Fortunately architects are not the only ones making design decisions, I’ve seen things that were built “under architecture” (supposedly used as a badge for quality of design etc.) where I have been wondering what the architect was thinking because there were some really impractical spaces/structures/other things in the design.
E.g. a building with large metal and glass doors that petite people had a very very hard time to push open (and sometimes just couldn’t), but at least it looked “open and light” instead of “closed off and dark”. Or zig-zag hallways instead of straight or curved so you had to make 90 degree turns every 10-25m.
Now one could argue that the architect who came up with that wasn’t a really good one, but still… they’re out there anyway and there are people who buy it because they want something modern, less mundane, more “exiting” architecture. And the people who the building was meant for got lost along the way and end up with the impractical things to deal with.
experience is practically invaluable in every field of life, but that is not what i was talking about, though i see your analogy and that is unfortunately a common problem and gives every architect a bad name. but, nobody stops you from choosing a more experienced architect if you want to be sure to have a door which you can open.
imagine that there actually is an experienced architect being involved into a public site of bigger instances. he devotes about 500% of his life to this project, which he and his team work out every possible scenario for to make life more worth while for everybody involved into the actual usage of this site, while targeting feasibility in matters of structural, financial, sociological, political, biological matters and whatever complementary adjective you could think of agenda while also fighting to communicate their ideas if there are still some left, since if you knot in every single parameter making up a building, an architect has very little to nothing to say in the end becoming a marionette in his own theatre. well ok that is a pretty egomanic analogy because it definitely is not his theatre alone but it fits the irony.
Yes, I got what you meant, experience is necessary but as you say there is always a compromise between an architect’s vision and the demands/requirements of the other parties involved. And it is not just architecture where this happens, in other design/engineering fields the same things apply and odd design choices may come up there too.
I actually agree with your “egomanic” analogy because that is what often happens, I call that an appeasement process where they try to make everyone happy and in the end you end up with something that went through the proverbial blender (kitchen device, not the software )
That is the goal, right? It’s not there yet, sure thing, but it can and will be one day, that’s a sure thing, too.
I work in the ‘design department’ in our architectural office (40-50 people), using solely Rhino and VisualArq. Perfect tool for this stage. Easy, flexible, playful. However, the moment you need production planning, it starts to get tricky, and it becomes an AutoCAD job.
(We used Revit, too, in the last years, but people have lost their enthusiasm for it, and we are fading it out. It costs much, is a difficult and clumsy beast, and the chief noticed a drop in productivity.)
I’ll avoid any philosophical debate (important as it is), and just mention some of the technicalities that need to improve (repeating what has been said on many occasions):
Clean separation of 3D and 2D. 3D goes to model space, 2D in layout space. This oldschool sloppy ACAD-like workflow where you strew 2D stuff all over your scene should be a thing of the past.
Make2D should be able to target Layout space, and stay history enabled. VisualArq does a similar thing already with their commands vaPlanView and vaSectionView, but it cannot output to Layout, too - yet! I tested the ChangeSpace command on their parametric vaPlanView to put it to a Layout, and it worked, and stayed live. It’s a planned feature, they assure.
Export Layouts to DWG. Yo. Crappy, but industry standard to deal out plans to the co-planners. Like the AutoCAD ‘ExportLayout’ command.
A Layout should remain as it is, period. Working in model space must not break it. For this, better handling of layer visibility in Layouts is needed. Updated LayerStates would help, too.
I feel confident enough to do even bigger layouting in Rhino, but not without the ‘SafeLayout’ command anymore, and still it is a necessity to keep a pretty strict layer discipline, or you go crazy.
DisplayModes should be attachable to Layouts. They define the look, and are easily forgotten when passing the scene on to a coworker.
Linestyles, line endings, arrowheads. These received some love in R8 WIP.
Many more standard architectural symbols (dims, height annotations, tags, scale bars, you name it…) should be available, and definitely be placeable on top of a Detail view, with automatic updating.
This is obviously specific to architecture, thus it should be left to plugins like VisualArq (which lacks here, astonishingly). No fun to create them all by yourself, also because they need to have some ‘intelligence’.
A catastrophy: Rhino dimentions can be put on top of a Detail, and display the right numbers, even move together with the Detail, right? Nice, but when VisualArq objects (walls etc.) are dimensioned like this, once the Detail is activated and deactivated again, the dims can break and play crisscross over that Layout. Such things are just unprofessional and a showstopper. Needs fixing.
Data should be readable from the scene, and be placeable on Layouts, too (VisualArq feature ‘vaTable’, but, again, it cannot yet dwell on Layouts.)
A reliable batch export mechanism for many Layouts. In the Print dialog, multiple Layouts can be exported at once, yes, but this is very rudimentary.
Better blocks (ha ha, funny).
Because some fear Rhino becomes a bloated beast expanding it in the drafing department - I don’t share that sentiment. Most of it is kind of bugfixing or straightening out existing features. Just taking it down the road where it belongs.
As has been said, working with Rhino from A-Z might already be possible, but beware, and handle with great caution!
Not really, e.g. Mechanical has similar needs with regards to dimensions etc. so I think that the generic items like, dims, tags and perhaps scale bars etc. should be part of Rhino and not left to plugins.
My other CAD program has a somewhat similar issue, most of the time the dimensions stay associative to the underlying viewport but sometimes an operation can cause viewport to update and the dimension associativity to break mostly because it loses connection to the snap points for some reason. My guess is that the same applies to Rhino and this may be a bit tricky to solve.
I run a small office and do everything in rhino+visualarq. Projects are usually 30,000sf and smaller (3000sm). For the most part it works great. It’s easy to present concepts to clients and smoothly develop documents from the design model and construction documents. The projects are relatively small and relatively fast. I’ve previously worked on large scale projects in rhino for concept and then rebuilt everything in revit for construction documents. I don’t find revit fun to use at all and it’s not necessarily a great tool at this scale, so I no longer use it.
For the drawbacks, I 100% agree with everything that @Eugen said! Also, reflected ceiling plans. This absolutely needs to be fixed, and apparently is finally getting addressed in Rhino 8 + Visualarq 3.
I would add better dimension editing. Selecting a dimension should automatically turn on its points for editing. Also being able to edit the dimensions text in place rather than from the properties panel would be helpful. Perhaps a right-click menu?
I would like it limited to dimensions only. I find having points on every selection distracting. It would be nice if there were sub-options allowing you selectively display points only on certain objects. Although I have AutoCAD set to display grips on all selected objects and that DOESN’T drive me nuts. Go figure! I am nothing if not inconsistent
Forgot to mention one critical thing: collaboration. In Revit or ArchiCAD many users can work on one and the same scene. In Rhino, not really. Can we.
In Revit, a user can check out the central file, work on it, and check it back in. The parts that are checked out are then locked for the other users. A BIM server can be used, or just any 'master’file in the local network.
In ArchiCAD, it’s a bit more direct. A users can ‘take control’ over an object, which locks it for the others during editing. A BIM server is needed. There’s even a chat window there.
What comes close in Rhino are using linked blocks and worksessions, but these mechanisms just do not cut it (yet).
VisualArq, as practically the only architecture plugin with an attitude, barely supports worksessions as of now, and e.g. wall joints won’t work across an active and an attached file.
Thinking out loud: when using worksessions, there’s always one active file and one or more locked files, ok. Would it be possible to just select locked objects and ‘toggle’ their status from ‘locked’ to ‘active’ or back? That would more or less be the equivalent of taking permission over objects, like in ArchiCAD.
Problem of course: that would mean pulling out / deleting the objects from a foreign file and importing it into the active one. When a teammate has the attached file open at the same time, it would be locked, so no go.
Some new basic mechanism is needed here. Something like: when someone tries to ‘toggle’ an object into his scene (make it active), a message is sent to the other teammate for permission. If it is granted, the object is deleted from the attached scene which is then saved automatically, and reloaded in the other scene.
Next problem: what if the file is really big? Can take minutes to save/load.
Was this ever on the radar?
Thanks for reading!
yep detailing and publishing of layout sheets needs improving, and the ability to have a bill of quants table created from data in the model is a must, a table which is live and dynamic like in Vectorworks worksheets etc. I have Rhino8WIP installed but barely used it yet, I think I will start to use for some simpler project works. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for the improvements to layouts, publishing and creating a BOQ
Does anyone have a good tutorial tip for advanced texturing in Rhino 7? I am still struggling a bit in understanding how this is supposed to work, besides using it for a long time.
Start a new thread with this question and it is more likely to be answered. Click on “+ New Topic” which is above the top right corner of the list of threads.
This thread is about Rhino 8 for Architects which is unrelated.
Well, I do think it is related. I use Rhino for architecture & design and hope that in Rhino 8 the handling of textures gets a little simpler and more intuitive. Now it is very confusing.
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