Making 2d plans more automated what is needed

For my needs Rhino is pretty good at 2d drawings. I do presentation, plans and templates large scale size with Rhino. When I work for big firms they mostly have Rhino but mostly things are done in revit and plans in acad. It’s just how it is. Most people are stuck in 2d because it works for most things so why complicate it with 3d. Maybe in the next 50 years that will change?

The other barrier is you can’t make a good simple automatic 2d plan generating program without geometry being aware of what it should represent in plan and elevation views. In other words Rhino needs to know a wall is a wall and not generic 3d geometry. Asunni cad works with better 2d drafting because it knows what the geometry is supposed to represent, thus it can represent it better, faster and more to architectural specification in plans and elevation. The same goes for mechanical design, in most programs where there is good auto 2d plan development the program knows what you made not just generic geometric surface description.

Holes and doors are a simple example in a mechanical part you would know automatically all the hole specs and the same goes for a door in architectural drawings. Without this kind of interoperability auto generated plans are a pipe dream. Without some kind of preprogramming and geometry name tagging auto plan making is not going to work. Many people/firms have programmed into Rhino the exact things I am now talking about so that their companies can generate 2d plans easily and to their companies specifications.

With these 2 examples you can see what a daunting task this is for McNeel because really what they need is libraries of specifications that can drive parts and structures so that Rhino can actually generate a correct plan/elevation of said structures. What is needed is a way to easily tag user objects with data that can be used to make correct 2d plans of an object.

If we exposed all objects to a spread sheet environment with exposed history then tagging and generating 3d objects into 2d plans would be much easier. Gh kind of has this but it’s too long winded and not exposed enough to use for most users.
Posting an image of my old Rhino to excel room builder to show what might be done.

RM

Well, I see the same things to happen here - architect’s are very vocal to push the software in their direction - walls, doors, BIM’s and etc. For me Rhino needs to stay away from this and be more as a general CAD. Let the plugins do the rest - there is a reason AutoCAD is still the dominant. Do we need another Revit or Archicad? Give the more graphical ways to the users to attach custom data to the objects, more ways to extract and export this data for further usage. UserData on steroids - for the woodworker the box is a side, for the architect it is a wall - let the user decide.

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This sounds like a great concept and a great discussion starter. Naturally, since Rhino is basically a general purpose 3d CAD nurbs-based program - despite it’s current heavy use in architecture - this concept would need to be implemented in the most general terms possible. Probably in such a way that a user could create his/her own object type, tag, properties and 2d drawing rules which could then be saved and used in any project.

Just thinking out loud.

Alternatively, crowdsource some funds (I’m guessing $400k would be a good start), grab or borrow some Rhino app and plugin devs, and go make something new and great to hang on the Rhino framework. Make offshoot versions for the several major industries even.
We’ll be here ready to beta test when you have something! :sunny:

I’m not an architect, but the plugin visualarq might work for you!

try the plugins VisualArq
Vittorio