drag and drop definitions

This is a feature request. I'm not requesting clusters but I think I need to mention them.
Grasshopper used to have clusters... in my opinion they were fantastic, not because they were well implemented (sorry David) but because I thought it gave a glimpse of what could happen in the future. Being able to construct and collapse pieces of the process into your own reusable components is a huge time saver and it also could promote custom component sharing.

OK I said this wasn't about clusters but it is almost the same. What if you could drag and drop definitions into the canvas? Something like document merging but with two simple changes.

1.It drops where you want in the canvas
2.It is automatically contained in a group

With this feature the user can start to build his own library of reusable generic processes. Form explorer he can and drop them in the canvas like components but instead it creates groups.

In the same logic the user should be able to save a group as a definition. Some useful features could be added later to this, for example if two or more components inside the group are connected to one component outside the group the definition is saved with a place holder of the appropriate type, in order to preserve the connections.

The sharing could be centralized and the most used/downloaded definitions can be later transformed into proper optimized components.

that's it, should be simple yet very powerful.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 14, 2010 at 12:23pm

Hi Charles,

Ctrl+Tab allows you to cycle through documents. Is that what you meant?

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Charles C Vincent on October 14, 2010 at 12:26pm

Uh, I wasn't aware of that. Pretty good!

Permalink Reply by Alpha222 on October 15, 2010 at 3:56am

Delicious！！

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 16, 2010 at 2:34pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0XZdIJ12Dk

What I got so far. The options behind the fold are still unresponsive, but you'll eventually toggle them by moving over them.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Frane Zilic on October 16, 2010 at 9:58pm

It looks very nice... and clean
Just a question. How do you get to drop the file where you want in the canvas?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 18, 2010 at 3:55pm

How about this solution?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5rqi601jdU

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on October 18, 2010 at 4:39pm

cool!

Permalink Reply by Frane Zilic on October 18, 2010 at 8:35pm

Yes! That's looking good.
Any idea when we will see this in our desktops??? :)

Could there also be shortcuts? Such as

Drop: opens a new file
CTRL+Drop: inserts a group
Alt+Drop: inserts a cluster

Or something like that?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on October 19, 2010 at 7:48am

Yes, since I have immediate feedback about the type of insertion, it's easy enough to trigger it with Shift, Control and Alt keys.

It doesn't feel quite right yet, it still needs some more tweaking. I'll release a new version before I'm off to Seattle next week.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Frane Zilic on October 15, 2010 at 3:12pm

In order to make it easier to create reusable definitions, groups or clusters, I think this feature would help.
This is the original situation

And with a right clik in the input or output you can expand it creating a place holder.

This case is simple but if you have multiple connections a feature like this saves a lot of time

Permalink Reply by Shawn Fernandez on October 15, 2010 at 6:43pm

I'm not really sure what you are after here, but if you disconnect the wires from the C input on the divide curve component, then try right-clicking on the "C" and then select Extract Parameter. It does almost exactly what I think you are asking for.

Permalink Reply by Frane Zilic on October 16, 2010 at 8:28am

I wasn't aware of extract parameter... useful but I think it could be better if it worked this way. ("better" meaning that the user needs to make less clicks/connections).

Maybe the example was too simple so I'll expand it a little bit. Please don't focus on the definition itself, just the process i am trying to explain.
Say I have a situation like this and I want to save the group as a reusable file. If I save this group I loose all the connections so I would have to make them again everytime I reuse the definition.