so… 6.7K views later… what’s the plan?
7 Likes
Section hatchings should be built in the Rhino core.
I would laugh as well, by the astonnishment, seeing a program like Rhino not be able to produce hatchings in live 3d sections.
This is so essential for product drawings even in sketching phase and relevant for multiple user branches.
Please McNeel, make a dream reality 
4 Likes
Listen to requests, figure out what can be done and prioritize. I’m personally working on some prototypes for some line type and block ideas that I have, but don’t have anything to share yet. I realize that is probably not what you want to hear, but there are a lot of different concepts to think about with respect to layouts/drafting and and lot of ideas to try out.
14 Likes
I always wondered if Layouts could be something like a grasshopper interface that pops up and references the model?
My major problem is I always have like 15 drawings and it gets HECTIC. Especially when some random opens my file and their computer has different views set up etc. If you start to get really picky about your drawings and what you show, or how you display etc - it can be a major problem months later if those settings do not stay consistent - like if you copy paste for whatever reason into a new file and start working from there - or just other interface type things.
Then as the file gets bigger with these graphic drawings, the graphics start to bug out, especially if you have multiple displays going on or PEN mode for example - very large assemblies.
Dare I say, I think it would be pretty rad to have a feature like viewbase (autocad) that wasn’t a complete disaster and didn’t result in BAD/zero updating - or critical failure errors but still allowed you to section, detail, add views with just one “reference model”
Then after this happens, I’d love to see 2 things regarding LEADERS
Ability to click on a block with a leader and display fx text as you desire. My choice would have to be block instance name. Without having to constantly go in and edit the text, this should be a UNIQUE and special leader-type. When I click on a block to place my leader head - it should extract the block name. AND/OR the ability to change the fx to something else, like bounding box, material, etc. THIS leader type would be used for text-callouts, for me I would use this for fast diagramming and fast labeling.
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And another leader style that would instead allow you to click and place bubble-call outs for things that have long “names” need more information associated to them, like a BOM. See @gijs work with bubble call outs. _tabl peters tools etc. This one also demands a long waited need for a powerful bom tool.
ALSO:
some detail call outs, section call-outs and “symbols” with ‘parameters’ set up so that users can make their own symbols by being creative and getting what they want/need for their projects.
Finally, I would like the ability to have a detail view on page 5. And then go to my COVER SHEET or really anysheet and be able to reference THAT view with a string of text. PAGE-NUMBER-001 & DETAIL NUMBER — that way if the view moves to another page, that will update wherever that string of text is. So the view would need a page association and a detail nomenclature association , number letter, whatever people use these day.
as rhino receives more improvement graphically, it will continue to receive more product designers and more tech savvy industrial designers - I think rhino needs to make a major improvement to it’s layouts before it can go into relationshipping and mating components - if it ever decides to go down that path somehow as it improves the features of blocks.
1 Like
It could be like this:
-new dialog to create “make2d”
-output of make2d would go into “named sections” and this would be placable in model or in layout space as a new object. All subsequent changes in the output would record a history in case of geometry update.
Dialog for make2d would define which objects, visible how and in reference to what plane (or a curve).
Also it would be fine if hatching in section was according to a material defined via user attribute
…get some inspiration in Microstation, Revit, Archicad
This is definitely a big thing to develop and implement but it is neccessary.
Yes. I hope this will be one of the flagship feature of R8, at least in parts.
Rhino suffers from being this huge 3D modelling app but with layout/documentation tools designed for 2D work in the 90ies (or 80ies?), cloned from AutoCAD, more or less. The question how to derive usable 2D drawing out of 3D scene hasn’t been answered satisfactory, neither here nor in AutoCAD (which can do 3d, should anybody have forgotten).
Make2D, history enabled, yes. For this, the Make2D result would need to be a parametric block, what else, right? Like in VisualArq.
Nice idea to have all resulting views/sections listed in some panel! Since these new “make2D-views” would be blocks, a new, dockable, non-modal Block Manager could serve this purpose - drag&drop any block anywhere, model or layout space (“Insert” command put into BlockManager).
All this would be an extension of the classic model/layout paradigm.
Or even go all the way and do it Revit/ArchiCAD-style and introduce viewports that function like live Make2D representations of the 3D scene, with all bells&whistes like editing in 2D changes the 3D scene? So, the 2D stuff sits in a viewport, not a block object.
Something else: since we are bitten by the problem that toggling model space layers craps into the layer settings of layouts - how about adding a checkbox in each layout like “Override model space layer settings”? When it’s set, the first layer lightbulb column would have no effect in this layout.
Not the most elegant solution maybe, but a simple one, for a start.
4 Likes
The live 2D views from the 3D model is a must for me, being a Revit user, I find it very intuitive. Though a literal translation of placing views on a sheet (layout) would be out of place, since there are no views in Rhino. Therefore, I want to mention Fusion 360’s layout method, which is currently being worked on quite heavily and thus one of the most modern solutions from any competitor.
Live view placement in layouts
While Fusion 360 requires you to place a base view prior to placing a section or elevation for alignment purposes it offers a convenient way to place a view (see video).
Now if you could reference in Stored views to the layout, then that should be the basis. I think there should be a seperate tab in the Named views panel (or whatever it is called), because saved views should be used for modeling — and you wouldn’t want to sift through all the output views while doing so). Then taken from Revit that this view is a seperate viewport, which you can double click into to change the view, that would create a perfect balance between usability and intuition.
Also, please see if this could be made into a flat UI rather than various pop-up windows that would continuously have to be rearranged. Blender’s workspaces and Fusion 360 provide perfect examples of how to tackle the creation of a flat UI.
5 Likes
Just to add (after reading as much as I could of this)
If I run “make2d”, add dimensions… and then “save as” an “.ai illustrator” file and import into Vectorstyler …
Then print from Vectorstyler… I can create a very reasonable technical drawing with hidden lines and proper vector output.
By contrast if I try and print directly from Rhino using the RhinoPDF (set to “vector?” Output !!!) I get a splodgy mess ** by comparison, no matter what line widths I specify. The details can’t be scaled. As soon as you zoom in there are artifacts and no detail carried through from the model.
What I would be ecstatic with personally is a Rhino PDF that outputs genuine vector output (I.e when one zooms in on a PDF the line weights scale with the zoom so details can be viewed.)
It seems crazy to me that Rhino can’t do this as it can obviously create the necessary vector output in “Make2D”, and export it successfully via the “illustrator “ output… all that is missing is the facility to “print” the vector file
2 Likes
I totally agree…Vellum was lovely… super fast, clean and beautiful!
Lets not forget that we are making beautiful stuff and appreciate beautiful tools to work with
1 Like
please, do better tecnical representations for meshes when doing make2d command. Put some options to only draw the otline edges, to activate or not the meshes wireframes.
we need a better way to publish layout pages, I often have 15/20 layout pages per model, its slow and painful saving all these out to PDF.
1 Like
Do you mean saving them one by one? Instead of having a way to print/export all pages to PDF?
Hi @gustojunk yes printing them one by one to PDF is a pain. Each layout has a seperate drawing number too, Rhino doesn’t keep this name either when saving out to PDF, you have to manually enter a drawing number for each page 
Would be nice if you could organize layouts in the Layouts-pane in a folder-structure, and then print all layouts in a folder at once. And setup print-properties per folder.
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Agree, something like a publisher independent on layouts. Option for one by one print is a must. I had a project with 150 layouts in Rhino and I wasn’t far from committing suicide with a not particularly powerful stapler…
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Multi-page, with master objects/templates is a must. This is the reason I don’t use layouts and we do all our documentation in Indesign.
Also we need to be able to load a detail in any layer visibility state, snapshot state, view mode, custom shading mode, etc.
G
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I feel your pain, it could be sooo much better and much more efficient 
there is a good script for that
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Hi, I’d be interested in the script ? But to be honest, it shouldn’t need a script, there should be a standard publishing tool within native Rhino 
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An improved publisher is definitely needed in Rhino. I have written a post about it comparing it with Microstation:
You can add your voices there to bring it up to the developers’ attention.
This might not solve all the problems, but try File>Export and select PDF in the format option. This brings up Rhino-native PDF exporter instead of the OS-based one when you use File>Print. It has some basic tools for exporting multiple layouts and even works with different page sizes. I do encounter frequent program crashes when using it and there is no option for exporting individual sheets, so it is far from perfect, but it should solve some of the problems listed above. I hope this is helpful.
