Need ideas for an icon

After a request by Arend I added an unflatten component for reversing a flattening operation. If you still have the original tree and the number of items hasn't changed it can be put back together:

However I just cannot come up with a good idea for an icon for Unflatten. The best I could come up with was an acorn, which is a tenuous link at best.

Any ideas welcome, but please remember that the icon must de drawable and recognizable in a 20x20 (24x24 in an emergency) pixel image.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 3:07pm

I am just a big advocate in 'programming' of living by the rule that you should only abstract once. Any more and the meaning becomes esoteric or just unnecessarily complicated / confusing. Simple, simple, simple. That is actually an internal motto used in Apple corp and Lo and behold it becomes the most valuable tech company in the world. Programming by nature is abstract hence why many individuals find it complicated, so to burden it any more is surely a big foi pas.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 16, 2013 at 4:10pm

Would probably be better to call the component "TransferDataLayoutFromTreeToFlatList" and animate the icon to show the full process step-by-step in HD...

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 4:22pm

Can it be in 3D too? Thats the trend these days

Permalink Reply by newy011 on March 16, 2013 at 5:36pm

Lets not be facetious, after all the strongest something can be is always limited by its weakest link.

I think the direction this discussion can take will be slightly beyond your comprehension so lets leave it here.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on March 16, 2013 at 5:51pm

Yea your right, im the one that gets it but okay :D well later then must get back to dwelling on icons :DDDDDD

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on March 16, 2013 at 2:45pm

The arrow would have to be visually on top of the tree rather than positionally. There isn't enough room in 20 pixels to draw both a tree and an arrow. If I draw them on top each other then I suppose it could look like this:

Once you're told it's to do with flattening data structures called 'trees' it becomes obvious what it means and very easy to remember. If you had to guess what it meant before you were told about trees I'm not sure what you'd make of it. Perhaps something to do with downloading? Downward pointing arrows are often associated with downloading things.

If I compress the tree image the arrow can be above it, but now the tree doesn't look like a tree any more:

Unless you've seen it before on another icon and you know that shape represents a data tree in Grasshopper.

I in fact did use a downward pointing arrow to represent flatten in the parameter post-processes:

These icons only have 10x10 pixels so anything beyond a single, simple shape cannot be represented so I couldn't go with the stump.

I'm not particularly hesitant to change the UI from version to version. I know it annoys some people and I know that some tutorials and course materials will become outdated because of it. But while GH is in alpha mode I think it is more important to try and figure out what interface works best. I'm not particularly impressed by the improvement of the tree+arrow icon, because even if it immediately conjures up the words "Flatten Tree" in your mind, you still don't know what to make of it unless you already know about data trees and what it means to flatten them.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 16, 2013 at 2:46pm

Nice idea and would certainly make the process and the reverse a consistent set.

Now look at it as a totally "uninitiated individual". Right now Graft and Flatten form a consistent pair, both beeing constantly used data operations. Growing a tree looks more like a graft operation but actually does something completely different. How is that less confusing than the current state?

Permalink Reply by Arend on March 16, 2013 at 7:23pm

Well, there is an interesting discussion.

What this component actually does is not unflatten. If I were to name it in a more descriptive sense it would be called Build Tree By BranchCount From List (if what it actually does should reflect the name of the component).

Unflatten is a word chosen after the grasshopper analogy for flatten tree, because it somewhat reverses the behaviour of the flatten command. So knowledge of the flatten command is needed to understand the unflatten analogy for the working of this command.

If you know the flatten icon, I think this icon makes sense.

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on March 16, 2013 at 4:01pm

To me the flatten icon really says 'eliminate the branches'. I never think of it as actually 'flattening' anything. Flattening is probably not the best word to use but I find I have no interest in suggesting another. Turn the icon upside down to 'shake out' the original branch structure (let gravity do the work).

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on March 17, 2013 at 6:15pm

This wont make any difference

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on March 16, 2013 at 5:13pm

To me the flatten icon says 'deforestation'. The planet is hurting enough already so to keep my definitions green and sustainable I instead use the environmentally friendly "shift paths" component with the appropriate offset value in each case.

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on March 16, 2013 at 5:25pm