Sepentine3D - Missing Functionalities

[lourencovp]

Hello,

Lourenço Vaz Pinto here, giving it a try as mentioned online. I’ve been looking for a NURBS modeller for Linux for quite a while, and I saw your post on the Rhino Discourse asking for feedback. I’m honestly really liking the clean experience so far.

Now, to why I’m here: there are some functionalities that, from my point of view, would be useful additions.

If any of these are simply not part of your objectives or already implemented and I’ve simply missed a different or newer way of doing them, feel free to correct me.

Non-exhaustive list

Software

1. Spacebar as Enter: Spacebar should act as Enter to fulfil commands, as it does in Rhino. This allows for one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, which makes things faster and more efficient.

2. Detail scale in Layouts: In Layouts, the Detail scale should be easily set in the Detail Properties panel.

3. Rhino orbit/navigation: Rhino's standard orbit is done with the right mouse button, unlike what the current Preferences panel says. This is important because it is part of the muscle memory that will be one of the first shocks for anyone coming from Rhino. shift + right-click is used to pan.

4. Layer hatch settings: There should be a hatch/fill setting for each layer, so that any object within that layer automatically uses the specified hatch when cut.

5. Layer print thickness and linetype: These should have a dropdown rather than "rolling options".

6. Opening .3dm files: Opening .3dm files seems to be a bit slow. The centred progress bar is very helpful, though, as it lets you know that the application is at least doing something and hasn't stalled.

7. Navigation of large .3dm files: Navigation of large files is very slow. It seems like the application is always trying to render everything in the file. In Rhino, if a large file is slow, isolating geometry or simply not looking at heavy geometry can make navigation much faster.

8. Layouts are not imported: Layouts don't seem to be imported when opening a .3dm file.

9. Sublayers: Sublayers don't seem to be implemented yet.

10. Multiple layer selection: You can't select multiple layers and turn them off at once; they have to be turned off one by one.

11. Reordering layers: You can't move layers up or down to organise them.

12. Isolate command: The Isolate command becomes extremely slow when there are multiple geometries in the file.

13. Array / Array Path command activation: The Array and Array Path commands require clicking on the command bar to activate them, as pressing Enter doesn't seem to work.

14. Array Path orientation: Array Path doesn't seem to offer orientation options such as Freeform, etc.

15. Visual feedback when selecting geometry: When selecting things as prompted by commands, such as "Select edge" for Fillet, there doesn't seem to be a clear visual cue showing that the edge has been selected.

16. No section or cut plane tool

17. No live section or live plan tool

General

1. Online command list: There should be an online command list, similar to Rhino: https://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/commandlist

2. Website: There should be a website for this software. It certainly deserves one! You could also have a donation option, including monthly "Buy Me a Coffee"-style contributions, which might help cover baseline costs such as website hosting, servers, branding, etc.

3. Icon / branding: Is there an icon/branding for the program yet?

4. Discoverability: The software is currently quite hard to find online.

Things I really appreciate

1. Overall UI is nice and clean, especially in Dark Mode.
2. The curve UI is really pleasant and intuitive.
3. The Fillet UI is super pleasant, and the fact that pushing it out adapts the geometry is a very nice touch.
4. The app on Linux (Bluefin OS) is super snappy!
5. Open source!

These are just some first impressions from a first use, from my point of view, as someone who works daily as an Architect.

I really like the UI, especially in Dark Mode. It's quite nice, and the orange highlight is pleasant and professional.

I'm honestly really impressed that I already don't need to boot into my Windows PC to work on small-scale models for 3D printing. The dream of doing architectural work is still far away, but even getting to this point is already impressive.

This is really impressive considering the amount of time that has gone into it. I hope you continue!

Obrigado,
L

[lourencovp]

Would be great to add Sketchup file format .skp import functionality as it is a very used format!
Also its good that now ctrl+shift allows us to select individual faces. but the same should happen if we try to select multiple faces with ctrl+shift and drag to select

[lourencovp]

Feature Request: Gumball alignment command like in rhino, so we can choose different alignments for the gumball effectively.