Question for Teachers/Instructors

This has come up a number of times, but I thought I'd ask one more time before I start typing.

Would it, or would it not, be useful to have a switch between Expert and Beginner modes in the Grasshopper UI? At the most basic level this would involve hiding freaky components from the Beginner mode, but I imagine that I could also hide items from popup menus and other UI elements.

As there are more and more components every release, being able to hide the geeky ones must be a relief for beginners. Or am I wrong?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tudor Cosmatu on April 19, 2011 at 11:00am

David, this looks really great! i think something like this would be definitely helpful to show things to people.

Permalink Reply by Holger on April 19, 2011 at 11:54am

Now I'm confused whether this is a joke or not... Hopefully it is!

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 19, 2011 at 12:03pm

It's not a joke. I'm only allowed one joke a year and I already made it on april 1st. Not to worry though, unless you press Ctrl+Alt (a widely improbable combination) this will never bother you.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Holger on April 19, 2011 at 12:59pm

I indeed don't like this feature visually - it simply looks so damn foreign in your so elegantly layed out GUI that I thought it could only be your second Aprils joke.

Visual aspects aside: I believe such an arrow also doesn't communicate well. Learners have to understand the organization of Tabs and how to access its respective Toolshelves. What I see shown in your Clip is an Arrow pointing to a certain location in Screen-Space.

It fails however to help Students find the way who currently have a completly different Layout visible (= other Tab active - this will be damn likely).

I can already hear them say: "On my Screen this looks different - there' s no such button!"

If one implemented such I believe also Tab-Changes and the way the Mouse travels had to get visualized in a convincing way, otherwise I'd consider this Helper of very limited value.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 19, 2011 at 3:43pm

Well if you're going to animate it, you'll never get it right either. It'll either move too slow or too quick. Plus, animating the cursor is already quite easy, you do it all the time by dragging the mouse around.

It could probably use a second arrow pointing at the tab, and a smaller arrow pointing at the icon, and maybe some additional big red text, but this will be easily visible on an overhead projector from a distance.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Tuan N. Tran on April 19, 2011 at 2:18pm

Brilliant!

Permalink Reply by Martin Dembski on April 20, 2011 at 12:08am

It's a nice gadget, but I think in some cases it will be more confusing. The beginners especially the one you are teaching to will ask why the arrow doesn't go from the component you were clicking on to the place in the toolbar where you can find it.

(for example at 0:07; 0:11; 0:13 and 0:15)

Of course it's just a first sketch. ;)

Good work.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 20, 2011 at 3:41am

Yeah I know. Problem is that the arrow might be very long or very short depending on where the component and the icon are located relative to each other. I think I'll move to a system where I draw a circle around the component on the canvas, an arrow at the tab name and another circle+arrow at the icon.

Drawing stuff on the screen like this is a big of a hack and the smaller the individual items the faster it will be.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 21, 2011 at 7:34am

How about this? It's very difficult to draw markers for components which are on the dropdown only. In fact it's not possible without rewriting a lot of the UI code. Maybe someday, but not now.