Cleaning up models

Rhino
1

Hello. I am starting to model in 3D with Rhino and have rapidly found that the model becomes very messy with additional lines. In particular when using the boolean commands. I realise that the model can be viewed with the shaded setting to ‘clean’ this up and that some of the lines that indicate a surface can be removed but it is more to do with the lines that are left when changes are made. I am very used to the Sketchup logic of creating solid shapes and how easily Sketchup cleans away unwanted lines (or how easy it easy to manually remove them). Is there a workflow that I can use to tidy up the geometry?

2

Hi Jake -

When you don’t post a 3dm file that demonstrates an issue, you have us guessing at what’s going on. Perhaps MergeAllCoplanarFaces works? Or ShrinkTrimmedSrf? Or you want to turn off an object’s isocurves?
-wim

3

Fair point. I think it is to do with going back in to a polysurface shape and adding gometry. In the attached model I have used booleandifference to make a gap and if I were to now fill it in or rationalise the irregularities, the line command seems like a very clunky tool to use to do the job. Is there a quicker way to add surfaces and then delete away the unwanted lines?

Example model.3dm (122.5 KB)

4

I opened your model, but your problem description is very vague. In your model, no lines or other types of curves are to be found, and no gaps between any of the surfaces; there are only 16 surfaces that have been joined. Maybe post some screenshots to explain.

Untitled-46
Untitled-461920×1096 106 KB

Untitled-47
Untitled-472060×1176 160 KB

5

If you are expecting these guys to get cleaned up and disappear

image
image1630×616 56.9 KB

– they won’t, because they have been badly modeled. There’s like a 9° angle in there. If things were all lined up, they could get taken care of by MergeAllCoplanarFaces - which is also an automatic option during Boolean operations.

6

It is merely an example of a situation where lines need to be altered. I take it that means that I can’t go back in and adjust and delete lines?

7

No, you are working with surfaces, not lines. Certainly it’s possible to clean up the mess, but it’s a lot easier in this case to just draw a new box and cut the opening correctly with a curve (on Layer 01) - about 30 seconds work max.

Example model-msh.3dm (2.7 MB)

8

I’m a recent convert from AutoCAD. With any new software it pays to work out how the software does things rather than trying to force your existing workflow on to it. I’m a great fan of Rhino. There’s a lot that I feel it does better than AutoCAD, but there’s still the odd AutoCAD feature that I miss.

The best approach would be work out the most effective way to achieve you task in Rhino, not to try and force an existing approach which may be far less efficient in Rhino.