Hello,

In my opinion the Rhino command interface presents a huge drag on that product. Just take a look at the number of new users (especially on the Mac side) that are struggling with that interface decision that is a throwback to the old days. A toolbox for commands not readily apparent has been suggested in the past for MoI which be a compromise but cluttering the MoI interface with a million options that break established UX rules for clarity is not the way to go. McNeels issue with that learning curve will not get better until they commit to doing a major overhaul on that interface.

Michale said > Typing in command names to launch everything also means you have to remember a lot of kind of arcane names ...

When I want Boolean Union, I type Boolean Union. Not very arcane or difficult to remember. I guess the average Rhino user uses 20 or so operations / commands on a normal day. Just as the average MoI user. Believe me, these can be held in ones head.

Some commands are used rarely, if ever. Arcane ? No, just not used. Not by everyone. A nice example in my eyes is the Fair command. I rarely use, but I am glad that it's there when I need it. Arcane ? No, just not used very often.

As to you suggestion to switch to Rhino if I find MoI too cumbersome : That has already happened. I still like MoI, and I am a very big fan of you in the way you handle user requests and problems. A serious hat-off for your work. Nothing but astounding!


> When you type a command inside Rhino do you release the mouse ?

Yes. And I leave the mouse-pointer where it is as well. Because often, the objects that get manipulated by the command I am typing in are the ones that are where or near the mouse anyway. So instead of running the mouse all over the screen to select the command, and than back to select the object(s), I leave it where it is. Saves kilometers of mouse-movement.

No radial menu on the screen ? (I have not Rhino)
That is the more killed one process!
I see guys who use that on Blender! That is speeding like light!

Hi Dan,

> I don't think that having suggested commands or an autocompletion feature would really change
> the overall workflow at all, though.

There are probably cases where it would... The main focus for that input field in MoI is for typing in x,y,z point values. One of the things you can type in is relative coordinates like if you're drawing a line you can type in r5,6 for the second point to place it at x+5, y+6 from the start point. With an autocomplete popup for command names running, there would probably be some kind of hiccup and a menu popping out when someone tried to do that.

That type of thing makes me think that it would probably work better to have a separate control for typing in command names, something that you could optionally make appear on the side pane and then when you typed into that control since it was focused just on typing in command names and not on other things like x,y,z inputs it would be easier for it to go "hog wild" with various fancy stuff like an autocomplete list when you started typing into it.


> Besides, aren't there some commands that don't actually have a button in the GUI associated with them,
> and you have to know what they are beforehand? (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

There are but I consider that to be a hopefully temporary design flaw. I would like to expose those things on the GUI in some kind of "advanced tools" dropdown somewhere.

Certainly I wouldn't want to use a current design flaw for reasoning about how to implement something... One of the pretty fundamental design philosophies behind MoI is that I'd rather leave something hanging or just not implemented yet if there isn't a pretty clear way on how it integrates with the whole. The reason why is that once you just start sticking on features just to have more features they end up getting stuck on in awkward ways and pretty soon you've got scores or even hundreds of features which make things weird for new users and you can't remove any of them because each one is someone's favorite thing... That's basically how things get bloated and complex over time and I'm very focused on avoiding that with MoI.

Anyway like I mentioned before I could see in the future having some optional plug-in that would give you the autocomplete behavior that you were asking for - so don't get me wrong I'm not saying that it will never happen. Just that it probably won't be part of the default setup.


> <...> An autocompletion feature would help the user discover those hidden commands.

Well like you mentioned later on, nobody really would know from the beginning that you can type in command names in the XYZ input box anyway, so it doesn't really help much with command discovery for the vast majority of cases...

But imagine if you could go into a "Script library browser", and go to a section like "Command handling", and there was an entry in there for "Command line entry with autocomplete", and you could hit a checkbox on there and then a field would appear in the side pane and you could then type in names there with the dropdown. That would actually have a chance at being discoverable by someone who was really interested in typing in command names.

- Michael

Hi Ditto,

> I guess the average Rhino user uses 20 or so operations / commands on a normal day. Just as the
> average MoI user. Believe me, these can be held in ones head.

For the most frequently used ones, setting up a keyboard shortcut does the same job really...

For the ones that are not used very frequently (like less than once a minute say), there just isn't much to gain over just using the regular menu with the mouse. MoI's side pane menus are usually quite a bit quicker to access than the regular "pull down from the top" menus because they stay open and also the buttons are larger squarish targets with an icon and text combined.

It's a great advantage in simplicity having a single mechanism that combines both a menu and a toolbar mechanism together.

Having said all that, I would say that having some more type-in command options is certainly a possibility for some optional plug-in in the future. It just hasn't been a priority for the default MoI UI. In fact the priority for MoI's UI was initially exactly the opposite of that, the focus for MoI at the start was to make it possible to run the program from a drawing tablet in your lap with your feet up and never having to touch even a single key on the keyboard at all for regular operation. That's become less of a priority but it's still what has primarily shaped MoI though, if that helps explain why typing in command names just hasn't been a focus...

- Michael

I like the idea of having a separate, dedicated command box, even if it's an optional plug-in. It makes more sense to me than using the x,y,z input box to enter commands. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.