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 Andrei Raducanu on February 11, 2011 at 6:45am

19th idea: reverse list option from input hook context menu

as with the "invert list" option on the pattern input hooks, it would be useful to have a reverse list option for all hooks that can take lists

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 11, 2011 at 8:17am

Does it really only make sense to put this on List parameters? Why not put it on all of them?

I can easily grey out or hide the option on non-list parameter, but it seems a useful feature...

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on February 11, 2011 at 8:19am

cool! was this in the works already, or did you do this just now?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 11, 2011 at 10:18am

Just did it now. Spend about 10 minutes getting the icon right and 5 minutes adding the code. I felt like I needed some concrete progress to perk me up. I've been spending too long chipping away at some interface classes these past two weeks.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 11, 2011 at 8:21am

Also, it Reverses first, Flattens/Grafts second. So in the following case:

{A, B, C} ; {D, E, F}

If you have both Reverse and Flatten enabled you'll end up with:

{C, B, A, F, E, D} instead of {F, E, D, C, B, A}

and similarly, if you have both Reverse and Graft, you'll get:

{C} ; {B} ; {A} ; {F} ; {E} ; {D} instead of {A} ; {B} ; {C} ; {D} ; {E} ; {F}

In the case of Graft it makes sense to do it this way, but for flatten either might be useful. Did I pick the right one?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Alpha222 on February 12, 2011 at 1:38am

Finally！！

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on May 25, 2011 at 2:59am

20th idea: make Dispatch match the Weave tool

it's really useful to dispatch a list (or tree), modify the ouput lists differently, then weave them back in the same order. the problems are:

1. the dispatch only has 2 output lists unlike the weave that can have multiple inputs

2. the outputs of disatch are named A and B, and it outputs "true" values in A, yet the weave inputs "true" values in the second list, because "true" is interpreted as 1, which is the name of the second inut hook (so you have to invert the boolean list used in dispatch or connect the lists the other way around).

i think it would make sense to make dispatch work as weave does (integer pattern instead of boolean, more then 2 outputs)

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on May 25, 2011 at 3:50am

Hello Andrei,

Is this not what the Sets>Tree>Stream Gate does for us?

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on May 25, 2011 at 3:33pm

hello

not really, i just would like the dispatch to work more like the complement of weave as i explained above

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on May 26, 2011 at 3:50am

Again, how is this different than the stream gate?

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on May 26, 2011 at 4:22am

Wow, I swear I had used the stream gate to do this before! Sorry for the assumption...just tried it and see what you mean. So it would be like stream gate, but with a pattern input instead of a single allowed value...

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on May 26, 2011 at 10:38am

don't really see how that would be the opposite of pick n' choose but anyways, i'm just saying that the dispatch should be able to output more then 2 lists.

(so you can dispatch a list in 3 or more lists, make some different modifications to each, then weave them back together in the same order)