My ideas for future features

Hi all !

(and especially to David Rutten)

After the response to this thread , i decided to make a thread with only my ideas. everyone is welcome to comment on them, but if you have your own ideas, please don't post them here, but make a separate thread in respect to Davids request.

I keep adding new ideas (from small useful tweaks to component proposals), but you have to check the latest pages.

1st idea: receivers for everyone! (the crowd goes wild)
i'm thinking, why not make each input hook be able to work as a receiver. it could be chosen from the right-click menu, and the waves graphic can appear (as in the receiver component) around that hook.

an advantage of this would be, that if you start with a bunch of components near the input components area, and then decide to make room in between this two sets for a new set, it is useful to get rid of the current connection lines that would make that area messy. it would be easier to just change the status of the hooks, rather then create a receiver for each input data needed, and redraw the connections.

2nd idea: preview selected only button
near the "preview mode" button, there could be an on-off "preview selected" button,that when is pushed, only displays the component(s) that is/are selected

it happens often that i am working in one part of the definition, that generates a certain geometry and i need to see how this geometry relates to other stuff in the scene, so i need other components visible, but i also need just to check if the resulted geo looks right, and it's hard to see with other objects overlapping in the display. i currently do this: bake the current component, and then close grasshopper, or chose no preview, then switch back to shaded preview. that button would make things easier.

thanks for the interest!
awaiting some feedback

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 5, 2010 at 9:13pm

#2 is done. There is now an extra item at the bottom of the Preview dropdown on the Canvas toolbar that toggles the Selection preview filter.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 6, 2010 at 2:45am

wow, i'm really flattered you're taking into consideration my proposals.
i'm really glad i had a say in the development of this tool and that some of my ideas are getting implemented so thank you for that!

Permalink Reply by Shawn Fernandez on November 11, 2010 at 12:06pm

Currently if you pull down the Edit menu you can choose options for pasting that allows for pasting in the middle of the screen; also listed there are keyboard shortcuts to do the same.

It would be nice to add them to the right-click context menu as I am used to in Office programs where you can choose Paste Special. When I want a modified paste option, I subconsciously always right click to get it, no matter what program I am in.

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 11, 2010 at 1:50pm

had no idea about these! great stuff!

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 12, 2010 at 3:17pm

13th idea: "simplify" from the input hook menu
as flatten and graft got in the right-click menu of the input hooks, it might be useful if "simplify tree" did too (would be especially helpful when using the merge streams components.

Permalink Reply by michaeldrobnik on November 12, 2010 at 4:38pm

Hi,
probably someone already came up with this simple wish, nevertheless, I think it would be quite nice adding further Rhino Geometry to a already set Collection of Geometry. Just go to the Manage "Geometry, Line, ... whatever" Collection by using "New Item" and then select the new Geometry in Rhino. So you don't have to reselect the whole thing in the case you are missing one surface. The other way around you could highlight a Geometry and then kick it out of the list.
Best Michael

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 19, 2010 at 6:48am

14th idea: check if SURFACE is planar
we now have the component that checks the planarity of a curve.
we can use this on the naked edges of the surface, but this only gives the right answer if the surface isn't circular/periodic. let's say you have a cylinder surface and you check the naked edge of this surface for planarity. It will return TRUE, because it TWO edges that are planar circles, even tho the surface isn't planar, so a check planar for surfaces would be useful

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 19, 2010 at 12:17pm

Added.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on November 28, 2010 at 3:41am

15th idea: group time estimation (for profile widget)

the profiler should also write below groups the sum of the needed times used by the components of that group. Might be useful and i'm guessing it's not too hard to do since it's only a sum of floats.

(and btw, PREETTY PLEASE make the profiler widget stick after closing rhino)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on December 4, 2010 at 8:15am

16th idea: wireframe thickness for custom preview
would be nice to be able to set a wireframe thickness when using the custom preview component

say you have a line that is very important in the shown geometry, but just changing it's color doesn't make it stand out so much, being able to change it's thickness would help (also being able to make the line dashed would be cool)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 11, 2011 at 4:15pm

17th idea: more primitive solids

regular and semiregular primitives would be nice to have in grasshopper, especially since rhino doesn't provide them

(mmmm...dodecahedron...)

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 31, 2011 at 4:43pm

18th idea: "bake visible" component

Bakes whichever components are currently set to visible

I'm guessing i'm not the only one that keeps just a few components visible - the ones i'm interested in and the ones i would like to bake at some point (at the end of the def, or as a test bake on the way). Would be easier then selecting each visible component to bake them or feed them all into a general geometry parameter component.