Clipping-drawings can now be directly selected and edited using standard Rhino commands, making them much more intuitive to work with. Clipping-drawings are now defined as blocks (block instances), so instead of placing drawings in locked output layers, you can work with a single object using familiar Rhino workflows:
Double-click to edit the drawing properties.
Gumball, Move, Scale, Rotate, and Copy to position and transform it, in model space or on a layout.
Hide, IsolateToViewport, Delete, and more, just like any other object.
Explode to create a static copy of the drawing.
Because the drawing is a block, it stays linked to the model and updates when the source geometry or the clipping plane changes (via the drawing’s AutoUpdate property or when running UpdateClippingDrawings command). Running Explode breaks that link — the exploded curves are a static snapshot and will no longer update.
Important note
Please back up your V8 files that contain clipping-drawings before opening them in the Rhino BETA. The first time you open a V8 file, Rhino BETAwill take some time to update all drawings.
In this video, developer Rajaa Issa @rajaa covers important details about this feature.
Download the BETA to try this feature. Look forward to your feedback.
Note:You can use the Gumball to move , re-arrange and rotate the location of these Clipping Drawings. If the layouts are not showing the clipping drawings properly, move them back into the locations curves on the ClippingSections::Placement layer
You can double-click on the clipping drawings to run the EditClippingDrawing command. This is used to change the settings that were used when the ClippingDrawing was created.
For example, you can check Hidden and Tangent options to include this geometry on the clipping drawing.
First off, I’m not sure how much emphasis you are placing on “directly”. If that is the main concern, then the answer is no. You need to select a clipping plane in model space - which can be through an active detail. When a detail is active, you can’t place the output on the layout.
The workflow is: in model space, select a clipping plane and run the command. Place a block instance. You can then examine the output in model space if necessary. You can delete the block instance (also optional), and then insert a block instance on a layout.
Secondly, you can do that with any geometry. Previously, for doing that with ClippingDrawing output, that meant unlocking all layers and somehow selecting all output. Then either copy and paste on a layout or, from an active detail, use ChangeSpace to move it onto the layout. With a block instance this is a lot easier.
Finally, while that is doable, unless your object is about half the size in real life as the layout size that you are putting this geometry on, you’ll need to scale that instance down (or up if you are working with very small objects). At that point, you can no longer correctly dimension that object on the layout (without writing your own scripts to scale the value of the dimensions).
-wim
thanks for the clarification, I feel fine with all of them, they seems logical to me.
Let me say that having the drawing as block sounds very promising, and I like it a lot!!!
In product design we where used to work in 1:1 or more and hardly we use smaller size becasue they tend to cheat the proportions.
I’ve a question/suggestion: would be reasonable to shorten the layer structure at this point and have all the line inside the block on the single layers?
let’s see if I can explain it better: from my experience when you do a tech draw you want all the same “kind” of lines to look the same and hardly you customize them so at the end you need only the layers for the category (like v5 make 2D) and not stacking them insied the drawing name:
Hi @skysurfer
Thanks for trying the new drawings as blocks.
When you have 1:1 scale, placing the output directly in layout is reasonable because you can dimension without error. Also the drawing-block will update with model changes. See the following short video comparing showing the block in a detail set to 1:1, vs output directly to the layout. They basically are the same:
Notice in this video, there are no drawing layers created because I used the new “Properties=BySourceLayers” effectively output to the source layer and hence use source object/layer property [see here…]. So if your drawing output has one kind and is perhaps created in one layer with the desired properties, the use ClipingDrawing properties=UseSourceLayer to keep the layer structure clean.
When set the Properties=ByOutputLayer the intention is to adjust layer properties per category (BTW, you can now create a template to pull these properties from so you don’t have to reset for each new section, [see here…]). I hear you about shortening the layers, but it is more inclusive to allow setting output properties for each part. for example hidden-lines vs silhouette vs hatch boundary, etc. For organization in the layer manager, you can collapse the section layer.
I’ve to say that none of the two option fit my actaul workflow.
The template drawing seem to make even more redundant layers than the standard one.
On the other hand using the bySourceObject it means that I’ve to keep my layers object ON while adding dimensions and axis to the tech draw… Having the block on Layout it maybe a viable solution. I’ll give it a try and I’ll tell you.
No, Ideally the best for me is to have only the TemplateDrawing that stores the category but not repeated layers for each section, so all the drawing come into the respective category once.
EG: Curves stores all the Curve from all the ClippingDrawing and I can set the LineType and print options once.
Ok I see, so you’d like to have a “Name” option in the ClippingDrawings command that forces output under one “root-layer name” (if you use the same for all your dawings) instead of creating a separate one per clipping-plane. Added to the list for consideration here…
Also because the graphical aspect of lines in mechanical drawing is something strictly requested from the ISO standards. If you want to be complaint with mech industry you need to reduce error source also by giving the aspect only once.
Having multiple options for the same line drive to errors very easily.
MCAD, like Solidworks or OnShape , assign this properties only as document option and you can’t easily edit them.
get a rid of all the sublayer for each section and keep all the drawing organized by categories under a unique “template Drawing”.
And yes this could be saved into a template file letting people to make 2D drawing whitout caring about the visual aspect being a much faster and more “reliable” system across the company.
PS: I think clipping drawings as Block are just amazing!!!
Hi, works for me and I like it. I have one wish. Is it possible to use this new leader with user text on drawings generated by sections? For now it’s not working as long as drawing is a block but maybe it’s possible to keep block and use those leaders?
Currently there is no support to access attributes of block geometry, but it is on the list here…. You can explode the drawing block as you mentioned, but the drawing will become static and will no longer update with model changes.
@skysurfer The feature you requested to output all drawings to one layer structure (documented here) is now available in the WIP. Please let me know if it works for you and if you have any feedback. This post include details of the workflow using this feature…
Hi @Rajaa,
I saw the post and I’m really happy for this option to happen.
I’m in a busy period so I can’t really deepen it but I tried it just after the release (I saw wim’s YuoTrak reply) and it was outputting what I’m expecting.
I’ve to test the interface more but is absolutely good to have a proper options window
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