Architectural symbols / dynamic blocks?

Doesn’t anyone tried VisualArq?
Looks like the simplest, and for less than 400 euros, the cheapest solution.
For architects at least :wink:

Originally Revit was sell for less than a 1k, then autodesk bought it.

Software is becoming more and more expensive which means Rhino is ridiculously cheap by comparison (ssh! don’t tell them!). modo801 is out and the upgrade cost is $500 - that’s more than half the price I paid for my Rhino license and it’s just an upgrade. There are impressive new features and improvements in the new version but if I pay for the upgrade it will only be for the new snapping engine (snapping in modo was until now, laughably inept) - none of the other new features are relevant to me. So I’ll pay $500 for improved snapping functionality that probably won’t be as fluid, obvious or well engineered as snapping in Rhino.

On a more positive note - there are some movements in the other direction. Autodesk has released a LT version of Revit, Maya and Inventor (but not Max for some reason). I had to upgrade my AutoCAD LT license recently and I found that upgrading to the Inventor LT suite (AutoCAD LT and Inventor LT bundled together) was less than the cost to just upgrade the AutoCAD LT license alone. I’m toying with the program now, no time to invest in really learning it in depth, but Inventor LT seems to be Inventor without assemblies.

Sorry for the delay, my friends. I had a little vacation but I have been thinking about all the input you have provided here and how to organize it all. I want to capture it all and get it on the wish list.

Arial & Mortenengle
More architecture specific functionality would be nice.

I have been a stand-still for years trying to figure out how to gather and distribute drafting/architectural symbols, block 2D/3D. I still only have some ideas. Maybe Food4Rhino is the answer. Maybe resurrecting Icontool blocks and functionality into some add-on toolbars for Rhino might help in the form of a LabsTools. (Do any of you remember IconTool?)

I also have heard that Rhino needs a Content or Design Manager, that can reach into a model and drag and drop thumbnails of blocks, layers, linetypes, layouts, dimensions styles and other content into another model is the way to go. What do you want to see?

Jeff & Cosmas:
they’re sort of limited regarding typical architectural dimensions so if it were to be implemented in rhino, i’d imagine it would require a custom font to be made… at least going all the way through 16ths… but if the effort were to be made to do such a thing, it should probably go through 128ths…

Absolutely agree. This and proper fractions would catapult Rhino in to the architecture stratosphere (where it deserves to be because it does many, many things that the architecture programs don’t).

I have wish listed this as a Rhino 6 feature based on suggestions from other users. They suggested that a “fractional text scale” would help. This would be a percentage of the dimension text height. There would be an options to stack the fraction or not. This Fractional Text Height would also apply to the limit tolerance display that is also stacked in the Limit and Deviation displays.

Fractional display for precision to 1/128th is already supported, but currently it is not stacked.

***Jeff, Halo & Arail
I remember those from Revit. If my memory serves me right, those handles were limited to 2D objects.

  • if you could define objects in a Block to be non-scaleable, that would allow parts of the block to be adjustable while others stay put.***

I know AutoCAD dynamic blocks pretty well. You can assign parameters to rotate, stretch (x,y,z), mirror, parts of your block. You can also create a List control that will allow you to pick from a menu the specific parameters that you want in the pretense of name option.

An example of this is being able to have one table black that can be scale in the x & y (possibly z since we are in Rhino) into any size table. The scales/stretch steps can be restricted to a increment like 6", and a overall maximum and minimum. This concept can apply to a bed, door, window … and more.

With the dynamic bed block, you can add a menu for the selection of the size of bed (king, queen, twin …) and x and the y are scaled according to the sizes in an embedded table. So when you redo your standard CAD blocks as more power dynamic blocks, you have a nice collection of smart blocks.

There is one more feature to blocks a lot of you know from other programs and have asked for in Rhino, that is Attributes. These are on the list but I have no idea how far up or down. An attribute in a block would allow you to change the text, like the section number or the page it is found on, with our exploding the block. You could also trap other information like make, model, finish, color, quality for reporting. Yes there are other ways to do this, but not available without programming.

I have used VisualARQ for 3-4 years now and done a few side projects with it, mostly interior renovations in my free time. I found it really helpful. It has reporting and dynamic section and elevation creation for 2D. It also does reporting for architectural elements like doors, windows, beams, columns. I favorite parts of VisualARQ is the easy adding- changing-deleting door & windows locations, moving-adding-deleting walls, fast complex roof creation. It was very fast to pop in door and windows and adjust them or even delete them later. The walls heals if deleted, moved or copied. The elevations and sections update. They have a eval. Download and give it a try. IMO, it is inspiring to use. (Because VisualARQ uses content styles, it exports these style to Revit using the IFC format. So this is another feature of VisualARQ.)

The more we hear from you and what you want to see added to Rhino, and more likely you will see this in a future Rhino.
From this thread alone, I see suggestions for:

  1. Stacked Fractions
  2. Attributes
  3. Design Content Manager
  4. Dynamic or Smart Blocks

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. There was a lot to cover. I hope I did not get too far off the various topics.

Kind regards.
Mary Ann Fugier
McNeel Technical Support & Training

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Hi Mary,

Welcome back.

This all sounds great. The only other thing that I am hoping for is the ability to control how the Layout module handles new layers. I think we’ve talked about it: When you have several pages with many, many details, and you add a new layer, the contents of that layer will pop up in all those details and you have to go through them one by one to turn them off. It would be nice if we could control how the layout module handles these new layers. Maybe the default would be to have the new layer turned OFF – since chances you are, if you are adding it, it is because you are adding geometry or separating off geometry from whatever is already there and you don’t necessarily want it to show in all the details you have already created. That way, if you want that layer to show up in a particular detail, you can just turn it on, which should be a lot less work.

I am not familiar with Autocad, (I went straight from hand drawing to Rhino) so I’m not sure how they handle it: )
I have just talked to someone who works in Vectorworks and they say the default is for the new layers to NOT show in the preexisting details.

Thank you.

Hi Cosmas- this is implemented in V6- if a detail is active, you can right click on its visibility control (Light bulb) and choose “Layer on in this detail only”. I see that is does not apply to subsequently added layout pages, I’m not sure if that is by design or not, but we’ll sort that out - basically I think it works.

It is by design- when new layouts are added, the layer shows in the new details- you’d need to set it again.

-Pascal

oh… right. that seems like the better way to do it (if i understand correctly)… instead of using a custom font with a specific character for , say, 7/16… rhino just builds the fraction with normal numbers using smaller text height … a standard 7 on top of a line with a 16 under it.

When you create a new layout in AutoCAD it opens with all layers on. But when you copy a layout the new layout opens with all of the settings of the layout it’s a copy of including layers set to freeze. Like many users I have a ‘base’ layout that is blank, all layers on, that gets copied out every time I need a new layout.

Great reply. I’m still working my way through it - a learning experience.

I’m a little wary of straying too far in the direction of AutoCAD blocks. The unnecessarily complex and bureaucratic nature of AutoCAD is one of the things that propels me towards Rhino. I think Rhino handles the universal dilemma - how to expand functionality while increasing complexity as little as is necessary - much better than AutoCAD. The section symbols that I first mentioned in this thread are to me the best of both worlds - they’re blocks but they’re self contained - in other words, you don’t have to open a panel, make selections, click Save or Apply, close the panel, etc. Everything happens within the symbol by clicking on it’s various controls. Rather like Rhino’s gumball. That means, of course, that actual functionality is limited to a few tasks (like the gumball) but this is the necessary tradeoff for a fast workflow.

YES!! It would. I’m a 3ds Max guy that went to auto cad, then I got introduced to rhino. It’s one of the best programs I Ever used untill I ran into both of those issues. No proper fractions in layout mode and no dynamic blocks

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So do we have a way to integrate the gumball into a rhino block?

Just go metric and save yourself the hassle :wink:

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I’m so glad someone said that :slight_smile:

that needs to happen from the top down instead of bottom up… (imo)

u.s government and suppliers of building materials etc need to adopt metric first… then the designers/builders will use it… (happily and welcomingly in most cases)

otherwise, we’d design in metric… convert those numbers to imperial for our material orders and whatnot… convert back to metric to build… convert to imperial when discussing with others in the states who aren’t using metric. etc… no thanks :wink:

Devils advocate (assume you’re in Arch/Eng): you personally author design data to exact panel/sheet/tile sizes beyond just ceiling heights? (And that one is easy enough to overcome)

Don’t get me wrong: it would be monumental change management undertaking to get momentum in that space (in any country; let alone a big one :slight_smile:
Although it seems crazy for me to learn imperial; if I wanted to, I’d have a whole country worth of content to help me.

An industry or two seems more achievable; and (expensive: big manufacturer level) tooling seems like it’s genuinely the most difficult bit…

I have both arguments going here…

You can do it! Start a movement! :slight_smile:

Something new emerged on the dynamic block side? Would be a great implementation for Rhino though.

As in - since the last time you asked? That’s the 7th time within the last 24 hours…

Just discovered that sketch up already has what seems to be a very nice implementation of this:

Always pains me when Sketch Up has features Rhino should have.

Seriously hope McNeel are giving layouts a major overhaul for V6!

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Just some management of expectations: I’m sure that what’s on the table in the WIP at this point will pretty much be what’s in RH6. Major overhauls of anything else will have to come later…

Still waiting…
Rhino has slowed to a halt when it comes to improving 2d and 3d drafting and layouts.
Actually got much slower with V6 :frowning:

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It’s scary to get those in Rhino at this point. The UI in R6 slowed down significantly in comparison to R5. I can only imagine how painfully slow it’ll become with all those architectural improvements. R6 is already in AutoCAD realm where every button press is a slo-mo action movie.