Hi,
I don’t know how to categorize the question. I’ve started learning Rhino and after watching several videos feel quite lost.
I created a tube in my design and need to change the wall thickness. How can I do that?
I’ve spent a lot of time previously figuring out how to change sizes, and I estimate I’ll have many more questions. I have my work to be done late Monday, so please answer promptly.
Thanks you!
What does “tube” mean? A Cylinder? A Pipe? Try OffsetSrf.
In Rhino3D, in top menu Solid there is a item “Tube”, after selecting that one can create a tube solid object, by specifying the center of a tube end, inner radius, outer radius and height.
I’ve created a tube, and now want to change the inner radius and outer radius. Some parameters like that are available when I run command “BoxEdit”, but I don’t have access to some other parameters, so for a cylinder I can change sizes, but for tube I don’t know how to do that. Hence the question.
Rhino is no parametric solid modeller. You cannot change the inner or outer radius, thus changing the wall-thickness of Tube, once it was created.
Thank you. That’s quite an adjustment to the mental model 
. So, every time the object created slightly wrong, it has to be re-created, and every operation should be perfect, or undone and redone. Interesting.
If I understand it correctly, Rhino doesn’t know anything about Tube - a Tube command is just a set of surfaces organized in form of a tube for the user, but from Rhino point of view, when Tube command is invoked, several surfaces are added. So - even though Rhino can select the tube as a whole - Rhino can’t work with tube object later on, since it doesn’t know what it is.
Correct?
Hi,
Yes Rhino sees it as a bunch of surfaces.
But there is the thickness property in the object properties panel that lets one parametrically make a tube and allow it to be altered. Just like there is the curve piping area and edge softening. It’s too bad McNeel didn’t go a little further and make so it can control and or output the tube. Is there a command to extract a thickened surface like extractcruvepipe?
One can alter the inner/outer tube radius once it is made by shift-ctrl selecting both the top and bottom inner radius curves, then in top view use the gumball on the “plane” control and hold your shift key to force 2d scaling of the two radius curves. Don’t know if it’s kosher output but it can kind of be done.
RM
Rhino is a NURBS surface modelling software. If you need to constantly or retroactively change dimensions and other aspects of the parts of your product, while developing it to its final production-ready state, something like this is most likely more suitable.
Thickening only affects the render mesh used for the screen display in modes such as Shaded and Rendered. It does not affect the NURBS geometry. It is not parametric modelling.
Apply thickening to a surface and then switch between Wireframe and Shaded mode. Note that the wireframe mode only shows the original geometry, not the thickening.
Rhino creates and uses a “render mesh” to display surfaces. The render mesh is automatically created from the NURBS geometry, and is then used by the GPU to calculate the pixel data fed to the screen display. Thickening creates an offset mesh from the render mesh of an object so that the object appears to have thickness even though the NURBS surface does not.
Thickening properties | Rhino 3-D modeling
Hi Alex -
You can sub-object select the inner (or outer) surface and 2D scale that to change the radius.
-wim
if the curve is nonlinear, you can use the dave shultz offset hack- which is extract the inner surface, then turn on it’s points, then go to move uvn and set the scale to a unit that works for your model, each full drag of the slider gets you one of those units.
see this video -
and possibly this one, although its aimed at subd-
