Hello,
May I propose a functionality I think it would be awesome to have within Rhino. At work we very often need some “basic inflate” of a surface or a mesh. I have grasshopper definition doing this but frankly it is very much faster inside Illustrator. Yes, Illustrator can do inflate any shape and the result is OK 3D mesh OBJ file.
not a big deal but I find it funny after +20year of using Rhino to need to use Illustrator for such basic thing 
thank you
@DanielPiker can you chime in on this one?
Here’s one method, I’m fairly certain there are other threads but I cannot find them at the moment.
Yes, as the link above shows, one way is a physical inflation simulation with Kangaroo.
or are you after a simpler more purely geometric solution?
I can see how for some applications something simpler without the iterative solving would be desirable. Also - is it just a mesh output you need? Do you need other controls, such as whether the height increases all the way to the interior, or flattens off within some distance?
Thank you for asking,
The idea is to go without Kangaroo nor Grasshopper (it requires every time to tweak settings and correctly set Z-axis etc).. We are 40using Rhino where only one digs in Grasshopper..
Yes, I’m thinking of simpler one/2 click solution. A Mesh as result is totally enough.
Example: Click several times on More or Less to adjust… and watch the preview before pressing Enter:
Actually _Patch almost does it, but requires a bit tweaking plus it looses the contour and result wise it’s behind Illustrator.
@cdordoni the subD aproach does not work well for large surfaces (the middle area remains flat) and the solution is not 1 click..
I see your point, I just tried it in Illustrator. I had no idea that function was built in. I was aware of Adobe Dimensions, which has some basic 3D functions, but I have never used that.
Hi @Alex
Also take a look at StructuralDesigner, which is free on Food4Rhino. It has pneumatic tool that might work and runs inside Rhino.
-Jakob
Look brilliant! Thanks Jakob
I knocked together a little plugin for a quick and simple inflate of closed planar curves, purely geometric with no iterative solving:
The command is called PuffCurve, and it has settings for Height, FlattenDistance and MaxEdgeLength.
FlattenDistance gives you the option to make the puffed surface level off to a plateau within that distance, or if it is set to zero, no flattening is applied.
MaxEdgeLength controls the resolution of the mesh used. Avoid setting this too small so you don’t create overly dense output.
@DanielPiker that’s nice. I quickly gave it a run. It seems like the height and flatten distance are sticky but the max edge length not. It would be nice to have that setting sticky also, so that you can make a try on a single curve and then quickly apply it others.
Thanks @Gijs good catch - I meant to make all the settings sticky but missed that one. I fixed this and updated the file in my reply above.
this is a very useful tool… display and sign making folks will love this.
any chance this gets full rhino tool status? I think it’s worthy to add it.
also any chance it could have a subd result?
Great plug-in for those who make signs! 
Definitely needs to be incorporated as a native tool in Rhino, and with a sub-option to auto-convert to SubD. Similar to the “QuadRemesh” tool.
Is it compatible with Rhino 7? I got the following warning message when I unblocked it and then tried to install it:
The file I uploaded before was built with dotnet 7. I just rebuilt with 4.8 so it runs in Rhino 7, and edited the post above again to link to the updated file.
Yes, I’ll look at including a SubD output.
Now it works in Rhino 7. Thanks! 
Rh 7.16 still has bug
Hi Obatt man -
Bug?
The current version of Rhino 7 is 7.38…
-wim
This command should become native to Rhino.
Rh 7.16 still has bug
