Radial Menu further development?

Hi David,

I really like the new radial menu, just thought of some improvements because I think it's not so intuitive than the other parts of grasshopper.

Don't know if I'm right with that, if not, sorry, for this comment. ;)

I also don't know how much work it would be to add such functionalities in the Grasshopper UI, hope it wouldn't be too difficult.

So here are some thoughts and first sketchs:

First, (like already wrote in an other discussion) it would be nice to activate it by pressing the spacebar once and deactivate it by pressing the spacebar a second time or by doing this with the right mouse button the same way.

I think it would be nice too, (as also already wrote in an other discussion) to make the radial menu editable, to have the chance to change the positions of the commands and maybe also to add some columns in the outer space to have also the possibility to add also some commands like the profiler gadget etc.

columns

add columns

Then I think to make it a bit better to chose and see, what command you've choosen, it would be nice to add also some highlighting cells, because now you have to click directly on the icon and sometimes it is like it slow down your working speed.

add cells

add highlight cells

Also I think it would be nice to add like in the compass gadget an arrow in the middle, but maybe it's more a reason of thinking of yesteryear than a practical one. ;)

arrow in the middle

sketchs in use:

What do you think?

Best,

Martin.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 6, 2011 at 4:19am

Hi Martin,

some good ideas. I like the cell highlighting, the current blue box is a bit faint, especially on icons that use up the full 24x24 pixels (like Preferences) and having a bigger hit-stage per icon would be great.

There's literally hundreds of actions one could wish to assign a radial menu button, maybe a specific component (Text Panel, Param Viewer, Slider, ... etc.), any of the standard menu items, and Lord knows what else. I'm currently of the opinion that the best possible approach would be to allow people to put a custom icon and some VB code into any of the 16 available slots. That way I can represent the default menu and a fully customizable one in the very same way. It also allows people to code up some very specific uses.

I'm not very fond of adding additional rings, as I already have to limit the menu to the canvas boundary. Making it bigger will cause the menu center point to be off-cursor even more often, and that will make reaching specific buttons harder because you can no longer rely on muscle memory.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Fred Becquelin on August 6, 2011 at 4:27am

Hi,

Yes, about muscle memory, could we have toolbar buttons back please?

Seriously, programmers always have strange ideas about UI... Why those curly brackets?!

cheers,

Fred.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 6, 2011 at 5:16am

I'm going to ditch the curly brackets. I wanted to keep the preview settings distinctly separate from the other buttons. First I was going to use the brackets, but then I decided to align them on the right. I should have removed the brackets, but didn't.

"Seriously, programmers always have strange ideas about UI"

Programmers make UIs. If we're not allowed to have strange ideas, who is?

It's true that a lot of UIs suck. And it's definitely true that I've made serious mistakes with the Grasshopper UI in the past. But the only way to find out whether something is a mistake is to actually try it, and then allow ourselves a few days to get accustomed to it. It's not really fair to choose between two options when one of them has years of use and familiarity and muscle memory in favour of it. It might help you to decide which UI you like best today, but it will do nothing to tell you which UI you'll like best tomorrow.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Martin Dembski on August 6, 2011 at 8:24am

Hi Fred,

I also liked the old style of the canvas but I also think to improve a good working system sometimes it's necessary to do some bigger changes and try them.

Permalink Reply by Martin Dembski on August 6, 2011 at 8:17am

Hi David,

I thought already that adding rings could be some kind of problematic, maybe a solution could be to offer the possibility to create a bunch of radial menus for different usages and activate them with different "subkeys" by pressing spacebar and an other key the same time?

for example:

"spacebar" and "1" opens radial menu 1

"spacebar" and "2" opens radial menu 2

.... etc.

...but maybe it's enought to have the possibility to add some functions to the 16 slots of one radial menu, otherwise it's getting too chaotic. ;)

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on October 4, 2011 at 8:47am

can radial menu be activated with longer right mouse button press ? in my opinion it would be a good solution for those who dont have middle button. time interval could also be customized.

Permalink Reply by Martin Siegrist on February 6, 2016 at 2:24pm

Hi David, any news on an editable radial menu?

Permalink Reply by kleerkoat on August 6, 2011 at 11:44pm

Hey David,

Anyway of porting this functionality over to Rhino!?!

keeping fingers crossed,

ryan

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 7, 2011 at 5:53am

Hi Ryan,

I'm not involved in Rhino UI development (apart from some icons a long time ago, but someone else has taken on the baton there too). I'm not really sure I want to be, it definitely sounds like a full time job and I'm already very busy with Grasshopper.

I'm hoping that for Rhino6 we'll do a better job of separating the core product from the UI, and that will make it easier to work on smaller parts of the interface one at a time.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by kleerkoat on August 7, 2011 at 7:52am

sounds like you've already been thinking about the UI in Rhino, are you kind of using Grasshopper as a work study for how the Rhino UI can be improved in the future? because you've come up with some pretty cool UI features outside of the Rhino "standards".

Permalink Reply by trevor.patt on October 4, 2011 at 6:13am

1) I like the hard edge of the menu in this mockup. Since you have to click outside the radial menu to disappear it, I'd like to know where that edge is. Right now I end up repeatedly clicking near the gradient edge before I get out.

2) The whole thing seems bigger than it needs to be currently, just getting to the nearest button is already farther from the center than the entire MMB popup menu in Rhino. Getting to the outside is an even longer way. (I have a sticky MMB which frequently clicks when trying to scroll, so this happens a lot to me.) Maybe clicking the center grey 'x' could close it?

3) Most popup menus (Maya's for example, or RH the way I use it) are there to make frequently used commands quickly accessible without having to track your mouse all the way to the sidebar. It seems wasteful to have GH Preferences, for example, on this menu. How often does one change preferences in the middle of a definition? I think that sort of thing is fine to leave in the menus. I'd rather have Panel (or something like the Markov).

4) Has the Legacy canvas option been removed? I don't have the option.

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