Grasshopper 0.8.0005 ready for plug-in testing

Dear GHA developers,

I'm about to release Grasshopper 0.8.0005 to the public. Since there are a fair amount of SDK breakages I'll post a debug version here first so everyone can test their own code before it goes out to the public. Since this is a debug version it'll be cumbersome to use and there's a lot of extra info and weird colours in the UI.

Download the installer.

For pure component and parameter code there should be little or no difference, but if you're doing anything 'special' you might run into problems. Specifically:

● GH_Canvas.Graphics can now only be called during a redraw procedure. The Graphics object no longer exists between paint events. There's a new function called GetGraphicsObject() which returns a non-paintable Graphics instance.

● GH_Capsule has been restructured and a lot of the rendering code has been moved to GH_CapsuleRenderEngine.

● A lot of interface classes have been changed, deleted or marked as obsolete.

● The User Data implementation of IGH_Goo has been removed as it wasn't operational.

If you have a problem running under the new SDK, please post the error message you get here and I'll try and come up with a solution.

I've also uploaded a new build of the SDK helpfile.

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This is a list of changes (SDK changes not included) for this release:

● The deep-down-display-plumbing has been rewritten. The Grasshopper canvas is now drawn on the screen in a completely different fashion, be on the lookout for weird behaviour and novel crashes.

● Added customizable display threshold to profiler widget.

● Added a Reverse option on all parameters in addition to Flatten and Graft.

● Added constant info to the PathMapper mask dialog.

● Added 'Copy Content' and 'Copy Data Only' menu items to the text panel.

● Improved add-on icon placement on the banner.

● Rewrote Colour Picker control from scratch.

● Rewrote Number Slider control from scratch.

● Added a new Digit Scroller control to replace all standard windows numeric up/down controls.

● Added a new Digit Scroller control as a special object.

● Added a new data type for groups of geometric objects.

● Added Create Group component (Transform tab).

● Added Destroy Group component (Transform tab).

● Added Merge Group component (Transform tab).

● Added Split Group component (Transform tab).

● Added a Transform Matrix type and parameter.

● Added Compound Transform component (Transform tab).

● Added Split Transform component (Transform tab).

● Added generic Transform component (Transform tab).

● Added Transform Matrix display object (Transform tab).

● All Transform components now output Transformation data.

● All Transform components now have optional geometry inputs.

● Double clicking on the trackbar portion of a slider now pops up an input textbox.

● Added a Settings browser window (File menu). Note that this is not supposed to be a true Settings interface.

○ Fixed a problem with the popup search box not showing up sometimes.

○ Floating parameter icons now center themselves in the space left over by the state tags.

○ 'Export Hi-Res' menu item is now disabled if no document is loaded.

○ Fixed a problem with tooltips on the Grasshopper banner assembly icons.

○ Parameter flatten settings were not recorded in the undo-stack, this is fixed.

○ Parameter graft settings were not recorded in the undo-stack, this is fixed.

○ Fixed a bug with Curve|Line intersection and degenerate curve boundingboxes.

○ Fixed a bug in the Shatter Curve component (thank you to])

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 23, 2011 at 12:31am

Hi Stan,

I added that override, but it requires you change the settings xml by hand. I didn't write a dedicated interface for this yet which is why I omitted it from the list of changes. You'll need to find the following two lines in the grasshopper_kernel.xml file and change the limits to your innermost desires:

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Stan Carroll on February 23, 2011 at 1:29am

Terrific, Thank you David.

Sounds easy enough to change the xml. The only difficult thing will be limiting my innermost desires ; )

Permalink Reply by Thomas Bildsøe on February 24, 2011 at 2:14am

Hi David

Nice work, but i have a comment on the Colour swatch. I find the shadow you've made somewhat counter-intuitive. The only actual feedback of what colour i've chosen is through the small box to the bottom left. I think the previous color swatch worked perfectly.

Kind regards

Thomas

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 24, 2011 at 2:36am

Hi Thomas,

my reasoning was as follows (it might well be wrong):

1) It's very difficult to pick the exact colour you want from a gradient image under any circumstances.

2) It's very difficult to pick a transparent colour off an opaque screen under any circumstances (gradient or no gradient).

These two assumptions (if correct) mean that no colour picker that allows you to navigate the entire colour space is going to be satisfactory in terms of accuracy. Even though it may give a stronger appearance of accuracy.

3) The best way to pick a colour for an object is to have the object in question update in realtime while you pick the colour.

So I tried to focus on point 3 while giving myself a lot of license by discarding any design constraints imposed by points 1 & 2. In the first version of the Colour picker I actually had the cube slice also cast a shadow onto the box behind it, even adjusted for transparency. But I found that introduced too much visual gunk.

It is wholly possible that my threshold for 'too much gunk' is different from yours and that the shadow cast onto the colour slice is something you would be much happier without. I don't mind adding a switch somewhere that allows you to turn this off, but I'd like to wait a short while so people can get accustomed to the new UI.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on February 28, 2011 at 12:49am

I am assuming that the way this version behaves is because it is a debug version...meaning changing a part of the def means you almost see the information travel through the def like a snake eating a mouse...

For things like the UDP receiver component, which receives near continous changes, it slow things down, and each new piece of data ripples through the def...but I tried with other things...changing a slider, and the behavior is the same...so I think my assumption is correct and for now most gHowl things seem to be working. Will do a more rigorous test this evening. Thx for the update!

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 28, 2011 at 4:06am

Yup, Debug builds refresh the screen on every change during a solution. It also draws those annoying labels over components indicating their state and the hatch pattern on the toolbars. None of this happens in the proper Release build.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on February 28, 2011 at 1:18am

Thanks for the advance build for testing.

I tried compiling my plugins against the debug libraries and should be only minor changes for my plugins if the release is similar.

Permalink Reply by Philipp on February 28, 2011 at 5:20am

hmmm i have a strange problem with installation.... it hangs after a while

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on February 28, 2011 at 5:58am

I saw this type of behavior on a friends computer in January.

Whilst the installer was hanging, I monitored the grasshopper folder and somewhere therein a file kept growing until gigabytes in size until I terminated the installer. I don't have access to the computer, but we never resolved why this would happen.

Permalink Reply by Philipp on February 28, 2011 at 6:07am

yeah, after all it display "disk is full" message althrough i have 300 gb on it....

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 28, 2011 at 6:51am

I don't know why this would happen. I'm not in charge of the installer and don't understand enough about it to try and track this down.

I'll try and remember to release an installer-less version from now on in parallel with the official releases (basically just a zip archive, unzip where ever you want and install rhp manually).

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on February 28, 2011 at 6:56am

If it's just a matter of copying the gh folder contents, it's probably rare enough at this stage that the user can do this from another pc. I wasn't sure if the installer was also initializing any other settings.

I've no idea why this would happen either, very bizarre.