Peter's Tools Collection

Rhino Rhino for Windows
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Is anyone using RealMaterialTools in the ‘Peter’s Tools’ collection? It’s giving me a RhinoScript error message. Also, the sample values for some plastic materials (that Peter Mentions on his Wiki page) don’t seem to be in evidence.

Edit: The latest version (1.93) fixes this.

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Yes I have used the materials in Peter’s Tools but since getting ORCA3D use the materials there instead. What is really nice is that PT can give you centers of gravity as well. Peter was kind enough to write some specific features at my humble request. I still use most of the other Tools included every day and keep the toolbar open all the time. Great stuff. Thanks Peter. BTW, I’ve noticed Pete here in the last few days and am sure he will chime in. Writing your own material values is possible too, just read the notes.

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Peter is patiently waiting for me to convert PT to python, at which point it can all be dumped into a plug-in - almost done…

-Pascal

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I sent Peter an email at pretty much the same time as I posted here. He’s replied to my queries a few times already. A very helpful guy.

Being able to add materials to the list in Notepad is great. I’ve just been doing that. I’d like to have the RealMaterialTools call a table rather than listing things on the command line (I’ve got loads of materials I want to list). It’s something I’d like to have a go at scripting myself, but I’m not sure if it’s too tough a task for a beginner (i.e. me). I’d also like to see if I can get it to return a mass centroid for a collection of objects with different materials. That would be very useful to me.

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How do you do this?

Thanks,
Don

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Don,

First you need to select the closed polysurfs (needs a volume) and select a 'real material' in Peters Tools. Then you hit the BOM button and select your assigned solids from above and a window with a list of attributes to include in an Excel or CSV. Peter was nice enough to add a 'volume centroid' box in the list that when checked along with 'weight' will let you do a total Weight and Balance spreadsheet which is a beautiful thing for a yacht design project. If you have Excel (which I don't) on your computer, I think the BOM command will open it and drop all the values chosen into the columns and rows. 

PT also asks is you want to save a CSV file which then can be imported to a Google Sheets file. Then it is a simple task to add you sums of the xyz components of the volume centroid. I have since gotten Orca3D which does much the same thing with lots of fancy labels in a sharp looking report but for the price (free!) you can beat Peters Tools.

I find the feature I use the most is his implementation of Set Point. Lots less clicking. Bunch of other goodies too. I'm sure that when Pascal finishes the Python conversion that Peter can implement more items. Check his website, he does some really fun modelling too!

Thanks Peter and Pascal too. Keep us posted on the Python version.
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