Custom Grasshopper Ribbon layouts

Because of this discussion, I started typing on a customizable ribbon layout for Grasshopper. First test (it worked right away! must be the heavy coffee smells in Arlanda Airport Starbucks...):

The basic idea is this:

- If no custom layouts are defined, the default layout is used.

- If even a single custom is defined, the default layout is discarded.

- Any number of custom layouts can be active at any time.

- A single layout defined a collection of Tabs, Panels and Items.

- The order of Tabs can be specified, but the order of Panels and Icons is always alphabetic (just like it is now)

- Items can be grouped though into Panel sub-sections, separated by the vertical fading etches.

- If two layouts define the same Tab or Panel, items will be merged.

- Layouts are stored in xml files and can be loaded simply by dragging them into Grasshopper. I don't know how I'm going to let you remove loaded layouts yet.

- Layouts can of course also be managed from the SDK, so they can be changed at any time by any code running inside the Grasshopper framework.

I also don't have a layout editor yet, I'm currently making layouts through code (hence the VB component).

The main problems I see with this approach are:

- It's not possible to easily create a reduction of the default layout. Even though it would be trivial to automatically create a custom layout that mimics the default layout, it is not possible to specifically hide certain tabs or panels or items.

- It's not possible to define the order of Panels within tabs and Items within panels.

- Your lovingly crafted layout might get screwed up by any other layout that is also loaded. Especially if it's loaded before yours, the order of Tabs (assuming there are overlapping Tabs) is no longer guaranteed.

- The Markov and Popup Search still display all components. Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing yet, though I lean towards good.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Arlanda Airport, Sweden

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 25, 2011 at 4:20am

is this your third or fourth airport?

- The Markov and Popup Search still display all components. Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing yet, though I lean towards good.

Can you add some toggles to the layout template that switch off things like the Markov Widget. But they still remain an option to switch back on. This way you could set up everyone in the class the same. Draw Icons, Fancy Wires etc.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 25, 2011 at 4:25am

Thankfully only my second. Third will be in 2.5 hours, but I don't intend to stick around there long enough to go online.

Draw Icons, Fancy Wires and all widget Show/Hide flags are now in the grasshopper_kernel.xml file. So you should be able to unify them, though it won't be part of the layout file. I could of course also put those setting overrides into layout files, but then you get the problem of two layouts defining different settings.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Arlanda Airport, Sweden

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on April 25, 2011 at 5:06am

I think that is not a problem have all items in Markov and Popup, is like Rhino: you could hide all tabs and work with commands, and that doesn't mean that commands not in toolbars desapear...

GH Rhino

---------------------------------

Popup = Command line

Ribbon = Toolbars

This is the first step for a customizable interface in GH....I LIKE IT!!! :)

Thanks for your hard and usefull work.

Best Regards.

Permalink Reply by Mårten Nettelbladt on April 25, 2011 at 12:34pm

David! You were supposed to get some holiday, remember? Anyway, nice to hear you're passing Sweden...

Permalink Reply by phillip on July 1, 2011 at 6:17am

Hi david,

i just love the layout function!

thanks.

i am having some trouble though. I made a new layout and draged 2 sets in a differnt group. now the components don´t show up anymore and i can´t use them. any help for this?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 1, 2011 at 7:57am

"draged 2 sets in a differnt group"

what's a "set" and what's a "group"? Ribbons contain Tabs, Panels and Items. Furthermore Panels are divided into 7 "Exposures" with separators between them.

Can you upload the ghlayout files that aren't working?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Andres Gonzalez on July 1, 2011 at 8:07am

David, do you think in the future, we could add an Icon that eventually would load up a Definition from these TABS?

This way we can organic a set of Definitions in one group, and upload them as needed.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 1, 2011 at 8:11am

Hi Andres,

you mean sort of like a User Object, but containing multiple components? I suppose. Initially the idea was that you'd use Clusters for this.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by phillip on July 1, 2011 at 8:30am

ok., excuse for the misnomer. --> draged two panels in a different tab. after loading the layout panels were still there , but items diappeared.

layout attached...

(tab "impex" -- panels: "dinamic toolkit" & "In&Out"

Attachments:

GHLAYOUTpcr3.ghlayout, 265 KB

Permalink Reply by phillip on July 1, 2011 at 8:35am

just loaded the same layout in gh with RH4... even more panels turned empty.

e.g. kangoroo, which i havent moved, but just renamed the tab before.

Permalink Reply by Andres Gonzalez on July 1, 2011 at 8:32am

No, sorry, the idea is like this:

You have a very simple definition, like few PARA and COMPONETS, you save it, give it a name etc... it is somewhere on your hard disc ok

Then, you add an ICON to the RIBBON and somehow, tell the icon to open that definition. So, you could have a set of short definitions ready for your class at your finger tips.

I hope I am clear...

Permalink Reply by phillip on October 11, 2011 at 7:51am

Hi,

I am still desperatly trying to use the ribbon layouts, but i just can´t make it work , which is driving me crazy.

As I wrote before. The problem is:

I can create a Ribbon Layout and it looks fine. But as soon as I close and reopen Rhino the ribbon is loaded, but all Panels of User objects are left blank. Also when creating user Objects, I can only save them in one specific Panel, but not change their location.

I think it has something to do with the file permissions as described here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/user-object-work-around-f...

Unfortunatly this didn´t work for me though. I aslo tried changing permissions and use Administrator-mode, but could not work out what is the problem.

Please help.

Thanks

(first pic. no ribbon loaded /

second pic: created ribbon by shifting user obejects and renaming panels - everything fine in the same rhino session. Picture after restarting rhino.)

Attachments: