multiple wireless components

My application consists of many separate user objects that all need input from the same few number sliders. I was thinking it would be nice to have a slider, when given the name "xyz" would broadcast wirelessly to all 50 components but only if they were also given the name "xyz". It would save alot of time everytime I drag out a user object, it would automatically "connect" if it had the right name.

Is there a way to make this work or is it gone with the old receiver system?

Apologies if this has already been covered - I wasn't able to find any similar ideas in past posts.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by djordje on October 3, 2013 at 6:18pm

Hi WoodDuck,

What's the difference between renaming all those components, and plugging a wire from particular slider to one of their inputs?
Sorry if I misunderstood your question.

Permalink Reply by WoodDuck on October 3, 2013 at 6:34pm

Hi Djordje, the components would already have the inputs with the correct name. In my case, it's a thickness parameter that I want all of the components to pick up on, so as I make the various user objects, I would give the appropriate input the name "thickness"

I saw this in a program called Topsolid at Vegas where you write a parameter which sits on the screen say, "th = 9" Then, when you building a parametric box or what have you, you can give the thickness of material this parameter. So if it has the same name, whenever you change the parameter written on the screen by double clicking on it, any part in your model that references this parameter will change along with it. I hope this makes sense..

Anyway, you're right - I could just connect the wires and be done with it. I'm just thinking of an interface that would have minimal user input. There would be one setting to control all the inputs on say 20 different components without any additional wiring. I should mention that these components would be dragged out, used once for one configuration, then deleted to make way for a new configuration.

cheers

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 4, 2013 at 2:52am

The receiver functionality is not gone, now every parameter has wire-display settings.

However this (or the receiver for that matter) will not solve your problem. I can't be done without custom code in GH1, but I'm planning something like this for GH2.

I want to add a 'Broadcast' toggle to all floating and output parameters. When this toggle is set to TRUE, then every parameter anywhere within the same file can get the data inside the broadcasted parameter by specifying the name. So instead of having a parameter with a bunch of wires that connect to sliders called 'Width', 'Height' and 'Depth', it would have a piece of text somewhere that states 'Width, Height, Depth' and the data would then be collected from those sources (in that order).

There can even be a shorthand for that using the existing parameter nickname. If you change it to '=Depth' or something it just links to the relevant source without any wires.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Tirol, Austria

Permalink Reply by WoodDuck on October 4, 2013 at 12:27pm

thanks for clarifying, David. The wires will work just fine for now. The way I imagine using your broadcast parameters would be to use them as a global setting which can affect all components whereas the local parameters would have the inputs with wires. Exciting stuff for the future!

RSS