Question for Teachers/Instructors

This has come up a number of times, but I thought I'd ask one more time before I start typing.

Would it, or would it not, be useful to have a switch between Expert and Beginner modes in the Grasshopper UI? At the most basic level this would involve hiding freaky components from the Beginner mode, but I imagine that I could also hide items from popup menus and other UI elements.

As there are more and more components every release, being able to hide the geeky ones must be a relief for beginners. Or am I wrong?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 18, 2011 at 4:42pm

View->Component Panels.

This already exists. You can also adjust the height of the ribbon so that only the panel names remain.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 18, 2011 at 4:49pm

I meant without needing to go to the menu each time to restore it.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 18, 2011 at 4:57pm

Ah clever. I didn't know that.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 18, 2011 at 5:28pm

I should also point out that the MS model has a single click opens the tab for selection of icon and then once selected it closes again. Double Click restores it to being open all the time.

Permalink Reply by Andres Gonzalez on April 18, 2011 at 4:30pm

Wrong, do not hide anything to users.

Permalink Reply by Arturo Tedeschi on April 18, 2011 at 4:49pm

Hi David,

so far I noticed that beginner are not particularly frightened by the UI, but have difficulty understanding the connection logic. Maybe a Beginner mode may have some interactive-help that appears by clicking - for example - the input/output parameters of a component.

The experts users always ask me about the opportunity to customize the UI and create customized components (for example by saving a Cluster component)

Arturo

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 18, 2011 at 5:00pm

Hi Arturo,

are you talking about Clippy? Or something like it?

It's a good idea, but will require a lot more work to get done. A beginner/expert switch probably wouldn't take more than 50 lines of code in total (not counting the database of which components are considered expert only).

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Arturo Tedeschi on April 18, 2011 at 5:08pm

yes David, something like Clippy....

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on April 18, 2011 at 4:50pm

Here's a potential alternative: the ability to customize (and load and share) GH workspaces. As a teacher, I could start my students off with a basic workspace with 5 components for lesson 1, then expand to 10 for lesson 2, and so on and so forth, rather than having simple on-off modes. This way it is left to the instructor to decide what is essential and what is not - I am sure it would be different for different kinds of tasks. I could also see how this might be just as useful for "power users" as for beginners - providing the ability to streamline the interface by hiding unused components.

just my .02!

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 18, 2011 at 5:00pm

I like this idea of fully user customised Workspace Templates

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 18, 2011 at 5:02pm

That is an excellent idea. It will also require quite a bit of work, but since the main purpose of this feature was to ease the suffering of GH instructors this is probably the best idea yet.

I assume you'll want to be able to define Tab names, Panel names and a collection of components per panel?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Wood on April 19, 2011 at 2:58am

This really is a good idea!

How about a way of 'inactivating' unwanted components or tabs as you would with components on the canvas, so that only the 'active' ones are coloured and functional, the rest grayed-out and locked?

I personally tend to learn by remembering where things are in the tab menu's - i understand the Tab, then gradually each component inside. Could an element of learning by remembering to locate components be maintained? So helping the transition to 'full' GH!

Colleagues i've tried to help learn GH are initially mesmerized by the choice of components (especially if they're new to Rhino as well). So i think there is a valid need for what you suggest David, but that it should be an option to customize not a default setting.

Appreciate your work,

David.