Rhino 8 Development

Some fun with those Revit error messages from hell:

Or perhaps something non-text like eg: turn on the isocurves when finished for a second or two.

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Well its not so easy. Commands on a parametric modeller work or they don’t. If they don’t, it makes no sense to give “as much as possible”. This would break the constraints and it breaks the parametric nature. This is why direct modelling CAD has still a very wide range of use-cases.

Rhinos biggest disadvantage I currently see is its inability to stay lightweight on many operations. This is not necessary a bad thing, but sometimes fitting a single span surface will just work much better at the end. Perfect examples are offsets. Some people need offsets exactly x units. But many people would rather pick a higher tolerance in order to keep offsets as much lightweight as possible. So what they do, they rebuild or refit the perfect result in Rhino. On breps this already becomes a none-trivial problem. And even if not, if you sum this up its quite an effort to refit all the time.
If you don’t care, you are likely running into problems later, especially when it comes to filleting a shape. And that’s probably why we see so many failures on Auto-filleting in Rhino. (And this feature did actually become more reliable during the last 2 versions!)

Manually filleting is actually not as complicated, I personally found it much harder to do in Rhino as compared to Alias or Icem. Some other CAD have much better automation tools. Auto-Filleting in Catia, Solidworks and even in Fusion is much more reliable compared to Rhino. However, the quality of those fillets are not as good as manually created in a direct modeller (assuming the person behind the screen knows what he/she is doing). Sometimes its a trade-off. It depends…

But that’s the same regarding the price point. 6-10x times more expensive CAD can in the end become a much cheaper solution. It doesn’t makes sense to compare prices from a commercial standpoint. If your job is to fillet sheet-metal-constructions all day, then it just a dumb choice to use Rhino for this.
Instead it should be discussed how Rhino can be improved for its use cases, and maybe on how new type of problems can be solved, or how this tool can become useful for people which are not ready yet to switch over. I currently see three groups, architects looking for a 2d/3d AutoCAD replacement, hobby users/“makers” and all type of professionals in need to automate CAD work.

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This is typically are result of the limitations of NURBS, not something specific to Rhino. The “exact” offset of a NURBS curve or surface is only a NURBS curve or surface for special cases. The more general situation is the exact offset curve or surface can be aproximated within any desired tolerance - but at the expense of increasing the number of control points and spans as the tolerance is tightened. Similarly the exact intersection curve between two NURBS surfaces is only a NURBS curve in special cases. Otherwise the exact intersection can be approximated within any desired tolerance - but at the expense of increasing the number of control points and spans as the tolerance is tightened.

OffsetSrf wih Loose=Yes maintains surface structure on the offset surface.

This works just for single surfaces and it’s basically just moving the cps in offset direction. But I’m rather talking about a function which creates a grid of offset points and fits a single or low span surface to this theoretical offset. Or does it this already? Actually I don’t know for sure. But comparing Rhino to Alias and Icem, the point is that the other two are prioritizing lightweight surface properties over exactness, with all its pros and cons. Rhino did improve on this as well. But essentially comparing many of my workflows I had with Icem, I personally found this different “weighting” always as the slow downer.

A billion times yes to this outliner. I’m not a full time modeler/cad person, so every time I come back to Rhino I have to re-aquire my bearings with the structure of anything I didn’t just build with some nodes in grasshopper. (Consequently I end up using grasshopper for things I know I don’t need it for, but my level of familiarity with it seems to stick more since I come from a programming background and grasshopper is really just a node based programming environment)

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I don’t know if anyone had a word about this, but it would be great to have an “Offset Face” command, maybe using joined surfaces UV isocurves to move a face in or out.

Here is a clear example from another software (I know it may be a little complex to emulate):

I would love to see the history tool developed. If I could trim/punch holes and precisely fillet creases of a SubD, and still have control of the surface as a SubD, that would be great.

have a look in the comment section under this video and get the atmosphere amongst sketchup users:

i am pressingly emphasizing that there is huge glacier to be torn off the antartica which will need a haven.
Sketchup, so far Trimbles milkcow, users is that huge piece of ice and Rhino might be the haven if it reacts upon this opportunity!

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what features do you think rhino needs to be the Haven you refer to?

quick push and pull modelling in rhino is not very good, clicking materials on faces, integrated warehouse of 3d models … thats it
and definately better block functionality

otherwise rhino tops sketchup in every other aspect even in price now

look up push pull here on forum there are so many topics about it am not repeating same things over again :slight_smile:

have you watched this video?

I agree with your other points-

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i watched this video years back i dont say you cant easily model in rhino but still push pull in rhino could be much improved i know exactly how it could be and that would be almost 1:1 to sketchup logic with very small effort but could be “sold” to su userd with plenty return

No disrespect intended, are you a programmer or software dev? (if so, and you want to work on this, we should talk offline :wink: )

There are no small efforts in this game unless you are self funded, starting from a blank page by yourself with no one to answer to and no 3rd party ecosystem to consider.

We are not in that situation and have a looooot of moving parts to insure each new change does not upset another crucial system.

Does push pull have room to get better? yes absolutely, I 100% agree. Is it a “small effort”?

no.

Does that disqualify it from validity? no.

Are there significant issues with how rhino represents 3d models in the push pull paradigm? yes. Can they be solved? most likely with enough money and dev hours… Sadly that call is way above my pay grade.

All that said can you expand on specifics of what problems with our current push pull workflow we need to solve still? (don’t say “copy sketch up” we don’t and won’t ever roll that way.)

anyone else want to add their thoughts here?

Remember the best way to reach a software dev is to present the problem to solve not the solution to the problem. This has been my biggest lesson learned as a designer working with programmers.

The most helpful info is, answer this question:
My biggest problem(s) or hurdle(s) to working with push-pull modeling in rhino is__________

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fair enough, its only my hope that can be easily done. i rely on the fact that it is easier to emulate functionality by complexity reduction from more complex to more simple (rhino > skp).

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… this:

This is what you get in Rhino with SplitFace and Gumball extrude:
image

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push-pull

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gotcha- yep, totally 100% agree.

Will write this up and see what we can do to tune that up-

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-62638

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I dont miss much from SketchUp, but i really liked how they did guides/helper lines. You could just drag out edges and pull them on the face so easily.

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