1.Dot Grid or generally a customisable grid
dot grids are probably the oldest grid flavour since the inventions of CAD which all prominent software packages have, like:
AutoCAD, Solidworks, Vectorworks, BricsCAD, FreeCAD, QCAD, LibreCAD, Adobe Illustrator, IntelliCAD, Inkscape, SmartDraw, Civil 3D and Revit to some part, Apples Freeform (not a CAD but rather prominent)
here a running tracker RH-32117@dan i saw that you created that list, any hope/chance for v9?
2.Custom grid colour per DisplayMode
this one has been requested quite a lot of times i have added my vote some weeks ago which went unnoticed then someone else added a vote 2 weeks later, so it is probably pretty hot. i found a tracker that is not public and i assume that a dot grid potentially could also go into this? so maybe these have to be merged idk.
@wim does this belong together? RH-10212 + RH-32117
Good question. Given that it was prioritized as “Future” quite some time ago, it might be due for another look. The display pipeline situation may have changed in ways that make this more feasible. I can’t answer that question, but I suspect @jeff could. That said, our priorities for Rhino 9 are fairly constrained at the moment and there’s a significant lift for the Direct3D work going on, so I would not hold my breathe.
I wrote a simple example command a while back experimenting with this idea… I’ll make it visible through a test command in the next build-of-the-day… we can discuss where and what settings exist at later date…assuming it does what you want it to do.
i am thrilled, but was your message aimed at Dan? if so, would we normal earthlings get a chance to try it out soon either and get the secret password to that command?
The latest build has a test command “TestPointGrid” that basically turns the grid into a series of pointclouds and draws them in the same manner that the grid is drawn.
Note: There are no other settings specific to this (yet), like point sizes… And the command acts on a per-viewport basis, and is not remembered across file sessions (you need to re-run the command every time you load a new file)… but remember, this is just a test command atm.
so i just downloaded the new release and that command exists now, but it simply obliterates the grid, using the command once again does not change anything, 4 view does not help either only a restart
There was a delay in the release, and when things finally went out, the Mac version didn’t get the updates… I can send you a link to the version that has the changes.
If you’re on Windows, then I’m currently at a loss as to why it’s not working.
only the major intersections are visible in my set up (4k emulated to 2560 x 1707) which might also be a good thing, and here i think if that could be an option to add the option to snap only to major either, currently it snaps to the invisible minor. specifically for this mode i think having an option to snap to major and only display the major would be indeed very helpful since its mostly about shaping something up quickly having obtrusive lines and dots out of way.
exposing the dot size parameter and/or custom colours is pretty crucial. colours set for a regular grid might not work the same for dot grid, i have here very subtle colours for the grid which become almost invisible with dot grid.
having the grid colours, dot size and style per display mode would be tremendous
Display mode setting “Show grid behind all objects” is currently ignored
maybe further steps
different grid shapes might be interesting for some like Polar/Radial Grids
as @Czaja pointed out an infinite grid might be interesting, is that at all feasible in Rhino? i know that bigger grids can bring down performance (i have noticed that often at least). some applications with infinity grids use a gradient towards the end of the viewport in perspective which might help keeping the performance in check. in c4d for instance in an ortho view it just keeps scrolling out and majors become minors automatically, in perspective mode the grid simply vanishes at some point if you zoom out very far which might be linked to the camera clipping settings.
You need to change your minor gridline color so that it’s not so close to your background color…or change your background color… A point grid removes thousands of pixels and replaces it with a few… so “your setup” is probably going to have to change to accommodate this.
Also…
The command is simply a proof of concept…it is not integrated into the Grid settings for viewport or display modes…The only settings it pays attention to are the Grid Configuration settings and the Grid Colors… everything else is hard-coded into the command.
Other than point sizes (right now there are 3: Major, Minor, Axes), what other settings would you like to control?
Looks good @jeff ! I actually implemented this also using a point cloud approach for a grid option in a plugin I’m creating for Rhino but I was not able to set the PointStyle to anything other than square.
Every other option simply did not work. Did you do something special here to have the dots show up as circles/dots?
Here was the bug/post about it:
If point cloud style can be set to dot now and that’s fixed, that would be amazing!
ok now i see what is going on, because i have a 4k which is emulated, the pixel density is too high, that means that i can’t actually see the minor at all when i look at the screen in Rhino, the subtle colour i use indeed makes the minor grid points practically invisible and when i zoom in they stay invisible. only when i use an image processing tool and zoom in then the dots become visible.
yes it works when i use stronger colours but then i have to change the grid colour each time i toggle since i need the subtle colours for the regular grid where they work well for me.
yes sure, i dont want to be overly demanding.. what might be imminent as a next step would probably be to store the alternative colours and automatically change these when the testcommand is activated. if you could pack dot size parameters into an ui it might be interesting to play with either, they are after all a little tender which i honestly like but just as a reference here an image of how i see it, the width of the tool panel is 3.7 cm that you see how tender they are here.
@jeff may i also ask how the grid is actually built generally? is it actual geometry, lines? if i remember that correct then curves now also are some sort of triangles since v6 and since bigger grids can cause performance drops, maybe it makes sense to use different entities entirely. i am just thinking out loud but could voxels be an interesting contender for this? @stevebaer do you have any insight if that would be helpful?
just theoretically, i remember we talked a few years back about how nurbs could theoretically be directly processed and displayed skipping the meshing (if i remember the correct), the same could work for curves and voxels, if you skip the triangulation step at the end altogether all the new stuff like Metal and the newer Direct3D’s could probably perform all the necessary rendering for voxels on the GPU with ease which not only might be very flexible with the geometry processing and parameters of generating a grid but also very fast. i mean it could be at least something to think about. a small step? just an idea.
