I checked the wish list and forum and didnt see any mentions of a thumbnail preview type thing. I suppose its already on Michael's mental list. ;-)

That was a slightly ambiguous statement by me. I meant a thumbnail preview on the File>Open dialog.

Hi Nick, I added it to the wiki to keep track of it better than just in my head. :)

One thing though - there are actually 2 different ways that thumbnail previews can work with the File Open dialog.

One way is to add support for the Windows built-in thumbnail view mode - this is the thing on the far right of the top bar of the File Open dialog, where you can switch between view modes like "Tiles, Icons, List, Details, Thumbnails".

If you switch to thumbnails there, then the list would switch to a list of thumbnails (currently it just shows a big icon in it because support for this is not present yet), and that would be one way to see them.


Then the other possible method is to re-arrange the file dialog so that there is space for one thumbnail off to the side somewhere and show that when a file is selected.


I'm thinking of focusing on the first method initially, that would have a benefit of adding the support to other places in Windows that support thumbnail file view as well, like the regular file explorer, etc...

- Michael

Thumbnail preview in explorer would be quite interesting!

Marc

http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/RhinoThumbnailViewer.html

EDIT:

Sorry, that does not work with MoI 3dm files, but OK with the 3dm I have from Rhino.

There must be some difference, or some missing export/save from MoI to 3dm?

Hi Michael,

A Thumbnail Viewer for MoI would be a nice addition for V2.

I downloaded a Viewer for my Rhino3, but to be honest I can't remember where from?
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work for MoI's 3DM files only the Rhino ones.

This is how it looks with my Windows XP Folders setup.
Would this be similar to what you're describing?



regards Colin

Hi Steve,

> There must be some difference, or some missing export/save from MoI to 3dm?

Yup, MoI does not write a thumbnail image to the header of the .3dm file - that embedded thumbnail image must be present for that Rhino viewer to work.

So that's the part that I would add - to embed thumbnail images into the .3dm file when MoI writes them.

- Michael

Hi Colin,

> This is how it looks with my Windows XP Folders setup.
> Would this be similar to what you're describing?

Yup, that's the same thing.

Also if you click on the button to the right of the "Folders" button in the screenshot that you show, you should get a little menu that lets you pick "Thumbnails" as the content to show, and then each item in the list should show up as an individual thumbnail.

- Michael