V6 User Interface

UI redesign is not a high priority for Rhino 6. There will be some small changes but nothing major.

What are the small changes you have in mind?

I’d say make all tools more visual. Like sweep2 and networksurf. Mac is on the right track.
That way users will see the options more clarely, and more likely explore them.

I’m really not sure what radical changes you are talking about.

From the what I can see at a quick glace at the websites and UI tutorial videos, there isn’t any radically different UI in Spaceclaim. You really can’t compare Autodesk360 as this is just a collaboration platform and a viewer. Obviously this UI will look cleaner.

Spaceclaim UI looks like Revit so I will try to report my experience with that UI. The interactive highlight of editable objects is nice at first. But all the blinking will get annoying and dramatically slows everything down once you created a few more objects than your average tutorial. For the interactive and “intelligent” rulers: I found the intelligence to generally decide against the reference, I wanted to use. So I ended up, manually drawing dimensions, which is no improvement over the old way.
Last but not least, I have absolutely no idea how all the nice extending should work if you allow more than straight lines and arcs.

UI support for high-res screens is something I’d like to see in V6 - buttons with up to 1024x1024 pixels for example(this is what Apple does for Retina displays). In V5 this the maximum is, I think, 32x32, which is very small on, e.g., a 4K display.

There are more than 6,000 open issues of all types. Many require minor UI changes. We will get to as many as we can for each new release. Only a few are UI only, but the very high res display issue is one example that @stevebaer has started to look at for Rhino 6.

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I have already done quite a bit of work with respect to high DPI settings in V6.
http://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-25163
http://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-25263

If there are other high DPI issues that need addressing, I would like to know about them. Thanks!

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Hi, I agree that a some UI change can help a lot to speed up modeling processes, I`ll find very helpful if you insert some of the Mac version triggers as hot corners to activate a command. Also I find this marking menus for v3, very interesting but it doesn´t work any more. I think that the UI its an essential part of the Rhino ADN and change in could not be very good, but adding some extra triggers, marking menus or the possibility to change from different interface States, depending on the phase or activity your doing, for example if your drafting, your interface could be only Preferences, Layers and Dimension tools, but if you want to go back to the normal UI you can access it trough a short cut, a trigger or a marking menu. I don´t know if there could be any patient issues with the marking menus.
I also think that David Rutten Grasshopper Space Bar Menu it´s great, iI think that could be a way to start.

This is the marking menus that I find
http://www.rhino3d.e-cnc.com/pie/pie.htm

Great work for the Rhino Team.
Cheers
#Jamagax

This is the site I find

+1 for pie menus!

I think Autodesk’s implementation is a good example how these menus can speed up workflow.

Cheers, Norbert

Willem - this is very nicely put, and a great overview of the problem.

The UI as it exists is built for rhino V2, which is as you say, a much leaner program.
Since then, more and more commands and features have been stuffed into this package, and now going into v6 they are spilling out all over the place.

It’s very difficult to find all the commands and options for many features, they are not consistently laid out, many options are, as you say, "hiding in crevices"
and many features are overly complicated or poorly implemented - layouts being one, the block manager being another.

However the biggest problem is that people at mcneel don’t seem to think there is a problem…

That it’s still one of the easiest of these kind of program’s to use is because its core stuff is great.
However, increasingly all the tacked on clutter threatens to overwhelm the whole - I think there needs to be some serious housekeeping done…and I’m disappointed that its not going to be done for V6.

cheers
rabbit

We think it is a big problem, just not the biggest one out of about 6,000 on the list.

I understand that you are disappointed but you would be more disappointed if we told you we were going to get to a UI overhaul for Rhino 6 and didn’t. We have to be realistic and honest with you and ourselves.

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I recommend planning the overhaul now so all changes/new tools for V6 are easily adapted to the future UI.

And keep in mind that nobody wants a complete overhaul, Microsoft tried that with Windows 8 and we all know how the pro and long term users reacted to that. So I think it is mainly a matter of organizing stuff, in a more logical way, and that should always be an ongoing process in every expanding project. And updating old tools so they act in the same way as the new tools.

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So where would you start?

I would start with all surface generating tools since Rhino is mainly known as a Surface Modeler.
That makes it easy to communicate to existing customers.

So I would make all options visually available in them, like they are for NetworkSurface.
And make preview default for all those tools.

If you wonder how I would solve a specific tool then ask, and I’ll see if I can cook up a photoshop “proto”.

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I agree that this is a good thing to do, but it seems like this is the ‘easy’ area. What about dealing with the mountain of commands/buttons that appeared to start this thread? I thought this was what the general complaint was; we throw a zillion user interface widgets at you which can be overwhelming, especially for someone starting with Rhino.

Yes, that is the easy part, since Bob clearly indicated that there will be no owerhaul for V6. So I saw no reason for digging into the intricate part of a modern UI. So basically what I say is: If you don’t have time to a major owerhaul then at least take time for a minor one, that will benefit many for the years to come.

And of course, if you want to discuss a full rework then I am happy to do so.

Just to be clear, we are already making minor adjustments:

  • The options dialog is resizable
  • The toolbar buttons and tabs display at corrected sizes under high DPI settings,
  • The material editor is getting an overhaul
  • preview button has been removed from the sweep1 and sweep2 dialogs
  • The two viewport properties dialogs have been consolidated into a single panel
  • Panel tabs can show just icons
  • CurvatureGraph controls have been cleaned up
  • Real time preview added to the smooth dialog

I’m sure there are plenty others that I missed and there will be plenty more minor tweaks to come.

@Holo, this wasn’t meant to ‘diss’ your comments, be defensive, or offensive. I just wanted to point out that minor UI tweaks are constantly being made in Serengeti. A major UI overhaul is not something we plan on implementing in the near future.

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The sun, ground plane, lights, etc etc etc have been consolidated into a single “Rendering” panel.

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My feedback from trainees is as follows: Those new to Rhino find that the interface looks a little clunky and old fashioned but once they’ve spent a couple of days with the software they actually find it’s a pretty productive interface. I haven’t come across many more experienced Rhino users who perceive the interface to be a problem.

Perhaps more of a problem to users is the interface inconsistencies. One thing that bugs me big time is tool tips, menus and command names being inconsistent. Examples would be SetPt which is now Set XYZ Coordinates on the Menu and Tooltip but Set Points on the preview button - and of course it still runs the SetPt command. Geodesic Curve / Short Path is another one - but there are quite a few. It’s difficult for the new user and the trainer - seriously if there was one interface issue I was asked about more than anything it would probably be this.

There are many cases where I think bringing options out of the command line and onto a preview palette would make sense - like Jorgen is saying citing the Network Srf example. Any tool for curve or surface creation where the designer is ‘thinking’ and wants options - these are ideal candidates.

Finally one ‘selfish’ request. Why is the ‘shrink’ option not sticky in Split at Isocurve - and come to think of it why is the option needed at all - surely thats why you’d use the command rather than extracting an isocurve and trimming/splitting.

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I agree, don’t waste too much time on major UI changes for V6. The make2D of meshes alone is reason enough to start selling V6 upgrades to architects :wink:

And I would change the default gray to darker gray, it i a change, better in my opinion, and more modern, and makes V6 stand out from V5. (Not mine though :wink: )

And please add a color option for the white background of the ui panels and the command line.

-Jørgen

It looks like there are 92 enhancements so far.

http://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issues/RH?q=tag%3A+{UI+Change}