Introducing Kits 2.0

[Stam (Stamatios Psarras)]

Just a couple of thoughts. Regarding the different kits one might have on their machine.

@teocomi

• it would add a lot of friction to the end user as they would need to know, before sending any objects, in exactly which kit they are defined. This would not be the case if the existing kits were merged into one.

…
Ideally, we want to almost hide the concept of kits from the end users, leaving it only to speckle hackers/developers and systems admins.

I edited a bit your quote but I think this should be one of the core requirements for any future decision

@teocomi

With Kits 2.0 we’re not only proposing a new way of structuring the various object models, but also a new way of using the kits. Kits will no longer complement each other, but contrast each other, so that users will only need to switch in between them in rare occasions (eg an Arup engineer collaborating with Grimshaw on a project where Grimshaw has developed and uses their own kit).
Ideally, we want to almost hide the concept of kits from the end users, leaving it only to speckle hackers/developers and systems admins.

I am not sure I understand how this would be in practice. Will you not be able to have a stream that mixes Arup and Grimshow kits? What about having a custom Object (BuiltElement or whatever) that nests two different kits within it? Let’s say for instance. I have an ArupColumn and I want to combine it with a GrimshawFloor, GrimshawRoom, GrimshawWall to create a CustomProjectHouse object. Maybe the later is also sitting on a separate Kit.

Totally understand that you should solve the determinism issue and probably by simplifying Kits is helping. What I am thinking as a nice example would be the way GH is dealing with missing libraries. If you don’t have the library required for the script then you cannot open it. The .ghx file has enough information to know exactly what library is required. Can’t the streams have that information for Kits as well? That way you will get prompts regarding any missing Kits for a given stream. Ideally you would also allow for an option to automatically fetch the right Kit / version for this stream, the user doesn’t have to know anything about what kit they are using, when receiving data. This might add a bit more work on your end and the future developers but would offer the best user experience.