Changing Viewports

Every time I import something into Rhino Mac, the lines face 'top’
when in reality most of the time it’s the 'front’
it’s really annoying to keep rotating everything to fit it into 'front’
is there a way I can change top to be front and everything else will change according to where front is for good?

What application made the files you importing?
What is the file format?

My guess is the files are drawn coplanar to the XY plane. In Rhino, that’s the Top view construction plane.

If your imported objects are drawn in XZ, then they would would in the Front.

yes, they’re DWG… so no way to do what I want to do, ey? :smile:

…and while I have you on here… sometimes a line that is 180 inches ends up being a super weird diameter of a circle, so instead of creating a circle with a diameter of 57.29577951308232, I simply want to turn the 180" line into a circle… is that doable in Rhino?

Hi IZabella - use a macro like this

! Import Pause Pause RemapCPlane CPlane Front

Make sure Top is the active viewport (maximize it to be sure) when you run the macro.

-Pascal

Please send me a small DWG file that exhibits this behavior. I have a copy of AutoCAD too so I can see it from both sides of the import.
Send it attached to a message to tech@mcneel.com
Please include this URL so we know what to do with it:
Changing Viewports

I don’t understand your second questions about a line becoming a circle and being oddly scaled.

sorry, I’m RhinoIlliterate:) What is a macro?

s-scroll_13-80-A11.dwg (35.2 KB)

Hi Izabela - a macro is text with a series of commands that execute one after the other. For now, Copy the macro and with the Top view maximized, Paste in the Rhino command line and see if that does anything good.

-Pascal

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BRILLIANT! Thank you!!! Do you happen to know anything about this?
…sometimes a line that is 180 inches ends up being a super weird diameter of a circle, so instead of creating a circle with a diameter of 57.29577951308232, I simply want to turn the 180" line into a circle… is that doable in Rhino?

Also, is there a way to save that command you gave me under a simple name? like… ‘make front’ or something like it.

Hi Izabella - try

Circle command > Click to set the center, then use the Circumference option.

To make the macro more convenient, set it as an Alias. Options > Aliases.

here’s a little more ‘fail safe’ macro

! Import Pause Pause SetActiveViewport Top RemapCPlane CPlane Front

-Pascal

ummm… should I look for the Circumference option somewhere else? seems to not be here…

I opened the file in AutoCAD 2012 first and it is a “unitless” file that appears to be modeled with the intent as inches.

I started a new file in Mac Rhino using the Small objects - Inches template and Imported the file.
The curves came in on the Top (XY) construction plane just as they were in AutoCAD and with the same size.
This seems to all be correct.

What am I missing?
What did you do differently?

If you want the XY drawn AutoCAD objects to be rotated to the XZ front construction plane, then the macro Pascal gave you should do the trick.

After you set the center point…

-Pascal

1 Like

Actually Pascal answered my question and his way works beautifully… thank you for looking into this:)
Here is his solution for my problem:
! Import Pause Pause SetActiveViewport Top RemapCPlane CPlane Front

OK.
So you DO NOT want the curves to be exactly like they are in the original AutoCAD file.
Pascal’s macro will remap them to the XZ Front CPlane easily.

Be well

Pascal, you are soooo good at this:) Thank you so much!
Do you know of a place where I can learn how to make my renderings look good? V-Ray seemed to produce really good looking stuff for me, but Rhino for Mac is absolutely the worst for a beginner.
I’ll put up 3 rectangular lights like I used to to light something from 3 sides and give it object a photo to work with, give the scene an HDR to work with and it just looks fake, fake, fake…

That’s exactly what I wanted… to take something that’s set up to be viewed in top and make it be in front instead… I think we just misunderstood each other:)

Hi Izabela, it’s a little hard to respond helpfully without knowing a little more about what you are rendering and what it is you don’t like about what you’re getting so far - I’d start a new thread, with some example images at least, and describe what it is about the images you’d like to correct/improve/eliminate…

-Pascal

shall do. thanks!