Draw order of annotations in relation to 3D objects

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Hi all,

I made this simple Rhino drawing to show the problem I encounter when using the ‘Draw Order’ function inside Rhino. I know this problem has been raised in the past as well. However, the last post I came across was from 6 years ago, so I’m curious whether there is an option in the newer versions of Rhino to fix this.

For the simple creation of Architectural drawings, hatches with patterns are created in combination with 3D masses and should be exported in both a 2D (top) view and 3D view.

When including the 3D geometry on top of the curves and hatches, the problem becomes clear; the two hatches which are on the same plane start flickering.

Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 152627
Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 1526271593×1065 168 KB

I then start to use the ‘Draw order’ function, and this goes well in the top view. The red hatch goes on top of the green hatch, the outline curve on top of the red hatch.

Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 152509
Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 1525091765×1103 131 KB

But when reopening the 3D view again, the hatches and curves which have been assigned a certain Draw Order, always override the 3D objects in the view, which looks really odd and is ofcourse not the image I want to achieve.

Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 152538
Schermafbeelding 2025-03-25 1525381585×1096 156 KB

Is this problem a problem that still persists everytime when using the ‘Draw order’ function, or is there a way to fix this?

A few sidenotes already:

  • The hatches are fixed; I don’t want to trim my green hatch so it doesn’t override the red hatch anymore, since I want to be able to turn on and off the red hatch for different exports of diagrams.
  • Placing the red hatch or outline curve slightly on top of the green hatch (by 1 mm f.e.) is not an option; it creates a very bad model which is very error prone and shouldn’t be the solution to something like this.
2

Unfortunately, there is no reaction at all on this topic.

Does anyone know if this is at least an issue that Rhino is aware of?

3

Have you tried _SendToBack?

hatch_send-to-back.3dm (96.5 KB)

4

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the reply.
This is indeed a possible solution for small models, thanks!

The downside is that when working with large models—I simplified the one in my first post—there’s often a lot of geometry and hatching involved. To make a single piece of geometry stand out, you have to ‘send to back’ every other element, which becomes tedious.

This also renders the ‘send to front’ function almost useless when you’re combining 2D and 3D geometry, as shown in my example.

I hope Rhino finds a solution for this, but thanks again.

1 Like