User input from remote control panel suggestion

I feel it would be cool if it was possible tu use a definition entirely without the Grasshopper box, and only with the remote control panel.

The goal is to render Grasshopper useful, even for people who have no idea what Grasshopper is, and don't really need to, but could make use of a definition.

To make this possible, in addition to the sliders, there should be buttons to pick the relevant geometry, notes explaining what the definition does and how to use it, and perhaps an illustration.

Am I running through open doors here ? Maybe this is possible already?
I admit I was too lazy to read all the documentation :)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on May 22, 2009 at 4:41pm

just a note, boolean toggles also appear in the remote control panel...

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on May 23, 2009 at 5:26am

Hi Luis,

Thanks for the tip !
From all the creations that I see in the galerie, I can guess that the people who did them were also the ones who created the corresponding GH descriptions, and they don't mind jumping from Rhino's interface to Grasshopper's.
Yet, I can think of more "down to earth" everyday tasks that could be accomplished by grasshopper and used by the non-nerdy people in the office.
(I am not using "Nerd" in it's derogatory connotation here)

I know that the Grasshopper interface is like a bowl of candies

...but it can be quite puzzling for a non-user, and you don't want your colleagues to mess with your pretty definitions, do you ?

Cheers,

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 23, 2009 at 9:47am

mmmm candy...

A revamp of the RemoteControlPanel is on the list, but I don't know to what extend I'll be able to make it usable-for-people-who-don't-understand-grasshopper.

To be honest this is not a major feature we're planning. At least until we hit the magical one-point-oh mark the focus of development is purely and exclusively on use, not distribution.

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on May 23, 2009 at 10:35am

Hi David,

"the focus of development is purely and exclusively on use"

Can we get "Project a curve onto a B-rep" with "Pull" option instead of just a direction....and a red twizzler ?

Cheers,

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 23, 2009 at 12:14pm

More candy coming up.

Permalink Reply by Olivier Suire on May 23, 2009 at 12:30pm

:)
But could the fancy lines be twizzled ?

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on May 23, 2009 at 1:22pm

I'm sure people who see that screenshot will think it was just photoshopped. I don't see a bitmap parameter in the toolbar, but it wouldn't make much sense faking the vertex coloring. I do see two new special components, something* tells me one of them is a new kind of trigger for a definition update.

*http://news2.mcneel.com/scripts/dnewsweb.exe?cmd=article&group=...

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 23, 2009 at 1:27pm

Hi Mr. Picky,

it is not photoshopped. I just didn't have time to finish the icon for the Image Sampler (it's the icon with a question mark, which is the default for all objects without custom icons).

And indeed, the two eye-balls with the file is the afore-mentioned file reader. Incidentally, the image sampler also automatically updates whenever the source file changes, so the interaction between your favourite drawing program and Grasshopper is pretty seamless.

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on May 24, 2009 at 9:33am

Very nice David...this is an old old wish, so I'm glad to see it sitting there on the GH canvas :) I assume the bitmap loading will be many times more efficient that doing so within a scripting component, correct? The autoreloading on change seams really cool as well.

Best,
Damien

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 24, 2009 at 11:04am

Cool!
Very excited to try this out. Thanks for all your great work

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 24, 2009 at 1:08pm

It won't be much faster than using a VB component. It's pretty much the same code (in fact, it will probably be even slower since I need to unlock the file handle, so I have to make an in-memory copy of the original).

I could probably speed up the colour retrieval, but I haven't yet.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 24, 2009 at 1:57pm

Ok, just made the sampling faster than GetPixel (way faster).