Hello everyone,
I’m using Rhino 8, and I’m having a problem with the Flat display mode for SubD objects. When I try to switch from Smooth to Flat mode using the keyboard shortcut, it doesn’t work as expected.
This issue is frustrating because I need to switch between smooth and flat views while modeling.
Has anyone experienced this problem? Is there a specific setting or solution to fix it?
Thank you for your help!
Dear @ANEGUER_ABDELAZIZ
are you talking about display of subD or about flatShade of the viewport ?
why would you need flatShade for the subd ?
the tab key → switches between flat/ box mode and smooth mode.
you can also use the command
_SubDDisplayToggle
_FlatShade
will toggle between…
left: subd, right: nurbs:
“flat”
ok… but it looks like subd s are not affected by the _flatShade
_extractRendermesh to the left will show more “graininess” then the subd.
@pierrec
can hopefully tell us more.
kind regards - tom
Thanks for the answer, my friend. It seems the issue lies with the graphics card; when I change “smooths” to “Flat,” the setting updates in the command line, but nothing changes in the project itself.
can you post a file or some screenshots that show the problem?
@Tom_P Could you post a SystemInfo here, for the computer where FlatShade doesn’t work on SubDs? Here on Windows, it is working in both v8 and v9. I think FlatShade doesn’t work for most objects on MacOS on v8, and in v9 it might be a recent addition. Anyway let me know where it doesn’t work and I’ll ping the right people to fix it.
the original post was refering to rhino 8 - so i used this
Version 8 (8.36.26293.11002, 2026-10-20)
tom_p_systeminfo_2026-10-24.txt (6.0 KB)
flat shade on subd works fine rhino 9 beta
