hi guys i have been creating a part in rhino but weird things happen when i try to add fillets, almost as if rhino has no idea how to deal with the corners, does anyone have a solution to this? i saw one guy in one tutorial once use the pipe command to split the object then blend the surface together but idk if this is really what i want. i have also attached the file
handle.3dm (279.5 KB)
You’re going to have to learn to do these the hard way. This is a good example case for several methods that are non-obvious and also kind of messy in most cases.
Hi
Watch this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvgcOpT30Ds&list=PL4600230A605499AD&index=13. This part should be broken into several solid bodies. That are then booleaned together either with unions or splits.The way you’ve done it with surfaces is unnecessarily complex. It also created many continuity issues that are bombing your fillets. 
My question to the developers is “will Rhino get modern filleting capabilities for V6?” V2 still works better in many circumstances. Solidworks 2005 kills Rhino’s filleting abilities even though my copy of SW is 10 years old and I have to boot into Windows XP to use it.
@Stratosfear thanks for this, i had the model originally made in 3 parts but i was thinking rhino was able to handle this so i went ahead and put then together without using boleans and i guess that is an issue, thanks for your help and link my friend!
@Rhinogoth after reading your message i looked this up online and found others are saying the same thing so i called up a friend of mine who uses solidworks and he lives near so i jumped in my car and took the model on a stick in step format and imported it into solidworks 2013 i think, to my surprise solidworks eats up these fillets in no time with no issues at all! in the end i solved this in solidworks rather than in rhino. Idk what can be changed to allow this kinda filletting possible in rhino but this is needed badly.
Thanks again all!!
A word of caution. Solidworks has the amazing ability to fillet together the most difficult geometry. The downside is the quality of those fillets tend to be really poor. I prefer programs that set high standards for their filleting operations. That way I know immediately that I need to reevaluate my topology.
what programs will guarantee good fillets?
In that tutorial quoted above, Brian James used the gumball to extrude a curve into a solid. I may just be a learning student but when I use the gumball to extrude, I just get a surface that need to be capped to be a solid. Am I doing something wrong or do I have a setting changed somewhere that’s not giving me a solid. Also if I extrude a planar surface with the gumball I DO get a solid. Thanks.
why not have both, for some parts i really dont need high quality fillets,…
@Sabino you are right, i love modeling in rhino, it just cannot handle fillets well so i think in my case its better to have both softwares and i will waite til rhino catches up
Yes, me too.
That would be really fine
Thats not what i meant, i cannot afford sw, so for me lower quality fillets just for certain parts would be very welcome,…
what would you term as a lower quality fillet? i mean i fillet is just a fillet right?
He probably is referring to the surface quality and level of surface continouity.
Norbert
stratosfear was referring to lower quality fillets in sw, im just saying i wouldnt mind having lower quality fillets as long as they dont fail.
Also, now that were mentioning fillets, i think when doing multiple fillets at the same time, it would be very nice when using the variable option if it would be more clear which is what, right now sometimes you can just have all those intersecting fillets in a corner and you honestly wouldnt know which one to select and edit,…
Hi Michael - I don’t know when that clip was made but at some point the distinction was made in Gumball extruding so that curves make open objects and surfaces make solids.
-Pascal
Hi Stratosfear and All,
First, I’d like to clarify that I’m not Rhino-bashing before I go further. I love Rhino and over the years it’s been instrumental in helping keep a roof over my head. Even if I was forced to use only SW at my new job, I’d still use Rhino for my personal projects. With that out of the way…
SolidWorks can make sloppier fillets than maybe are ideal. However, most of them are good or SW wouldn’t be the almost universal standard for CAD jockeys and machinists alike. When it does make a sloppy fillet or two, I can bring it back into Rhino and make the few necessary repairs in minutes, as opposed to spending hours in Rhino manually creating fillets in the first place.
Further, the number of times I’ve had problem fillets from SW are very few and far in between. Over the years I’ve never had a machinist say to me “Gee, your Rhino surfaces are great but I can’t work with those SW fillets”. I’ve just received nicely made parts, whether from the CNC shop down the street here in Canada, the several I’ve used in the US over the years or even the Chinese manufacturers I’ve had experience with.
Most users don’t need perfect fillets, we just need fillets within tolerance and without a lot of drama. When I was working freelance, my clients never cared that I spent hours making beautiful fillets. They just cared that they got usable files on time and budget. And I didn’t care either as long as I didn’t have to spend my evenings or weekends fussing over fillets and could instead spend the time with my family.
Now that I’m working full time my boss doesn’t care about perfect fillets either. He cares about productivity. Filleting in Rhino isn’t productive on complex parts, especially when you introduce draft angles into the equation. Rhino could really use better filleting more than pretty much anything else to make it a truly robust CAD program. Without that, I won’t be upgrading my personal license and my boss agrees that it’s not worth upgrading the 11 seats at the office either.
Hi Rhinogoth,
I understand your point of view. I have about 17 years of Rhino experience and 15 with SolidWorks. I’ve seen and made a lot of fillets.
But this question depends a lot on the kind of project and geometry your working on most of the time. SolidWorks has incredibly robust filleting and you don’t have to think much about it; just re-order until you get what you want. Fast and easy. But in some situations it fails and then it is very costly. I’ve seen situations where the only way out was to split a face with a sketch curve, delete the face, sweep a surface and stitch back into a solid body. And now the rebuild time has doubled and the feature may explode anytime.
In Rhino its never as easy or automated but there’s no situation where I’m stuck. I know where to go and how to get there.
I’ll parrot Rhinogoth in several ways; I too enjoy working with Rhino on a daily basis. It is my primary tool and it is a pleasure to work with. About the only thing that does cause frustration are complicated fillets and the manual work needed in some cases. Anytime I have to work with text in a mold, I cringe because applying fillets is so much work (the text, draft angles and possible intersections). The guys in the die shop using SolidWorks don’t seem to have those same issues. I often use SolidThinking Evolve (which supposedly uses the same kernel as SW) to apply fillets to items that Rhino doesn’t handle well. I’d love to stay totally within Rhino. If fillets were a little more robust, I could do just that.
I thought of one thing on the way home that I thought I should mention, to be fair. There have also been many times when the manual method of fillets and surface blends in Rhino have allowed me to saved the day for the SolidWorks guys. There are often cases where I have more tools and flexibility in Rhino than they seem to have in SolidWorks and I help them out. I guess all programs have their strengths and weaknesses.