technical reason why you chose to make any of the styles dialogs modal?

Besides that, wouldn’t it be better to have an all-in-one dialog instead of 20 different ones at different menu locations?
In fact, all of the dialogs look the same anyway, so why not unify them? Here’s a little mockup:

Thanks!
Best regards
Eugen

Hi Eugen,

That’s interesting. When we decided to have modal dialogs (long time ago) it was for performance purposes (we didn’t want that objects update in the model after every change in the styles dialog, which would slow down the workflow). In Revit for example you can only edit the families through modal dialogs too, (the dockable project browser only displays the information of families but you cannot edit them from there.)

In any case, we will study this suggestion for future releases.

We will also consider the option to unify the styles dialog for all objects.

Just a tip that might be useful. If you want to edit the styles of existing VisualARQ objects in the model, select them and run the vaStyleProperties command. You will be able to edit the selected object styles from one single dialog,… modal though.

Thanks!

Hi!
Non-modal dialogs often have an “Apply” button, if realtime update would slow down the workflow. In this case, this would be necessary I guess.
Thanks for the tip!
Best regards
Eugen