Hi @wim
In youtrack also you commented about misbehavior of this new option.
This ^ seems… sorry… useless.
Mikko said: “The cursor location in relation to the snap location indicates which direction the point gets projected.”
… this seems hard to exploit, hard to make intuitive and consistently use, to me.
Simon and jim probably wanted something simpler.
Something like: “Always project the point to the closest ortho axis.”
But at this point I’m not that sure about this.
btw… I don’t need this. … default Rhino works great here.
I have to agree with the poster. I’m tired of the stupid tab and moving in the direction one needs thing and have been for years since there is not a modeling session where I am forced to use this over winded methodology.
I am maybe the first to complain about this going back years. It makes the ortho switch completely useless. I wish you would port it to V7as a plugin it would save me time and be more accurate than the direction tab method.
I use the magic key Tab to lock the direction, which is pretty useful for snapping to other distant objects while keeping the movement locked in the desired direction. I have my Ortho turned on by default and I rarely need to disable it. Of course, this is just my use-case based on my workflow, so other may need a completely different approach.
Yes, exactly that, extremely simple. The way it is implemented now just makes this unusable, especially with 45° Ortho as you also found out.
But as I showed, it’s even more flawed because it will still sometimes snap completely overriding Ortho just as before and I can’t even figure out when or why that happens (at least before it would snap always, so it was more predictable). So either the new feature has bugs or it has been implemented in a way that’s unclear to me and definitely not useful.
Edit:
I can see that in such a case (Ortho always on and using Shift to temporarily disable it) you might find it slightly useful to have snaps override it (so that you don’t have to even press Shift*). But then you’re still unable to force Ortho in all those occasions where you actually want Ortho.
And also, I feel like this way, you’re basically using Ortho just as another SmartTrack guide (basically if you disable Ortho but make a smart point at the origin [which as far as I can tell, is actually always created, so why even have Ortho on?], it will also snap to it if you get close to the ortho axis but as it is just that – a snap – it doesn’t have priority over other snaps). But in my view, Ortho shouldn’t be just another optional guide, it really should force Ortho at all costs to make it useful and predictable.
Now I get that someone might not like changing this core behaviour because they somehow found it useful (I’m still somewhat baffled by it but that’s not important) which is why having it as an option is fine by me. I still feel like if you were testing new users unfamiliar with Rhino, most would agree what I suggest to be more useful than the current default but unless someone actually does this testing, that’s just a hypothesis.
Edit2: Now I’m curious – can somebody who has access to it check how this is implemented in AutoCAD? It’s been over a decade since I last used that program.
*Still, having to press Shift to disable Ortho is much, much less work than having to zoom out, Shift+Tab, check that you still somehow didn’t snap to a smart point accidentally created somewhere off screen that changed your direction by a minuscule hard-to-spot angle, then zoom back in.
When I want to disable the Osnap temporarily, I hold the Alt key.
I just tested your settings by turning off the Ortho entirely. Once I ran the “Move” command and dragged the selected object a bit, I held Shift to activate Ortho and immediately pressed the Tab key for a brief moment to lock the direction, then I released both keys. Pressing Shift+Tab for a half second does the job perfectly fine.
That’s not what we’re discussing though. In your case, you’d hold Shift to disable Ortho. In my case, I hold shift to enable Ortho. But other than that it functions the same.
Holding Alt to disable Osnap is only useful if you do not actually want to snap to anything (either because you’re entering the distance numerically or you’re freeform drawing/modelling). But most of the time, I want to snap or smarttrack even when I want to constrain to ortho angle, so I need both turned on which is where the trouble comes.
It does the job perfectly fine IF and ONLY IF the cursor isn’t near other geometry or a SmartTrack guide that will override the Ortho direction. Basically, you’re still running into the same issue. The only difference is, that since TAB will lock it, it is easier to find a place where you minimize the danger of an accidental snap (but that often means zooming way out and even that isn’t bulletproof if there’s a rogue smart point somewhere). You’d have to temporarily disable Osnaps while pressing Shift+Tab to be absolutely sure you lock the direction right. But try pressing Alt+Shift+Tab in Windows…
Edit: In fact, what I often end up doing is zoom out or pan to less busy place, hold Alt+Shift to see exactly where the ortho direction is, then release Alt, try to spot if the direction changed or not, if not, hit Tab, zoom back where I actually want to place the target point, snap to whatever I need and finally click. With what I suggest, I’d only need to hold Shift, find the snap and click without worry. I don’t get how someone can not see how much work and nerves this would save.
… default Rhino works great here.