Graphical Sends for REAPER

Requires Reaper v7.53 or later. This is 100% native ReaScript, you don't need to install anything. Just extract to your scripts folder and run it from the actions list. 3 easy steps:

Choose Options > Show REAPER resource path in explorer/finder. Extract the content of the zip (the GraphicalSends.lua file & the Graphical_Sends_Images folder) into the 'scripts' folder there.
Choose Actions > Show action list. In the bottom right choose New action > Load ReaScript. Choose GraphicalSends.lua and click Open.
In the actions list you'll now see Script: GraphicalSends.lua. Choose it and click Run.

Visual representation of Sends, Receives & Master/Parent Send

The flexibility and potential complexity of Reaper's routing is well known to us all, with great affection and maybe perhaps occasionally a bit of head scratching. If you're a visual thinker then this is going to make that a lot easier, less prone to error, and much much more fun. Graphical Sends reads all of Reaper's normal sends functionality for one selected track and displays them as source → destination cables, aligned to each corresponding Track Control Panel. The sends, the receives, the master/parent send, all at once.

Visual representation of sends and receives

I'm very pleased with that, very useful. But it would be even more useful if they were fully interactive, right?

Interactive send patching & removal

You can drag from one track to another to create a send...

Regret doing that? Not a problem, you can drag again to delete it...

If your destination track has a custom colour, it'll grab that and use it...

If you find sending a sidechain to be a bit laborious, you'll like this; drag to a track and hold over the destination socket for a moment and there you go, choose channels 3/4 as the destination...

Creating a sidechain send to channels 3/4

The script is all about a single track, but if you do have multiple tracks selected when you drag to create a send, then it'll give you the option to create sends from them as well...

I'm not sure what the reverse of that might be, but if you use Reaper's 'build multichannel routing' command from a big multi-out plugin then you'll get a lot of sends, which really benefits from this graphical confirmation...

Patching shortcuts

My experience is that once you start working this way, you don't want to do it the old way. But what if a track is scrolled off screen? Or an annoying distance away? Well, here's two bits of contextual curation:

Popular sends - If some tracks in your project are getting a lot of receives, you're more likely to route to them again, wouldn't you say? They'll be some manner of special project role, like your aux effects, or your cue buses, things like that.
Recent sends - If you've recently routed to a destination, there's a better than average chance you're going to route to it with another track, because you're in middle of doing some manner of task.

Based on those assumptions, the script tallies which tracks those are, and offers them up next to your source socket as patch shortcuts, each with a handy destination socket...

Send Volume & Mute

So, if you can inspect them, and create them, and remove them... well obviously it would be a real shame if you couldn't tweak them. So you can, and right where it's the most visually informative - on the cable itself.

The floating control will appear when you drag on any cable - send, receive or master/parent (note that for a master/parent send the level of the send is the level of the sending track, so that's what it changes.) Dragging changes the level, mousewheel also works, or double click the value to type it in. Sends and receives can also be muted.

Toolbar

The toolbar has buttons for preferences, dock/undock, Master/Send/Receive enable/disable, a preview of the cable style for each of the cable types, a button to enable or disable the patching shortcuts, and a close button to close the script, which of course you'll never want to do ;)

Each segment of the Master/Send/Receive is clickable, so you can choose which combination of the three you want to see...

Cable Styling

I've made six styles of cable - Normal, Thin, Thick, Hollow, Dotted & Braided. Each will take on the custom colour if there is one on the destination track.

Which one you prefer, and which ones you feel should represent which type cable, has proved to be subjective and contentious. So... er... do a load of user preferences? Yeah...

Preferences

Each of the cable types have their own settings, and so do sends to channel 3/4 and receives to channel 3/4. For each, choose one of the six cable styles, the colour of the cable, and whether the cable takes on the custom colour of a destination track if it has one.

You can choose whether to show the cable style previews in the toolbar. You can adjust the strength of the custom colour fill for the track blocks behind the cables. You can tell the script to tweak the brightness of colours it uses for tracks with custom colours if they're a bit dark against the dark background.

If you've got the Patch Shortcuts enabled in the toolbar, there are preferences for how many of the most recent, and how many of the most popular, of the sends to show as patch shortcuts.

Housekeeping

HiDPI - Fully supports HiDPI/retina at scalings of 100% / 150% / 200%. The correct scale will be used if your Reaper HiDPI scaling is set correctly. Your Reaper HiDPI scaling is set correctly, isn't it, yeah? Are you sure? Been having any size issues of anything? Maybe have a look at that, yeah? ;)

Docking - Dock the script to the left of the TCP, then you can just leave it running and resize it in/out of use with the vertical divider. You may find the way Reaper does that docking to be a bit fiddly and confusing, but persevere, you only need to do it once; the script will remember where you put it next time you open it.