Nested groups question

#1

We are continuing to work on a bunch of improvements to the new grouping functionality in 8.1. I am wondering about peoples need for nested groups. I understand that there is often a desire to show sub-groups eg: big chunk of geometry >smaller chunk > some small detail. It is tough to do this as actual nested groups without a lot of fussy group editing commands, ordering commands, etc. I know that Grasshopper allows nested groups, but they don’t seem that useful if you can’t select the nested group because of ordering problems. Do people use this nested group functionality in Grasshopper or is it fine to just create your smaller chunk of geometry in a separate group and then simply overlay it on the bigger chunk group? Would love to hear your thoughts.

thanks,

Lilli

#2

I don’t know how your grouping function works. So it is difficult to tell. I had never used Grasshopper.

 

It is tough to do this as actual nested groups without a lot of fussy group editing commands, ordering commands
Group editing commands o.O If the grouping function is hard to deal, it will not be helpful for the workflow. For example (not the best I know), groups in 3dsMax. Terrible! The groups are only useful to place the parts in the right position.

 

.. is it fine to just create your smaller chunk of geometry in a separate group and then simply overlay it on the bigger chunk group?
What is the different to a "nested group"?

In " my" workflow, I have some “simpel” nodes to group (I know sometimes you could do it with a code block, but I like the Nodes ^^) and while continuing I realized this section of the graph with this group, could be grouped too. This is my imagine of using groups.

#3

I simply envisage ‘grouping’ as what custom nodes are now… but not being custom nodes.

 

Double click opens per ‘layer’. Have some sort of ‘exiting’ command within each layer.

 

Would clean up a lot of ‘Under the hood’ functionality that doesn’t need to be accessed generally (ie. a lot of list management reversals, switches, cuts etc)

Then only the salient ‘nodes’ would appear at the top level.

#4

I use nested groups very often in Grasshopper. They make a difference.

By the way, there is no group functionality at all in the current stable 0.8 version, no?

Can we expect this to be included in the next stable version? If it means having to wait for nested groups, then I’d much prefer getting basic grouping functionality right away, and wait for the nesting in a later version.