Hi guys,
There are quite a few posts on people disappointed about the VSR tools going away when upgrading to V6. I’m one of those people. I decided to make a few videos on the difference between Rhino tools vs. VSR tools.
Let me begin to say that I believe the Rhino geometry creation tools generate good geometry, I just find the VSR user interface for two tools that perform similar or identical geometry is often much more user friendly.
First example is the Adjustable Curve Blend.
Here’s a video on a really nice feedback feature from the VSR toolset. They call it surface matching analysis. It gives visual and numerical feedback on the matching result of two surfaces.
This is a really nice surface evaluation tool.
Here’s another great example where the functionality between native Rhino and the VSR tool that perform the same function is just much more user friendly in the VSR tool. In Rhino this is Match Surface with Multiple Matches, in VSR it’s Surface Align.
The end result of the geometry created is Rhino is great, but the user experience can really benefit from some improvements.
Building on the the surface matching example, SolidWorks also has an edge deviation tool that calculates tangency. It’s not as nice as the VSR tool and it doesn’t have as much information, but what it does have is numerical feedback on your solution. Based on this feedback it becomes really easy to determine whether the created surface is acceptable or not.
Rhino Surface form Edge Curves vs. VSR Surface from curves.
In this video I compare these two tools that are really similar and in the end create results that are nearly identical, but the VRS workflow is faster with better feedback.
In Rhino I need to check the surface to see what the structure is, rebuild it and than match it. If I do this in Native Rhino I don’t know how close to perfect I get. Zebra analysis will show me I’m close, but I don’t know how close.
In VSR I can set the degree while in the tool, so I don’t need to check with the what command and rebuild. I just automatically get a degree 5 single span surface. When I use the VSR surface match command there’s numerical feedback that tells me the result is acceptable for me.
I also have VSR in V5, some nice tools but this isn’t a good example in my opinion. Compare these two screenshots from your video. In Rhino’s you can see the actual curve. In VSR you see a bunch of UI elements, labels, numbers that don’t matter, and gigantic yellow curves that occlude the actual curve. This is nuts in my opinion.
Hi Gustavo, thanks for pitching in.
You raise some great points with your suggestions. I never said in my posts that Rhino should copy the VSR tools and everything will be great. My objective with the post is to show that two tools with the same function can have a really different user experience and many cases it can be much improved upon. If you watch the videos I mention several times that the Rhino tools produce great results, but the user experience is not always great, so if this posts triggers some ideas for the developers to improve the existing tools and make them even better than the VSR tools I would be super excited.
