RhinoCAD plug-in

Rhino
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Hi everyone!

As we all know, Rhino is a wonderful program that gives the ultimate freedom in a 3d modeling environment using NURBS. But we also know that Rhino can be used not only for pure 3d design, but also for creating different kind of engineering models and drawings, starting with a 2D plans, PIDs and up to 3d assemblies of mechanical systems. That being said, it’s impossible to achieve a complete perfection everywhere at the same time. Priorities has to be given. And as far as my understanding goes, the priorities are give to the “pure 3d design”, which is quite understandable. Yet, being myself a mechanical engineer, I feel like Rhino should have its own place within the industry of CAD software. But at the current state it’s almost impossible to use Rhino as a replacement for some of the major players like Autodesk AutoCAD (parametric modelers should be excluded for obvious reasons). Yes, if you are making a home project for yourself as a hobbyist, you can use Rhino for designing some system/mechanism. You can even make some drawings for the workshop. But if you are a small-medium level business, Rhino is just too slow for the typical tasks of an engineer.
I won’t be going in a detail about the flaws, because everyone knows what they are. Much more important is to understand what can be done to change the situation as it is right now. Here is my question for the developers team: “Maybe it is worth to consider creating a special type plug-in, RhinoCAD, that would allow Rhino to catch up with BricsCAD, AutoCAD, etc., or even surpass them?”. I mean, you all are getting tired of the same requests/complaints which could be summarized as “not being a typical CAD program”. And there is a resemblance with a general CAD software. So why not go a bit further? I know the resources are scarce and the overall priorities are given to the general 3d design and interoperability with the mesh modeling paradigm. But you could start a crowdfunding project, just to see if the users are willing to commit for such an enterprise. This would also help with the clarification of the priorities. For instance, in Rhino 8 I’ve noticed the appearance of constraints. But honestly, who besides a design engineer would appreciate them? I think that for an average CG modeler it is simply irrelevant. Yet an effort has been made to develop such a wonderful feature.
Please, share you thoughts on this topic!

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Generalizations like this aren’t helpful- We always welcome all comments, suggestions and criticisms, but they need to be specific so we can have a chance to respond or where appropriate point developer resources towards addressing them.

again, how, specifically in your opinion what is missing for Rhino to “catch up”?

Tell us what problems need to be solved, and we’ll do our best to do so.

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Could it be that you are quite familiar with the CAD programs you mention, but not very familiar with the alternative methods available in Rhino for accomplishing the things that are common in the type of work you do?

So far the only more or less specific deficiency you mentioned is:

Do you mean overall in everything it does, or in specific tasks you perform frequently in your type of work?

What are some of the “typical tasks of an engineer”, especially those that might not be typical for other Rhino users - those you feel the program is optimized for?

Could it be that you find that Rhino can accomplish what you desire, but through a time-consuming combination of multiple commands while the programs you like can accomplish those results with quicker single commands? If so perhaps you could cite specific examples with timings and frequency of use.

Finally:

I think this is a misguided argument for this forum since a large number of the more experienced contributors on it are here because they have already concluded that it is the other programs you mention that are seriously flawed. Another large portion are people who use one or more of those programs, are as expert in them as you are and in Rhino, and use Rhino in concert with the other programs to get their jobs done.

My experience as a decades long Rhino user is that Kyle is sincere when he says

except that for many suggested features “their best” can take decades to forever. It comes down to what McNeel perceives is most important…

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Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been busy with the Easter holidays and such. Anyway, back to the topic. From a Mechanical Design Engineer point of view, Rhino has two major problems:

  1. Drawings preparation is at the very basic level.
  2. Part/Assembly hierarchy can be realized only with blocks, which aren’t very suited for the task.

The problem with the drawings preparation is so common and there are so many topics about it that I don’t see the point to state the obvious. Besides lacking local section views, broken views, missing annotation symbols, the necessity always working in two spaces (model and paper) whenever you need to find a workaround the problem, etc., there is also a huge problem with Make2d. If you have an assembly consisting of several parts and you need to create a section view projection, be prepared to delete the redundant lines or add the missing ones. And let’s not forget about making custom hatch to every part that’s been cut inside the assembly!

You could argue that where is the harm of some manual work?! But just as I pointed out at the beginning, this takes too much time. For a hobbyist, time is not the issue. But for a small/middle business time is money. And it takes just too much time to do everything manually. I know that software sdk is available for every user to improve their workflow themselves. But honestly, I’m not such an advanced programmer for developing an improved algorithm for creating a projection view of a section.

Also, I don’t think it would be a good idea just to fix Make2d, because it won’t solve the problem with the necessity of switching spaces when annotating drawings. Best way would be to add a new object based on the Detail object, like in AutCAD Mechanical or BrycsCAD Mechanical. There, user can create Basic View of a part/assembly, which include projection lines in some kind of subspace. That way you can focus on working in paper space and there is no misplaced lines or some undesired disturbances in drawing views.

The problem with the Part/Assembly hierarchy is that blocks essentially are just copies of an instance. But from mechanical designer point of view, the division between parts and assemblies hold some significance. It is possible to create a hierarchy with just blocks, but only for the case where blocks are embedded. The use of linked blocks is out the question because of the nesting problem. You can use layers of each individual block to control a visibility of parts/assemblies, but that won’t solve the problem of selecting part you wish to hide. Yes, it’s possible to add a plug-in from food4rhino which simplifies the block editing, but the workflow won’t be improved that much. And what if you need to create an exploded view? Can you imagine the amount of work of exploding an assembly? How easy it would be?

Again, I will repeat myself that everything can be done manually. The only problem is how much effort do you require. In my opinion, it wouldn’t be fair to ask developers to shift the focus purely on the CAD aspect of Rhino. But making a plug-in would be a viable option. Especially if there are enough users, ready to support such a project.

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Have you tried v8? there has been a lot of work done in blocks and drawings, especially hatches, linetypes etc.

for make 2d, can you share files with screen shots of missing bits? real world examples are super helpful in helping to improve that code.

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Hi @crow

Please don’t be mad but I feel your request is never going to happen, at least not in our lifetime.
McNeel’s track record on their other products is abysmal, poor Bob. They have basically run into the ground all their other products and Rhino is the only one that has been any good or worth the money.
Bongo shows promise but is too expensive and should be folded into Rhino anyways.

Good and efficient 2d drawing production should be made better in Rhino. It’s ok if your doing one offs or you need to send out a pdf for a clients perusal but dammed if there are changes. Your right it’s extremely time consuming with so many missing features. Arc-cad has made in roads where McNeel hasn’t but you have to pay for that plugin and it’s more suited to architecture.

If you have a team of guys you might need a talented person or persons full time to get drawings out and make all that happen.

McNeel has so many, many examples of what’s wrong and what could be made better that after 20 years it’s certainly seems unnecessary to send in anything more but we keep trying.

RM