More efficient way to export 2D surfaces to Illustrator?

Rhino Rhino for Windows
,
1

Hello everybody,

I am learning Rhinoceros and I am trying to export some shapes to my existing work I did with my class in Illustrator.

I could flatten out the 3D shapes using “Project”. What I have now is a series of 2D surfaces I can see from the Top view. When I export the document as .ai, I am getting only the outline of the shapes, and some other lines where the shapes should be. I’ve read on this forum I should use hatches and those do indeed export well to Illustrator, but it’s frustrating having to convert all the surfaces to hatches. Is there a way to export the 2D surfaces directly to Illustrator?

Thank you in advance.

2

In general you would want to use Make2D to get the best curves for export.

3

Nice, but that doesn’t seem it can export vector shapes, only curves?

4

Well yeah if you want shapes you’ll need to clean up the curves, which may be a pain but projecting surfaces onto a plane(potentially creating a self-intersecting mess)is really not advisable.

5

I don’t have intersections (I did _Intersect and produced me no result) I only have plain surfaces on a plane… is converting to hatches my only option? Thank you for your help

6

Well I’ll say “converting to hatches” isn’t necessary at all, I don’t get where that advice came from. I’m not sure exactly what you’re looking for in Illustrator that you’re not getting with your current method, curve outlines is all you can possibly get into Illustrator.

7

I have to flood fill between the paths with the right colors again – I did this job in Rhino already.

8

Solid hatches in Rhino, when exported as .ai file, will become solid fills in Illustrator.

9

Thanks that’s what I noticed too. Do you know if there is a way to convert all the surfaces to hatches automatically, including converting their material color to layer color? I am dubious on the reason for which this is even necessary, what’s wrong with plain surfaces?

Thank you very much.

10

You could probably do something like this: (manual approach)
organize surfaces by layers
use make2d command to get planar boundary curves of surfaces
use planar boundary curves to make solid hatches

Depending on the complexity of your Rhino Doc, with some layer management/select by layer, it may be a reasonable approach.

Short of taking a GH or scripting approach, I don’t think you can automate converting a material color to a layer color…but, I bet a search of the forum would turn up some GH options.