UV Indicators

Easy - U= Unthick and V = Very Thick. Where’s the problem??

-Pascal

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This is why I don’t use a 3D mouse. 25 years in 3D CAD, have tried the 3D mouse, but it’s just far too much of a tradeoff, my left hand is on shortcut keys and my right on the mouse.

What they should do is build a right hand mouse with a 3d space mouse built into it, best of both worlds. As it is, 3D space mouse is in 3rd place of importance, and so with two hands, no space mouse for me!

Back on topic, careful what you wish for, rather figure out a trick to tell me than to bloat up the software with infinite options in case the users don’t know what trick works well simply.

I’m thinking more like ‘you thick headed bast … “ therefore U=thick. And Verithin pencils, therefore V=thin. But maybe Verithin are a US only thing?

I can’t think of a single good reason not to do it that way. We can add an Advanced option so users can choose.

-Pascal

It’s funny that if I translate “Unthick” and “Very thick” to my mother language, the U and V should be replaced by “Н” and “M”, because their translation is “Недебел” and “Много дебел”, respectively. :smiley: Also, as I mentioned, I don’t use visible isocurves, because when they are present I can’t see the potential imperfections on the surfaces. The isocurves disrupt the visibility to the control points, as well.
Seriously, the lack of U and V letter markings next to the surface end is kind of confusing now and sometimes leads to using Undo and repeating certain commands.

this is what I use as a method … the directions u red and v green but the problem is to know the directions of u and v .for me I activate the control points and I click on a point to see in which direction the small lines are oriented. by this method I get around this problem. or change the orientation of the gamballe on the object. , if you click on a control point the red and green arrows point to the correct directions in my opinion it is crucial to have the direction markers for each selected surface. this will prevent us from looking for other commands that only break the workflow.

Obligatory VSR-related post of the day:

So easy. Why reinvent the wheel?
I remember that one of @pascal s scripts used to have similar u/v indicators.

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Yeah, I think the sprinkled arrows are OK, because you can be looking at a part of the surface and maintain your orientation, so to speak, but yes, it’s simple.

-Pascal

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I never had or used VSR, so I come from a point of view with different eyes. But yes, that so clearly would be much better. Even if I had to turn it on under the hood under 10 submenus just one time, were it to not be a default setting.

Compared to my SoftEditSrf example in the first post, this gives you so much more clarity. In that first example you are just totally in the dark without digging and finding out you need a display mode.

This shows automatically invoking any surface command under VSR.
So convenient.

The labels shown in your VSR screenshot are confusing. I prefer colorful (RGB) arrows.

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To avoid such a confusion like the one shown in the VSR screenshot, the U and V markings should be located at the middle of the surface edge. Also, without white background bubbles, because that’s too distracting. Simple letters and the default colour must be either black for both, or red and green, respectively (an option to set custom colour for those letters will make everybody happy). The black U and V markings are good for colour blind people who can’t recognise green and red easily.

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Well, my Space pilot has proper keys like Esc, Ctrl, Shift and Alt. It lacks the Tab key, though. But since there are 21 programmable buttons, I assigned the Tab key funktion to Function button #1, so I don’t need to move my left hand to the keyboard as long as I don’t need to enter some numeric value or to evoke a command via the command line. If your left hand is placed on the left side of the keyboard to reach the Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Tab and Esc keys, you anyway have to lift and move your hand to reach out most of the rest keys.

Not to mention that the 3d mouse is capable of manipulating the viewport even in situations where the focus of the regular mouse pointer is on a pop-up window! It’s especially useful while doing adjustments of the handles during the “Blend surface” command (one accidental press with the mouse while manipulating the camera with the Ctrl and Shift keys cancels the entire command, which happens to many Rhino users).
I can work on basically all tools with a pop-up window, the Properties panel, Rhino options, Layers etc, and still have a full control over the camera movement. :wink:

Also, when I activate the “Select by object name” command and some of the objects on the list is not visible in the viewport, or if I want to make a close-up examination of certain object(s) around the scene that are already selected from the parts list, I can freely go around with the 3d mouse while I use the regular mouse to pick different object names in the pop-up window.

Using the Ctrl and Shift keys to navigate the camera without a 3d mouse is limited to one movement at a time, too. With the 3d mouse I can simultaneously pan, rotate and zoom the view according to my liking. It has an option to lock only to one movement at a time, but most Rhino users prefer the full camera control; myself included.

My way of modeling involves a lot of camera rotation and point editing, so using a 3d mouse is a huge benefit for me.

But the biggest benefit for me of using a 3d mouse is the relief to my right hand. It allows me to use the regular mouse much less than before. Many times I spend a good amount of time examining the surface quality of the models, and so during those moments I even don’t have to touch my regular mouse. :slight_smile:

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And also to the left hand, from not switching between ctrl / shift to change the way you are manipulating the view. I feel lost without it, and thats only the small version with 2 buttons.

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Every few years I consider trying one again.

These days I’m lost in every program when it comes to orbitting the view, due to using too many different programs and they all have a different way of doing it. I regularly use Solidworks, Rhino, Blender, and Simplify3d, so often I orbit the wrong way out of confusion, good thing for zoom previous on a hotkey! I have it mapped to spacebar on Solidworks which is ideal, and now I set it to f4 in Rhino, lifesaver.

The 3dconnexion drivers allow to dial in all 6 axis in direction and speed independently and customised for different programs.
Same is true for the mapping of its buttons.
This works quite well and should allow you to standardise the 3D navigation between programs.
Just try the basic model it’s just around 100€/$ if I remember correctly.
Best money you’ll ever spend for a hardware accessory.

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The 3d CAD engineers and designers at every serious engineering or manufacturing company use 3d mouses for a reason. It’s a real time saver and could speed up the work significantly. The initial learning curve is quite short and for most people it only requires about one week of practice to get used with the manipulation of the viewport camera.

It’s a possibility, as I already considered that it could potentially mitigate that issue, but it’s not really a problem, just a slight annoyance, only takes a few seconds for my brain to get it right when switching programs.

I did try one a few years back at a job I had. I just didn’t like it because I am very hotkey oriented in my modeling, for speed, and having my left hand not on the keyboard slowed me down quite a bit. I found that I could about 99% as easily manipulate the view with the mouse, and coupled with using a zoom previous hotkey allows me to be as productive as I would be with a space mouse.

If the uvn icon is designed well, no labels are necessary because the shape of the icon makes it clear which arrow points to U, V or N direction.


uvn icon.3dm (359.4 KB)

I would definitely forget which shape represents which direction. :slight_smile: There is nothing more user-friendly than basic U and V letters. :slight_smile: No colours or arrow shapes could beat the simplicity of the letters.

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