SRD Android CAD Viewer — reading Rhino layouts on an Android tablet

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I work in shipbuilding, and the problem that started this is a boring one: the drawing is on the workstation and the work is on the deck. Someone needs to check a dimension on a spool sheet, and the options are to walk back, or to print, or to keep a PDF that went stale two revisions ago.

There are viewers that show a Rhino model on a phone. That is a different job. What I needed was the sheet — the thing Rhino puts on paper — readable where the work happens. So I built that.

SRD Android CAD Viewer opens a .3dm directly on an Android tablet. Rhino’s own file reader runs on the device, so the drawing is rebuilt rather than converted:

  • Model space and every layout tab
  • Dimensions, leaders and text resolved to their effective style, per-object overrides included
  • Hatches generated at the scale Rhino generates them
  • Detail views, with annotation size resolved per detail
  • Embedded images, draw order and linetypes

A layout is treated as what it is, a print preview. Anything set to “no print” stays off the sheet, whether that setting sits on the layer or on the object, exactly as in a Rhino print — a detail frame on a no-print layer disappears while its contents keep drawing. Model space is untouched: there, everything is visible.

The file is read on the device. No Rhino installation, no export step, no connection, and nothing is uploaded anywhere. Tap a .3dm in Drive, Downloads or Files and open it.

What it is not. It does not model and it does not edit. It does not measure — you can read the dimensions that are in the drawing, but you cannot pick two points and get a distance. It is not a shaded 3D presentation tool. And it is Android only; there is no iOS build.

Requirements: Android 5.0 or later, 64-bit ARM.

Listing, with screenshots and a short video: SRD ANDROID CAD VIEWER | Food4Rhino
Download: SRD SYSTEM

Free to download today. Development is active, and the most useful thing anyone can send me is a file that does not come out the way it looks in Rhino. I will look at it.

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Update for the September release: the app now opens the 3D model as well, and it measures. Two lines in the post above are out of date, “It does not measure” and “It is not a shaded 3D presentation tool”, so here is what changed.

The model

  • Wireframe, shaded and ghosted display
  • Top, front, left, isometric and perspective views, a lens setting, and a look-around mode for walking through interiors
  • A section box you drag to cut the model open, with section lines, and caps on closed polysurfaces

Measuring, in 2D and 3D

  • Distance between two points, without adding anything to the drawing
  • Linear, aligned, radius, diameter and angular dimensions, with end, mid, center, quad, intersection and near snaps
  • A point’s coordinates, measured from 0,0

Also new: attach another .3dm to see the 3D content of both files as one model, a layer tree with hide and isolate, and a properties panel that shows what the selected object is.

Two things worth knowing:

  • The post above says “no connection”. That holds for opening a file, but the app itself has to reach our server at least once a week, and after the first week it asks you to sign in.
  • A file saved without render meshes (“Save Small”) cannot show its surfaces in 3D.

Still the same: it does not model and it does not edit, nothing you measure is written back to the file, and it is Android only.

Download: SRD SYSTEM

If a file does not come out the way it looks in Rhino, in 2D or now in 3D, send it over and I will look at it.

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Is it compatible with Android version 10, One UI Version 2.5" running on a Galaxy Note 9?