If I’m designing a hinged box in Rhino 6 for 3d printing, is there a way to test the rotation of the hinge and see if it catches on anything/whether anything stops it from achieving the desired rotation or do I have to eyeball it?
The downside of eyeballing it by rotating along the hinge is that in Rhino objects rotate through each other, and therefore there’s a very good chance I’d miss it if the hinged box wasn’t workable.
Not that you need to know the following, but I’m trying to create a hinge that can be 3d printed as a part of the box (at least for the prototype), that’s barely visible when the box is closed but allows the top of the box to rotate along the hinged axis 180 degrees so that it’s flush to the top of the box.
I’m not even sure if what I’m trying to do is possible, honestly, which is why a way of determining whether it would work prior to 3d printing would be incredibly useful.
Any and all suggestions would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
I look forward to the day when it’s as simple as clicking a “Treat As Solid” button and then “rotate along axis–>Use preexisting hinge” where it proceeds to show you how far your hinge will rotate before it runs into trouble, followed by a “diagnose problem area.”
I’m sure this could be done with Kangaroo inside Grasshopper! It has components for simulating rigid bodies, what you call “solids”, and also components that imitate the behaviour of hinges.
You could make a BREP solid by sweep- rotating the lid so the solid would represent all of the air swept through. Then look for intersections between that sold and the rest of the model.
I eyeball this for all my jewellery hinges so would love to know if there is a better way. I find using clipping planes to view the rotation useful for checking closed hinges.
