I’m trying to figure out a way for symmetrical models to make more sense, because 99% of my work is on models that have Y-axis symmetry. We have ways of dealing with continuity across the centerline, so that’s not a concern right now. I’m trying to keep it simple, keep it easy to toggle on and off, so I can see better what’s happening thru the middle of the part.
My first thought is that there’s probably a way in the video hardware to simply mirror everything on the right side, onto the left. That doesn’t help much atm, unless the Video God(s) are smiling upon me.
Other ideas: A grasshopper plugin that just mirrors everything, all the time, with the mirrored objects being locked?
Is there a way to do it with blocks?
I agree that an automatic mirroring for every newly created object (only for visual purposes) could be really helpful. Even better if it can be turned on and off with a simple click on a dedicated icon or a keyboard key.
Until this is being implemented in a future Rhino release, for now you can use the regular Symmetry tool and have a Clipping plane in the desired location (in your case that would be a vertical clipping plan along the Y axis). Then you can manually switch it off and on with the “! _EnableClippingPlane” and “! _DisableClippingPlane” commands.
Actually, the above is working perfectly for what I want. The custom preview object only displays in rendered display modes, so the ghosted and solid modes (where I work mostly) don’t have it mirrored. But my chrome emap and rendered flat grey modes do show the objects mirrored, so I can switch to those modes with a key macro.
I’m going to mark this one solved.
- Note that there is a few seconds delay between commands, when working with the mirrored objects turned on, so this isn’t a perfect solution but it does work well for taking a look.
