How to Reflected Ceiling Plan?

It’s almost 2017 and you still can’t have RCPs in details without jumping through hoops.
How hard is it to implement something like this in Detail properties?

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I guess that the first step is making sure that this is actually on the wish list.

It is unclear to me from the discussion in the past if an issue was created for this and since I couldn’t find it in YT I just added RH-37076.

Have you tried the plug-in that is posted there? According to @SamPage that one came close to delivering what is needed…

To be honest I didn’t not go through that whole thread yesterday since it was 2 years old. The plug-in doesn’t load tough, maybe 'cause x86?

I, personally, would want it to a property of a Detail object instead of Display mode, so I don’t have to use different display modes for my details. Thanks for looking into it.

It came really close in that it did make a RCP display, but was in practice was not yet reliable. It has real difficulties in details on layout space, and there was some weirdness with display meshes going one way while edge curves went the other.

It seems at the time there weren’t a lot of people wanting / needing it, so it didn’t get tune ups based on feedback. I ended up (and still to this day) when needing an RCP using the trick of opening a new file, inserting the model to be RCPed as a linked block (so it updates when the main model does), mirroring that, and making drawings from the result.

It actually wasn’t a display mode, it was a toggle you could run in parallel viewports or details regardless of the display mode which would vertically flip the detail. As to it not loading, it is compiled for 64 bit Rhino 5, are you trying it there?

I would still love and wish for an RCP tool, I think though I have just accepted it is not something a lot of people currently need, so the chance of seeing it doesn’t seem great.

Version 5 SR13 64-bit
(5.13.60913.21340, 9/13/2016)

How I envision it working is that it would only “redraw” your detail view mirrored when you mark that checkbox. So if you click into your detail, it would revert back to proper view so there’s no conflict with anything and clicking out of detail flips it again. Does it make sense?

What would be even better is not to have that checkbox, but be able to just run Mirror command on the Detail rectangle and have it flip the view, so you can have control over vertical/horizontal/diagonal flip…

Interesting, I thought Jeff only did a 64 bit version, but looking more closely at your screen grab, I see you have the 32 bit. Here is the 64 bit version:

FlipView_x64.rhp (27.5 KB) It creates one command, which is FlipView

I understand that you would like it to be toggled via a checkbox exposed when a detail is selected, but I’m not sure I understand the “when you click into your detail it would revert back” portion. That seems like it might be painful to deal with in terms of annotations and dimensions if the contents of the detail flipped depending if the detail was active or not. Or am I missing the point?

As you will see with the plug-in, it is a simple, per detail / viewport toggle. It however is not very persistent, every Rhino restart, or any change to the detail will kick it off. Over here it also causes some strange navigation issues, and as mentioned earlier, strange display artifacts.

Sam

That means: double clicking inside the detail rectangle to get to model space where you can manipulate stuff. I understand the annotation issue. Most of our annotations are in paper space. That’s why I wasn’t too concerned about them. Only dimensions and some text tags are in the model space. Dimensions are always oriented to view and texts can be figured out later. At this point I’m only asking for a visual flip.

Right now we’re using Ghosted display mode looking down at the back of the geometry (ghosted - to see column outlines etc below) with clipping planes. The look doesn’t match the elevations and that’s the main concern.

I can tell you that we need a persistent solution, since it’s a set of drawings that can be manipulated by different people, so noting which views to flip when printing would be even more annoying. Especially when you have to deal with dozen of RCPs.

Here’s some ideas I’d like to throw in here.

A plug-in? that has your model Flipped/Mirrored in Z in “hidden” space, like when you Hide stuff it goes to “hidden model space”. And FlippedDetail command that creates a “portal” to that Flipped/Mirrored model space just like Detail creates a portal to the regular Model space.

A MirrorPlane object (like a normal plane) that acts like a mirror and reflects your model in it. Can be disabled in model space for performance issues. Will only activate/“start reflecting” when looked at in layout space or toggled. This MirrorPlane can be drawn under the ceiling to reflect it and everything infront and behind it (relative to view) isn’t rendered, so you skip HideInDetail part of routine.
You make a Detail, set your view to top of that MirrorPlane, adjust Detail scale and you’re done with it.

At this point I personally don’t care about being able to select Mirrored/Flipped objects or snap to them. I just want the proper view in my detail that matches elevation and plan views visually/graphically.

Just a squeaky wheel bump to make sure it is known the need for this is still there, and it would serve anyone using Rhino for architecture, set design, lighting design, and I’m sure other disciplines.

In case you don’t want to read the whole thread, an overview of what an RCP is, and how it might be realized:

It is like a plan, all your cut lines on the plan and the RCP should match, but instead of seeing the floor, it is as if you are looking at a mirror on the floor and seeing the ceiling. Another way of saying this is as if you took your plan view, flipped the direction of your clipping plan, set your viewport to bottom view, but mirrored the viewport top for bottom. This could be achieved by allowing a horizontal view scale of -1.

Jeff’s plug-in was close in theory, but had some real issues in use, which are described here.

Thanks,
Sam

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squeak squeak

Hey folks, Did the reflected ceiling plan option ever get implemented for V6? It seems like there was a lot of demand for it. If not, is there a work-around that people would recommend?

To answer your questions, “no” and “not a good one.”

What I do (and it kind of works) in insert the model you want to do an RCP of in a new file as a linked block (so it will update when you change your model in the plan / elevation file). Mirror the block about the X axis so it is now flopped top for bottom. Create a detail and set it to Bottom view, drop in your clipping plane at the same height as your plan clipping plane (but pointing the opposite direction), and that should start you off.

Sam

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Thank you, Sam. I will try it.

If I know McNeel there must be a good reason for not including it. I wonder, though, if a plug-in would be in order?

My turn to bump this one up!
And add that we also want it on the mac platform.
Unfortunately it seems to have been rescheduled to 7.0 (RH-37076)
Any possibility that it might move back to 6.X ?

We aren’t adding new features to V6 so this won’t show up until V7 at the earliest. Any work that we do on this would show up in both Windows and Mac.

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Meanwhile, I married, bought a house, paid it off, had a daughter. She’ll probably gonna get married before we see any semblance of RCPs in Rhino…:smirk:

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I second the wish.

is this still planning on being released in V7? …not sure why a mirror function takes 6+ years to implement but just wanted to add my voice to the list of requests.
thanks

Hi - as you can see on RH-37076, this feature request is still on the 7.x list. This means that it’s something that will be looked at at some point after Rhino 7 ships. Also note that release targets are subject to change …
-wim