My ideas for future features

Hi all !

(and especially to David Rutten)

After the response to this thread , i decided to make a thread with only my ideas. everyone is welcome to comment on them, but if you have your own ideas, please don't post them here, but make a separate thread in respect to Davids request.

I keep adding new ideas (from small useful tweaks to component proposals), but you have to check the latest pages.

1st idea: receivers for everyone! (the crowd goes wild)
i'm thinking, why not make each input hook be able to work as a receiver. it could be chosen from the right-click menu, and the waves graphic can appear (as in the receiver component) around that hook.

an advantage of this would be, that if you start with a bunch of components near the input components area, and then decide to make room in between this two sets for a new set, it is useful to get rid of the current connection lines that would make that area messy. it would be easier to just change the status of the hooks, rather then create a receiver for each input data needed, and redraw the connections.

2nd idea: preview selected only button
near the "preview mode" button, there could be an on-off "preview selected" button,that when is pushed, only displays the component(s) that is/are selected

it happens often that i am working in one part of the definition, that generates a certain geometry and i need to see how this geometry relates to other stuff in the scene, so i need other components visible, but i also need just to check if the resulted geo looks right, and it's hard to see with other objects overlapping in the display. i currently do this: bake the current component, and then close grasshopper, or chose no preview, then switch back to shaded preview. that button would make things easier.

thanks for the interest!
awaiting some feedback

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 1, 2011 at 7:26pm

REAAAALY could see the use of this...

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on December 3, 2011 at 5:36am

22nd idea: reference graphs in Graph Mapper

Graph Mapper should have an one additional input hook and one additional output hook. the output should export the graph information and the input should be able to obtain the graph information from another graph, therefore you can have different Graph Mapper component, that process different data streams, but are controlled by just one manually definable graph.

(Would be nice if the context menu of the input hook would have the option of importing the domain as well or fitting the imported graph on the locally defined domain)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on December 11, 2011 at 10:17am

23rd idea: Merge component option: create a path for each input hook

Merge should have an additional input hook, that if set to True, would make the output tree have a separate path for each input stream.

The addresses of the streams should be passed on into the resulted tree.

Ex:

input lists:

{0}

{0;0}

{5}

output tree:

N=3

{0;0}

{1;0;0}

{2;5}

If one of the input hooks has a tree structure, the structure would be passed on in the output tree within its associated path (unless you flatten it beforehand).

Right now, if you want to merge a few lists (that have the same addresses) into a tree, so that you get a tree with each list on a different path, you need to use some path mapper (or at least that seems to be the easiest way to get it), as you can see in this discussion.

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 20, 2012 at 6:30pm

UPDATE since release 0.8.0064: this is now resolved by the Entwine component

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on December 14, 2011 at 7:10am

24th idea: add number of items input to Point CP component

the component should ask you the closest now many points you want, and the hook should be set to 1 by default

say you want the 5 closest points, you input 5, and you get them, no more sort list etc...

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 17, 2011 at 6:46am

Done.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on December 17, 2011 at 1:38pm

goodies! :)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 20, 2012 at 6:28pm

not to be picky, but i think the Closeses PointS component would be enough if it's default value would be 1 (just to tidy things up a bit more)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 21, 2012 at 5:43am

29th idea: component to extract the lowest/highest n numbers of a list

inputs:

list

no of items to extract

outputs:

lowest items

(+ lowest items indexes)

highest items

(+ highest items indexes)

would be easier then using the sort list + sublist, what i usually o

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 19, 2012 at 2:30pm

30th idea : cast shadows on solids

there is the Mesh Shadow component, which is great, but it would be so much greater if it would be possible to cast the shadow on more complex shapes than a plane (breps would be ideal, but meshes would be cool as well). I might be asking for a lot, i don't know how complex this would be..)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 19, 2012 at 2:36pm

31st idea: separatrix

A separatrix is the line that divides the lit and dark areas of a shaded solid and i think it would be useful if a component could return this.
Ideally the light source could either be a vector (for paralell rays) or a point.

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on June 5, 2013 at 7:39am

32th idea: easily switch on/off groups

it would be very useful to be able to easily disable/enable all components within a group - it could be done with a double click (left or right mouse button) or some sort of adjacent widget that can be clicked or even alt-click etc..

I often find myself switching on and off parts of the definition for time efficiency when working. In order to do this, i lay a dispatch component plus boolean toggle at the start of the group, with the main information passing through it, so that components within the group lack (some) of the input data and therefore don't work (most of the times). I could, of course, select the components within the group and hit disable, but it is quicker with a double click. The problem is that it is cumbersome to do this for other data streams that enter that group, therefore part of the elements in the group still process data. Also, it's easier to just hit ctrl-G rather than making the dispatch thingie It would be so much easier if there would be an quick way to switch on and off whole groups...