Organizing and setting up cad lines in rhino file. Best practices?

Hi Guys,

So I going to start modeling my whole house in Rhino and I would love some help on how to set things up. I have the cad lines all brought in and ready to go. I have 3 floorplan levels and 16 section cuts all brought in to rhino. I want to setup things to make it easy to draw on top of and start modeling. So the question would be the best way to organize the cads. I am going to create a layer for each floor / floorplan. then a layer for exterior elevations and then section cuts as well. For each or the views I was wondering if I should make each a block or a group or what to group each together. I am coming from sketchup, so my typical thing would be to group each section cut, but I am not sure the best method in Rhino.

Thanks Scott

What is your ultimate goal? Are you looking to just model your house or are you also looking to do some drafting? You mention having layers to draw on top of the floor plans and section cuts, but I’m sure I understand what you hope to do.

If you are planning on having a model you can render, you really want to have a layer for every material you want to use. Regardless of the rendering system you use, that will help significantly. Depending on the depth and detail of your model, you could have one layer for the concrete foundation; one layer for the “core” layer of the walls (2x4, 2x6, etc); one layer for the inner surface of the walls; different layers for the different types of materials on the outside; then layers for furniture, lights, appliances, etc.

The simplified version would be to have a layer for walls, a layer for floors, a layer for windows, etc.

For drafting, you want to be much more selective. In general, I use about 5-10 layers, and sometimes more depending on the project. I do it somewhat old-school in the sense that I have different layers for my thin/detail lines, medium lines, thick lines, dimensions, hatches, dashed lines, etc. The principal being that you can set the layer properties to correspond to your different line weights and types. With drafting, less is more. I had to deal with a 80+ layer sloppy CAD file that was a nightmare to work with. I have done construction drawings for a 3,000 square foot house on only a dozen layers.

Hope that helps.

it does help a lot. The primary goal is this. The cads have been drawn the house is mostly built, so I really do not need the documents for construction. The whole goal of this is to take the kitchen and get as much detail modeled in as possible and then add lights, or other furniture to see how it will look rendered. Or the back hallway to be able to model a light fixture and see how that will look. I have vray for sketchup, and I use Keyshot which works for any program. I am also considering vray for rhino but would like to understand if it will be my primary modeler or not.

you won’t go wrong modelling your interior spaces in Rhino, and then rendering in Keyshot, I’ve just completed drawings for 166 kitchens in a modern high end apartment block, along the way I’ve rendered different examples and views in Keyshot to run by the client, it worked well.
Although I am also now looking to use Vray in Rhino for renders too. (vray only available on windows)

You should try Unreal Engine https://www.unrealengine.com
It’s free, real time, cross platform…
I ditched all my rendering application for Unreal.

not heard of Unreal :thinking: , is it good for rendering interiors, or stand alone furniture ?

Sure. It’s a video game engine, but we use for VR / AR projects and video games of course.

yeh just watched a different you tube post of an interior walk through, very nice :slight_smile:. Can you just render single scenes as a jpeg output too ?

Yes. In UE4, what you see is what you get, so a screenshot of 4K or 8K takes a few seconds.