From Rhino to Blender 2.8 I’d use my importer. From Blender 2.8 to Rhino I’d probably use OBJ, but I suppose it also depends a bit on what you intend to bring back from Blender to Rhino. I can’t really see what one would want to bring back from Blender into Rhino, so I’m interested to hear what your usecase is.
Hi Nathan, do you have a list of the features that your exporter supports? like layers, blocks, saved views,…
Thanks
Not a real list as of yet, but roughly:
- existing render meshes from the file
- layers (as collections)
- simple layer materials from layer color
- simple material conversion
Not yet done, but planned or in progress
- automatic scaling (in the works, but some buggy behaviour being investigated)
- views
- blocks
- automatic mesh generation using either Compute (already working on my laptop) or Rhino Inside (only Windows, and currently not an option as Rhino makes Blender 2.8 crash when being loaded as subprocess).
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In Blender I do a lot of Mesh and SubD Modeling. Smooth and organic forms (architecture & furniture), meshes, modifiers, etc… Once a design has been approved by the client and goes into production, I import it into Rhino and refine or redo it properly and prepare it for production.
For me personally it depends what kind of design I have in mind. Sometimes it is easier to do in Blender, sometimes in Rhinoceros. Most of the time I use both. I like this duality because the programs are so complementary.
For that I’d use just OBJ.
Thanks Nathan, sounds promising!
Hi Nathan,
I think my workflow will look like Rhino > Blender > Rhino. The reason for this is that I need to model accurate volumes in Rhino - in this case, the dimensions of a cave - then take them into Blender, sculpt and shape these basic shapes more organically with a custom brush, and then bring the resulting mesh back into Rhino to produce drawings to be built from. Do you have any suggestions for how I might approach this? And is OBJ still the best solution to export back to Rhino? I’m feeling fairly daunted by the learning curve here, so any help would be amazing.
Thanks!
The import_3dm add-on should help you with getting your Rhino geometry into Blender 2.80 (or later). To bring your modified geometry back into Rhino I’d stick to OBJ.
If you are familiar with Blender sculpting tools you should be able to get just going, otherwise you can look up tutorials on sculpting in Blender 2.80.
Btw, I just released v0.0.4 of the import_3dm add-on for Blender.
Hi, I’ve just tried installing these on the Mac blender. The theme seems to work although I prefer the standard dark mode (is there anything else it changes?)
The key mapper doesn’t seem to load and your instructions don’t seem to apply to the Mac version either.
Robin
I’m also struggling to get your 3DM importer working on blender 2.80 for Mac. I’ve followed the instructions and everything said it was successful. The instructions for installation seem to be out of date / wrong in terms of where certain things are in the installation process which makes me wonder whether it hasn’t been tested with the current blender version on the Mac?
I’ve tried two different downloads and neither seemed to work. With the non-‘master’ one it did at least seem to do something but came up with this error:
thanks
Robin
import_3dm.zip (34.3 KB) import_3dm-master.zip (255.6 KB)
You can find the correct link to latest release here. Your zip is larger than it should be.
I do most of the plug-in development work for this plug-in on the Mac.
The theme mimics the color scheme of Rhino on Windows. It does not change anything but the GUI theme.
I have to revisit the keymap - prior to the official 2.80 release things changed quite often, so it may be bit out of date.
Thanks, I’ve tried downloading from that link and again I’ve no joy.
No errors this time, but the import 3DM never appears in the list.
Incidentally, what I was getting at regarding testing on the Mac is that the read me instructions I think are not current. It seems that the ‘install’ button in the add-ons section of preferences is now at the top of the window rather than the bottom. No big deal though.