Best Workflow Between Rhino and AutoCAD? Looking to Speed Up Our Process

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Hi everyone,

We’re a bespoke manufacturing company always looking for ways to improve our drawing process — both in quality and speed. We’ve tried quite a few things lately but still haven’t found that “silver bullet.”

Our main challenge is that clients always require both paperspace and AutoCAD modelspace, so AutoCAD has to stay in the mix. The problem is that going from Rhino 3D drawings to AutoCAD tends to be slow and repetitive, especially when it comes to redrawing or cleaning up lines, its effectively a redrawer as the Make 2D, hatches and layers are never that great upon export.

We recently tried Inventor, thinking it would communicate better with AutoCAD, but unfortunately, it doesn’t quite meet our needs either.

So, my question is:
:backhand_index_pointing_right: Has anyone found useful workarounds or efficient workflows for this?
:backhand_index_pointing_right: Does anyone do all their modeling and 2D drawings (including paperspace) straight in Rhino, and if so, how well does that work for you?
:backhand_index_pointing_right: Is there a quick or reliable way to export Rhino layouts to AutoCAD that keeps clients happy?

Any thoughts, examples, or ideas would be much appreciated — even if just to spark some inspiration!

We are currently on rhino 7 but looking at rhino 8 for its sections tool capacity… any feedback on this whilst i have your attetntion :slight_smile:

Thanks everyone,

2

Hi mckinlay,

Saving a Rhino file as a dwg preserves the Model/Paper space.

Can you provide specific instances where this isn’t working for you?

3

Thanks for this! We haven’t yet dabbled with paperspace in Rhino, as we don’t have any templates set up and didn’t want to pour hours into it if it wasn’t going to work. It’s great to hear this could be a good workaround.

Would you happen to have a Rhino drawing that includes paperspace layouts so I can see how it’s set up? Really appreciate your help!

4

Here is a quick example.

Note that i used the solids export option for 3d geometry

image
image989×763 64 KB

The text scaling between paper/model space needs consideration, the scaling model/layout doesn’t have a direct relationship with Autosad.

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image979×389 52.3 KB

ModelSpace-R8.3dm (62.3 KB)
ModelSpace-R7.3dm (58.2 KB)
ModelPaper.dwg (31.8 KB)

5

This is super helpful - thank you.

How about scale viewports on Rhino, assume easy enough on Rhino and these would carry over to the export DWG? What about hatches?

Thanks again !

6

Correct

7

we’re kind of similar at our company. Autocad is just a pita, but yes people still request files in dwg format. I pretty much just use Rhino3d now, I just export out what ever file type is requested. For me it was a case of stick with 3d, don’t be tempted to fall back into old 2d autocad ways, just stick with the 3d and you will find yourself ‘just doing it’. Also what helps is when you let go of that search for the ‘perfect’ software, I’ve used a few over the years, and none are close to perfect for every scenario