(WISH) smarter SelChain

[Tom_P]

I have a small but important wish regarding the options of _selChain - mainly the angle options:

current behaviour:

as soon as there is more then one choice, that is below the angular threshold, rhino does not follow the chain but pops up with a selection dialog.

wished behaviour

there should be an (1) “automatic best choice” option: if there is more then one choice within the threshold (angular / distance / curvature) then the best fitting / lowest deviation / lowest kink should automatically be selected as next element in the chain.
And it would be great to have a very strict (2) “type sensitive” option: selChain will only select next segments that have the same “type” as the staring segment: naked edge, curve, inner Mesh edge, naked Mesh edge, …subD Edge, …and maybe some more.

select Edges in UV Editor

@BrianJ
I came across above wish while trying to align Mesh Edges in the UV editor.
I think selChain - with above improvements - should be part of the selection process when applying unwrapping constraints. Currently selecting continuous edges “loops” in the UV Editor is quite painful and selChain, fails if the angluar threshold is not set perfectly - or if there is more then one hit / element to continue.
This is the mapping I was (successfully) after today.
But setting the 6 constraints, (4x “to Curve” (a 0-0-1-1 rectangle) for the outer edges, 2x straighten for the inner Edges) was a bit a hassle - _selChain helped, loop selection / double click did not do the job for the inner edges. some improvements are welcome here - or do I miss something ?

thanks - kind regards -tom

[BrianJ (Brian James)]

Hi @Tom_P ,

Can you post the object in it’s own 3dm for the UV island edge selection issue?

[Tom_P]

Bottle_Mapping_Forum.3dm (4.6 MB)
here s the file.
it s mostly about selecting those inner edges for straightening…

[BrianJ (Brian James)]

Change the Angle Tolerance setting in SelChain to 2 and double click the starting edge. That gets the whole chain here in one shot.

[Tom_P]

Dear Brian - thanks for having a look at it.
it is a bit of fiddling to get Selchain working… i did it with selchain… but well next time it s 5 degree, or only 1… it would be cool to have a few more options in selchain - as wished above - or to have some other smart selection tools in the UV-Editor. (for example a shortest connection between start and end segment, similar to the double-click-loop selection, or a combination of both approaches: select first segment, select last segment - call a new magic “smart connection chain” command)… but for me the current workflow is ok, but not exciting - lucky not my daily to do.
by the way - you re videos are great, it s a nice pace, and a well chosen workflows (sneeaker, wooden chair).
kind regards -tom