Further to a previous post I made some time ago in the threads asking about what challenges teachers/students run into with Rhino, I thought I would make a more exhaustive wish list of everything that I would like to see in Layouts, from the perspective of a mechanical engineer.
I have been using Layouts extensively over the past 6 months. At times I still find myself wishing I could export a model from Rhino and do the drawing separately in SolidWorks (which I no longer have access to). I believe that the following features would elevate Layouts to the next level, and that if they were added, I could with confidence do everything I need in Rhino alone with minimal frustration.
Some of these features might be a bit much to ask, and some would certainly be more effort to implement than others. But if Layouts moved in this direction, I believe they would be deadly.
In no particular order:
- GD&T symbols, tolerances and fits
This is a big one for any mechanical engineer. The ability to attach various GD&T symbols, such as feature control frames, flatness, concentricity, parallelism and more (see here) is important for communicating tolerances of parts to manufacturers. These symbols can be made manually in Rhino and turned into Blocks (I may be saying this a lot today), but itâs time consuming and tedious â especially when weâre dealing with the likes of feature control frames.
- Additional symbols
Some extra symbols that would be nice-to-have include surface finish, dowel pin symbols, welds, cosmetic threads, hole callouts, counterbore, countersink, chamfer dimension, hole depth, centreline and centremark. [I have noticed that centremark does exist in Rhino â though it seems it must be placed in model space rather than layout space?] These can be drawn manually of course, but a command for them would be a real time saver.
- Tables
There seems to be no ability to make simple tables within Layouts. Again, these can be made manually with lines and text fields, but the ability to just make quick tables as one might in a word/excel document would be quicker, more easily editable and less fiddly.
- Dedicated revision table + symbol tool
Revision tables are a category of table that can justifiably be a tool separate from standard tables. Ideally a revision table would generate a revision symbol automatically with each new row added â which could then be placed in the layout space (and subsequently populate the revision table zone field automatically). Rhino does at least have the revision cloud command, which is better than nothing.
- Multi-leaders
Leaders work fine Rhino. Multi-leaders can be faked by attaching another leader without text to an existing leader. An option to create multi-leaders out of the gate, or by Ctrl + Click + Dragging a leader end would be neat
- Wild card entry: Bill of Materials (BOM) table
If there is any request in here that I realise might be a big ask, itâs this one. BOM generation in Rhino is pretty rough right now. The best solution I have found works as follows: make each component you want to add to your table into a block. Then, manually draw your own table, then populate the table with text field formulas including BlockName and BlockInstanceCount (to get a quantity of parts in your Rhino file). Iâve described this to my colleagues as a semi-automatic BOM table. It removes the need to individually count parts in an assembly, which would be highly vulnerable to human error â but it still requires a lot of setup and manual input from the user. Furthermore, no such feature exists in Rhino linking the table entries to balloons which can then be used to label the parts in the layout. Speaking of whichâŚ
- Balloons
Right now, the only way I have found to do this in Rhino is to use text, with a capsule frame around it â the closest I can find to a balloon. Being just text entries, the balloons are not dynamic either. Suffice to say, doing this manually for each table entry is leaving the door wide open for human error.
Forgetting BOM for a moment, even just a balloon feature that increments numbers automatically with each balloon added to the layout would be a nice addition.
- Nomenclature: change âDetail Viewâ name to âModel Viewâ or something else
Bit of a minor nitpick this one, but âDetail viewâ means something quite specific â normally a portion of an existing view at an enlarged scale. I feel that what Rhino refers to as âDetail viewsâ would be better named as âModel Viewsâ.
- Add detail views
While weâre talking about detail views â letâs add them. The ability to draw a circle/shape around an existing view and get a scaled up view would be a welcome addition. Again, these can be faked in Rhino by just adding a view at an enlarged scale on your point of interest, but it is limited by the fact that views must be rectangular shaped as opposed to the more typical circular shape of detail views.
- Section view/Break out view
Clipping Planes in Rhino work well. However, theyâre limited by the fact that only straight sections can be used. Jogged/offset section lines would allow for more viewing options. Broken out sections would be highly welcome too. Basically, the ability to clip views along a curve would allow custom section views.
I would have made mention of some bugs in layouts like vector print not working properly, but I believe others have made posts about these and they have been logged already.
Questions and feedback welcome
