RN First use thoughts/questions

Jarek

Hi D-W,

First of all, congratulations on creating such a great tool with a lot of potential. A lot of great ideas and interesting UI, thanks for all your work on RN so far! I did not have a chance to participate in the Beta program, and only recently managed to spend several hours giving RN a test-drive.
Please see below for some notes and questions (random order):

1) Cosmetics: when Tabbing between numeric fields, for example in Transforms > Rotation, it would be nice if the value got selected/highlighted for instant ability to change it. Seems like a standard in many softwares, now we have to a few extra key presses to get rid of the old value.

2) Is it possible to add/remove objects from already defined domain? (if not, could this be added in future?)

3) When I pick a non-block Entity, populate on a domain object and then use Rhino's Purge command with BlockInstances=_Yes (which we do constantly while working), the Entity disappears. I guess behind the scenet RN turns the object into a Block definition but Purge seems to not know RN is using it... It this a bug or no way around this?

4) Would it be possible to have visibility icon for each entity type and domain type?

5) I love the different display modes, point cloud being the best speed vs display one, but sometimes it it important to get the full, shaded objects visible, at least for some Entities. I see the "Shaded" is a global option in the Settings menu, either all or none. Would it be possible to have a Original Shaded mode that would override the Setting and always display given entities as shaded?

6) Editing multiple Entities : using "Adapt Multiple" command, could there be an "APPLY" option that confirms the changes but keeps the command running for many tweaks per-session? (Too bad we can't use the multiple Entities selection and edit things like color and appearance from there, if not all other settings)

7) Could there be a way, if RN panel is open, to select an object in Rhino and then highlight/select the RN Panel domain the object belongs to (if it does)? I guess it would need to be a separate RN Command... Didn't get there yet but I assume with many domains it may be easy to get lost in what's what and this inverse lookup could be handy

8) When working with Rhino blocks and Entities that are originally transformed (Scaled, Scaled2D for example) before picking as an Entity, could there be an option to retain the initial transform and do all RN magic xforms on top of that? Many blocks we work with come in different sizes but the libraries have them somewhat "normalized" via scaling or tweaked via non-uniform scale. Having to go via Local Scale/Size/Offset one-by-one when the blocks reset to original form would be very tedious with many of them, and non-uniform scale seems not possible just yet. Maybe encapsulating these blocks into a new block could be an option that would help to retain the original xforms? (as an option I guess)

9) While the documentation is very helpful to get started, I'd love to see some more thorough explanations of more vague/complex functionalities and options, perhaps with sample comparative illustrations for various settings.

Ok, I know it may seem like a lot for starters and don't get me wrong, the plugin is great and I am only excited about its potential and fully integrating it into our workflow. Thanks again!

--jarek

D-W

Hi Jarek

first of all, I've removed the Bug Reports tag as I don't see anything which would indicate a bug (maybe the entity _Purge case only explanation below).

Here we go:

I will check what can be done here, however, the current state is the default OS reaction to the Tab key.
You can do that by adding new scope which you want to exclude from distribution, direct selection of objects is impossible and this won't change.
This actually shouldn't happen as RN is listening to commands and if _Purge or _BlockManager is called RN is wrapping used blocks in another block to prevent the deletion, so here I guess something changed in v7 as I tested this now in v5 and v6 and it works as expected not deleting the blocks.
In entity properties you can set appearance to None - at the same, it's like hidden. Due to domains well those are regular rhino objects so my advice would be to create a layer for those and actually, you can use _Hide on them and RN will still populate hidden objects.
Yes shaded is a global option as it is dependant on view mode and if it supports shading. At this point, I don't see an option to make it per entity setting, as preview doesn't use display instancing (mainly performance reasons) so it's a combination of techniques i. a. batching which at frame redrawing point doesn't allow to steer individual entity shading.
Interesting I will check that, it seems that it shouldn't be an issue to add Apply option but I must verify it. Umm... I don't get what you mean with sentence in brackets you can select multiple entities on the list using Shift/Ctrl + LMB to pick what you want and edit all possible settings using the Adapt Multiple option including name and color.
Best practice is to have a layer for domains and naming them properly and there's no issue. You can select them from RN panel so they get highlighted in the scene. The inverse approach may be cumbersome as domains can be selected only one at a time and this actually may bring more headaches than solutions.
Quick solution: insert block transform it how you like explode and make a new block out of it and then pick it. The thing is that RN tracks instance definition so when you will change it RN will auto-update all the changes. Instance objects can't be tracked (it's just against logic) as those are only ghosts of instance definitions at the same if you would delete an instance object from a scene it would be deleted from RN which is far more problematic. On the other hand, some render engines keep it's data on this level, at the same, it wouldn't allow proxy functionality and that's actually an unacceptable drawback.
More will come over time. I wanted to have a webinar with a big overview in September hosted by F4R and we have already October... Don't get me wrong F4R guys are great and waiting for my signal, but I'm not ready with scenes to cover all webinar topics. This is my ineptitude, although in the meantime I was invited to present RN in the BW3 ArchViz conference amongst the greatest like Tomorrow and The Common Point. Time is not made out of rubber, unfortunately 🙁 I'm working here almost 24/7 on every possible front, so please be patient. I prefer a solid way of doing things once instead of partially covering things in small chunks.

Jarek Ok, I know it may seem like a lot for starters, and don't get me wrong, the plugin is great and I am only excited about its potential and fully integrating it into our workflow. Thanks again!

Thanks for the kind words! I hope it will suit your workflow and become more pleasant in use after a bit longer play with it.

D-W

Jarek 3) When I pick a non-block Entity, populate on a domain object and then use Rhino's Purge command with BlockInstances=_Yes (which we do constantly while working), the Entity disappears.

@Jarek Can you explain this a bit more? I ran today many tests regarding this and I cannot reproduce this in any conditions. Is it inside some special macro or its called via some script runner? The typical call of Purge is working as expected across v5/v6/v7 and in simple macro, it still works. Please provide more info on your context here to evaluate this issue.

D-W

Jarek 6) Editing multiple Entities : using "Adapt Multiple" command, could there be an "APPLY" option that confirms the changes but keeps the command running for many tweaks per-session?

D-W Interesting I will check that, it seems that it shouldn't be an issue to add Apply option but I must verify it.

Checked, verified, implemented, and tested. 🤗

Multiple edit just in panel UI moved to 1.1 to-do list for now, but I don't promise as this is quite a lot of work which should be put rather in extending features than polishing UI 😉

Jarek

D-W You can do that by adding new scope which you want to exclude from distribution, direct selection of objects is impossible and this won't change.

To clarify, I was talking about adding more objects to the original object collection of the Domain, so if I picked 2 boxes as the main domain, I though I could add 3rd one without messing with scopes, if it makes sense. Maybe I just still don't get how it all works...

D-W I don't get what you mean with sentence in brackets you can select multiple entities on the list using Shift/Ctrl + LMB to pick what you want and edit all possible settings using the Adapt Multiple option including name and color.

I was thinking that since I am able to select multiple entities in the Panel UI, why not allow any changes to the color, display type etc. made via UI when multiple selected apply to all selected Entities, without a need to go to Adapt Multiple, intuitively that's what I wanted to do.

D-W Quick solution: insert block transform it how you like explode and make a new block out of it and then pick it.

Good idea, thanks... I'll need to write some sort of smart block wrapper since often I would have 10+ entities at least to go with...

Everything else sounds good, thanks again-

--jarek

Jarek

D-W
Here is a screencapture of the steps:
https://www.screencast.com/t/ep4IO3K6

I tested some more, and in one instance, it worked ok. That's when I created the Ecosystem, and then all at once picked 3 entities (1 non-block, 2 blocks). In that case Purge did no damage.
Once I picked them one by one later on, always purge deleted non-blocks from the solution.
Also later in the Rhino session the first scenario (picking all at once) also was prone to Purge problem.
Can you see any of that on your end?

D-W

Jarek I see. Indeed looks like a bug. I will make more tests in that matter as this shouldn't happen at all. It's interesting that only auto-wrapped blocks are purged, this is odd.

Jarek To clarify, I was talking about adding more objects to the original object collection of the Domain, so if I picked 2 boxes as the main domain, I though I could add 3rd one without messing with scopes, if it makes sense.

Ahh... Got it now. I don't know if this won't bring overcomplication here but this should be doable. However, the new domain won't mess with scopes as all domains are taken into account in one primary scope so adding domains won't increase the count of scopes. Does this make sense to you?

Jarek I was thinking that since I am able to select multiple entities in the Panel UI, why not allow any changes to the color, display type etc. made via UI when multiple selected apply to all selected Entities, without a need to go to Adapt Multiple, intuitively that's what I wanted to do.

Ok, now it's clear to me I had this on my to-do list, but IIRC there was an issue that this triggered many times at once RN to recalculate the distribution. I will revisit this for sure at some point. I don't know if the color change will be so intuitive in this case as selecting one color id box will also change all other colors which may be unexpected by the user.

Jarek Good idea, thanks... I'll need to write some sort of smart block wrapper since often I would have 10+ entities at least to go with...

You should be able to handle this in RS in no time. Actually, you can use also this. Running _MakeUnique command on the transformed block should do all the work for you.

Jarek

D-W Ahh... Got it now. I don't know if this won't bring overcomplication here but this should be doable. However, the new domain won't mess with scopes as all domains are taken into account in one primary scope so adding domains won't increase the count of scopes. Does this make sense to you?

Yes and no 🙂 Meaning: it makes sense that scopes take into account all domains, but yet I think domains as collections of objects should follow some organizational logic, so if Domain1 is all grass surfaces and Domain2 is all paved surfaces and I add some geometry to my grass objects by either having added more to Rhino or simply forgetting in the 1st go, I should be able to add to Domain 1 instead of creating a new domain some changes happen to the model. Optionally I could delete the old Domain1 and add all new "grass" collection as new Domain1 but an option to add more objects to a domain (or remove, too) would be handy to keep things less complicated. This is all "theory" as I did not do any real work with RN just yet, only how I imagine I would want to work with it.

D-W I will revisit this for sure at some point. I don't know if the color change will be so intuitive in this case as selecting one color id box will also change all other colors which may be unexpected by the user.

Rhino seems to be following similar logic with Color in Layers panel (multiple selected, picking one to change changes them all). So color and display mode would be nice, with the Local Scale/Size it's more tricky as you would need to add "varies" in some fields in some combinations but eventually down the road not needing to go to Adapt Multiple would be a good UI simplification.

D-W You should be able to handle this in RS in no time. Actually, you can use also this. Running _MakeUnique command on the transformed block should do all the work for you.

That's my plan. MakeUnique would not work since I actaully down the road need the original blocks to be unwrapped and read their final transforms, so it would just take 1-level explode to get rid of the wrapper blocks and read the final values. Not a big deal, can handle that via RS. Thanks!

Jarek

D-W I see. Indeed looks like a bug. I will make more tests in that matter as this shouldn't happen at all. It's interesting that only auto-wrapped blocks are purged, this is odd.

hi D-W,
I just saw the same Purge behavior on using one of the Library Presets (Cut grass). Just FYI, most likely the problem you fingured out would fix this as well, but letting you know since it clearly did not affect only the wrapped blocks but the library ones as well.
thx,
--jarek

D-W

Jarek if Domain1 is all grass surfaces and Domain2 is all paved surfaces

IMHO best approach here would be to have two separate ecosystems for that

Jarek an option to add more objects to a domain (or remove, too) would be handy to keep things less complicated

That would require an entire domain management dialog at least which would be much more confusing than it is now 🙂 The long beta stage with people from major studios was enough to learn where is the point to stop nesting stuff and hard lesson that all should be dead simple.

Jarek it's more tricky as you would need to add "varies" in some fields in some combinations but eventually down the road not needing to go to Adapt Multiple would be a good UI simplification.

I agree. At some point for sure, I will revisit this. At this point, it provides all the options. I added Apply to my log to check how much work it would take to inject this there.

Jarek Not a big deal, can handle that via RS.

Glad to hear 🙂

Jarek

D-W IMHO best approach here would be to have two separate ecosystems for that

Yeah, I think that's probably the best approach. As I said I am yet to try using in on any serious production so I will follow your guidance, after all you know it a bit better 😉

D-W

Jarek I've tested this and seems to be good now in all cases RN-16

Jarek

D-W Checked, verified, implemented, and tested. 🤗

Great, looking forward to checking that out, thanks for listening.

D-W this is quite a lot of work which should be put rather in extending features than polishing UI

Good point - I have full trust that you prioritize the development well!