feature idea: drag and drop geometry into GH window

So I have no idea if this would be practical to implement, or useful enough to be worth the trouble, but it occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to drag geometry from the rhino window directly onto the GH canvas, and have it automatically create a parameter referencing that geometry. It would be fine if it were a generic geometry parameter, and slightly better if it could sense the geometry type (if it were only one kind) and create the appropriate parameter type. (Meshes make a mesh parameter, curves make a curve parameter, etc.)

doesn't change any major functionality, but allows for one click and drag in the place of:

double-click and type to add parameter

right click to select "set one geometry"

click to specify geometry

something like the attached video...

Attachments:

drag_geo.mp4, 116 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on July 9, 2011 at 6:03pm

I was thinking about this too and what I came up with was if an object in rhino was selected then pulling the appropriate parameter onto the GH canvas would automatically instantiate the object and deselect the object in rhino. I have no idea if this is possible though.

Chris

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on July 10, 2011 at 1:24am

I'll add to this, I always thought it would be good if you had geometry selected in Rhino and when you opened GH for the first time it would create all the Params of the selected geometry on the canvas already Points in Points, Curves in Curves etc.

Permalink Reply by Martin Dembski on July 10, 2011 at 2:32am

Hi,

also thought about that, and it would be great but I think there are some problems to solve, just think of, if you have selected for example 4 curves and one box, how it will be referenced? Solutions could be that there will be a box param and also a curve param with 4 curves, but also possible could be that there will be just one geometry param with all geometries inside, or a box param with 4 curve params in the Grasshopper canvas and so on. So for this case you would need another window where you can change the settings how it will be referenced and in this case it's maybe faster to do it the old way, but on the other hand it would be nice to test it, which way is the best one. Anyway it would be great to have this option.

Best,

Martin.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 10, 2011 at 7:59am

This particular idea sounds a bit odd to me. I'd rather not generate a bunch of objects automatically. Though I can create certain clickable regions -let's call them "action links"- that do potentially useful things. I'll need to think about this, but it does sound like it would have wide applications.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on July 10, 2011 at 4:19am

Also thought of this in certain situations. In regards to Martin's reply, I'd say either a few global switches on input behavior (single param vs individual params) or a popup like the one that shows up when you drag a file into Rhino (open file, import file ...).

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on July 10, 2011 at 9:01am

This sounds like a really good idea. We could think in some kind of active state in which grasshopper receive all geometry you select and drag in. I'm thinking about this state to simplify process of detect it'd you are dragging a grasshopper file, geometry or whatever.

Could be nice to control rhino object visibility from grasshopper, because sometimes to have redundant geometry in viewport doesn't help. All videos, screen captures and media we have in the community are maked hiding grasshopper geometry or rhino ones. If you need to hide some kind of complex object pattern could be nice make this step easier.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on July 10, 2011 at 11:42am

Unfortunately I won't be able to hook into these drag events. I can ask the guys in Seattle to add some form of drag+drop that kicks in when geometry is dragged off the viewport.

The general idea is good though, it would be nice to be able to get rid of a few mouse-clicks.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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