In the latest release of the Rhino3D 9 WIP, we have added a command to help in exporting flattened layout geometry to 3dm, DWG, DXF, or other formats as long as a suitable export plugin is installed. The command is a bit rough, and is being put forward so that we can find out if we are headed in the right direction. When you are in a layout view, simply type FlattenLayout on the Rhino3D command line and select the name and format. The resulting output will be a file you can load in Rhino3D or another application. Any feedback our users can provide will be very useful to us and help us to provide you with a final feature in Rhino3D 9.0 that is useful to you.
As an example, the command will take this Rhino layout:
Why the name FlattenLayout when the command does not flatten anything? Why not a name like ExportLayout which describes what the command does? Rhino already has a command with a name that starts with “Flatten”; FlattenSrf. That command creates “flat” (planar) curves from a non-planar surface.
Please try the attached 3dm. I have weird result of it.
Also, I would recommend giving an option to create a duplicated Layout with flattened copy.
Then user will decide what to do with it: export, keep or something else.
Also, it would be great to have a per-Detail flattening possibility. So you can pick the Detail (or a bunch) and flatten the content of it. This will keep the rest of the Layout untouched.
Hi @Bill_Cook ,
It looks great! Thank you for this contribution!
I see no issues with scaling of the dimension lines by looking at the two screenshots. As long as this is maintained, the command will be very useful!
@davidcockey it flattens (pushes) all Layout geometry to Model space. So “flatten” not in a sense of “unrolling”.
It does not do this for the same 3dm file, but for a new one.
You can open that new 3dm file, and copy-paste its content to the initial 3dm file.
I would also prefer the ``ExportLayout`` command name, as it would enable to use the same term as the one from Autocad.
@Bill_Cook Just this more: the linetype scale is maintained between the original and the result?
Layers as well?
@davidcockey It flattens geometry from two Spaces (Layout and Model) into one: Model space.
It is a very common term used in Vector and raster graphic editors (Photoshop, Gimp, Inkscape…) when two or more layers of data are merged into one.
FlattenLayout does not “flattens geometry from two Spaces (Layout and Model) into one: Model space.” All it does is export the layout data in a .3dm file which a user can import into Rhino along with a file with other data, which does not have to be a file with the geometry used to create the Layout.
If Rhino was also a 2D only graphic editor then the term “flatten” would be appropriate. But Rhino is a 3D geometry program with many, probably a majority of users, not familar with the terminology used by 2D only graphic editors. Search for “Flatten” in Rhino Help and 25 results are returned. All use “flatten” as making geometry planar, not consolidating/merging layers. Search
Hi! VisualARQ 3 includes a command (already available in Rhino 7 and Rhino 8) that lets you export Rhino Layouts to DWG. We’ve posted a video tutorial on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1BhuBbS9gNs
The approach is a bit different than the new FlattenLayout command. In VisualARQ, the DWG export creates a 2D drawing for each Detail View in 1:1 scale in the DWG model space, and replicates the Rhino Layouts (with the same content on each) in the DWG Layout.
After the introduction of multiple layout printing for PDFs, the Flatten Layout tool finally closes the gap toward a professional 2D CAD workflow. However, there are still a few necessary adjustments needed to fully integrate it into the work process.
Unfortunately, there is a fundamental issue in Flatten Layout.
The drawing is exported as a DWG directly in the layout’s scale. This is actually the purpose of the PDF, since the PDF is what gets printed. The DWG normally remains at a 1:1 scale so it can continue to be edited, while the layout’s title block serves only as information. Flatten Layout should make it possible to separate all drawings on the Rhino layout into individual files with a title block and export them, so they can be organized and distributed together with the corresponding scaled PDFs.
At the moment, only the blocks placed directly on the layout are exported, but not those from the referenced drawing, which are missing in the export. Currently, blocks need to be exploded before they can be exported, which makes the referenced drawing unusable for further editing.
To export layouts to DWGs more efficiently, it would be helpful if the file name were taken directly from the layout name, since mistakes can easily happen when dealing with many layouts.
To process a large number of layouts, a batch plot function similar to the one recently introduced for PDFs would be very useful. This saves a great deal of time and allows the entire set to be exported again in case of individual errors.
The model space scaling for dimensions is not preserved during flattening. Instead, it is reset to a model space scale of 1.00, which is very confusing for the person who opens the DWG. Several CAD programs already support proper handling of this.
I would be glad if you could incorporate these improvement suggestions into the final version.
I was able to open the Rhino file that generated the attached pdf (Demetriou_PDF from FlattenedLayout.pdf) and run FlattenLayout on it and get the results that you can see in Demetriou_Flattened_1.3dm which I’ve also attached. The text objects, dimensions and images all conveyed. What didn’t was the 3d objects (the staircase that is in my original Rhino file that you can see in the pdf.)
Can you tell me what the purpose of this command is? Why would someone want to merge the objects in Model and Layout space?
The Detail Display Mode is ignored. I set it to Technical and expected a technical line drawing (as displayed in Technical mode). Instead, the output contains Closed Solid Polysurfaces rather than lines and dashed lines.
Only one detail is exported. A layout typically contains many details showing the construction from different views/perspectives/cross-sections, but only a single detail is included in the export.
Clipping to the detail boundary is ignored. It’s possible to clip the view using the detail border, but the new command doesn’t respect that.
I think this command will mainly be used to create technical drawings, so the output should be similar to Make2D -but it should also preserve the Detail setup and any objects placed in Layout space. The output I would expect would look like the example below (I prepared it “by hand” using the Make2D command).
