Elmo: A new command to rebuild curves in Rhino

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

It’s absolutely crucial to include a customizable angle threshold for this tool. That alone will make it possible to fix various issues on many bad curves used in fonts, CNC-milling and general modeling.

[Eugen]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

customizable angle threshold

Yes, this!
Much better than just simply detecting/keeping any ‘kinks’, no matter the angle.

[vanastarr]

Current rebuild command is pure trash anyway. You input symmetrical curves (or curves joined into a curve) and the output is never symmetrical. What are you supposed to do when you need a rebuilt curve to be symmetrical? If you rebuild half of it and mirror it you aren’t definitely going to get G2 across the two halves.

[EricM (Eric Paul Marvets)]

@vanastarr

What are you supposed to do when you need a rebuilt curve to be symmetrical?

Symmetry tools are lacking, but there are hacks.

I mainly extract a control poly, explode and delete half of it, mirror back over the line of symmetry, join (or JoinCopy to preserve history-enabled editing), and then use curve through polyline.

Or you can mirror the curve across the symmetry line, lock the copy, and use set point to get a quick match.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

There is a great tool set in the form of plug-in made for Rhino called “byRhinoGadget”. One of its handy tool is exactly for making symmetrical surfaces. It was discussed in this topic, as well:

Share your favourite scripts, macros and plug-ins

byRhinoGadget includes many, many great tools, but my favourite among them is the ! _SymmetricSrf command which makes the surface points symmetrical by manually placing a mirror plane. This is a huge helper for those who do industrial design with curved surfaces, such like car windshields, bonnets, etc. This is a must have plug-in for any Rhino user! Description from the original author: byRhinoGadget is a collection of script-based commands that were internally used by the Plus Plastic desig…

You can download it from the following link:

byRhinoGadget

[s.alt]

This sounds like a great improvement, e,g, to rebuild offset curves.

[maje90 (Riccardo Majewski)]

Looks super. I didn’t try it.

Please make it accessible as wip also on 8. Then kill it when 9 is out.
I’m still barely touching 8 , there is no way I kill my workflow twice to test 9 while I’m still testing 8.

[Ja-Ka]

Hi,

Exciting news, but there’s a slight problem.

Maybe it’s something obvious that I don’t understand, but I can’t execute the “elmo” tool/script.

• Start R9 latest
• Type “Elmo”
• Download Python script (It downloads the script each time I start R9. Is the script only in RAM?)
• Type “Elmo” at the command after the Elmo download: nothing happens
• Select a curve; type “Elmo”: nothing happens
• In new R9 version, after script download:
  • No icon appears
  • Nothing is listed in the Plug-in list
  • Nothing is visible in the Package manager
  • No extra toolbar or icon is visible as far as I can see
• Is it wrapped inside one of the tools, like rebuild? I can’t spot it.
• Does it work with both .NET Core and .NET Framework?

[mcvltd (Rob McPherson)]

@pastrana For the vast majority of my work I’m dealing with single span curves, so I’d love to see an option for the creation of single span curves only. This would disable the point count and only have the Degree exposed for tweaking.

Also, it desperately needs feedback for deviation from original curve.

[davidcockey]

Initially I had to try using Elmo several times before it worked, and it still take a few seconds after starting Elmo for anything to happen on the screen.

[Gijs (Gijs de Zwart)]

@mcvltd

so I’d love to see an option for the creation of single span curves only

You could do this by setting this through a macro. I’ve created the attached toolbar for this WIP command where you can set single spans degree 2-6:
Elmo.rhc (20.8 KB)

Note: it has some settings already for the next release that shows curve deviation, output to current layer and delete input

[pastrana (Rafael Pastrana)]

@davidcockey

Initially I had to try using Elmo several times before it worked, and it still take a few seconds after starting Elmo for anything to happen on the screen.

@davidcockey Does it take a few seconds every single time you run Elmo, or does speed significantly improve as you run Elmo 1-2 times? Once you are in Elmo, does the speed of the command is on par with that of Rebuild as you cycle over different inputs?

[davidcockey]

@pastrana

@davidcockey Does it take a few seconds every single time you run Elmo, or does speed significantly improve as you run Elmo 1-2 times? Once you are in Elmo, does the speed of the command is on par with that of Rebuild as you cycle over different inputs?

The lag from hitting enter after typing “Elmo” in the command line to when “Select curves …” appears in the command line is a second or so the first time I use Elmo ion a session, and then significantly reduces when I use Elmo again.

The speed compared to Rebuild appears to be about the same, perhaps a small amount slower.

[pastrana (Rafael Pastrana)]

Thanks for sharing, @davidcockey. I see this behavior as well, about a second the first time the command runs, and a significant improvement thereafter.

@davidcockey

The speed compared to Rebuild appears to be about the same, perhaps a small amount slower.

It’s great to hear Elmo feels almost like Rebuild given that Elmo does a lot more computation under the hood.

[tay.othman (tay.0)]

used to be an alias for V6 I think
runxel/rhino-secrets: A short overview on the secrets of Rhino 3D & Grasshopper. (github.com)

[brian (Brian Gillespie)]

Bake curve to the current layer (RH-82871)

and

Show curve deviation (RH-82938)

are fixed in the latest Rhino WIP

[Ja-Ka]

Updated all drivers from 2023 to current via -DriverBooster-
: Now it works like a charm

[pastrana (Rafael Pastrana)]

@davidcockey

I assume Elmo will eventually show the "Maximum deviation before completing the command, and have options “Delete input” and “Create the new object on the current layer”.

All of these features are now available in yesterday’s Rhino WIP release!