Please take a look at this discussion from 4 or 5 years ago:
This is still something that we need, especially doing our toolpaths in RhinoCAM, where we don’t need to deal with exporting STEP and losing the colours (the more complex projects are surface files that are exported via IGES to WorkNC).
I found an example of how this could work in Rhino. I apologize in advance for linking to a somewhat competitive product, but I think he explains this better than I could starting at around 4:20:
Here’s a little more on why this would be helpful.
We use RhinoCAM for 47% of all our CNC programming (2019 statistic). We are talking about close to 30,000 unique details. RhinoCAM has the ability to automatically find features with one button, and automatically program them with another. But… the models have to be closed polysurfaces. But because we need to colour the surfaces to indicate what is important, tolerances, etc, we can’t use this awesome feature.
Hi Dan,
You can already do this in V6. Create your custom color in materials then shift ctrl to select the faces of the polysurface you want a different color right click assign material.
Only works in native rhino won’t work for export
See file
RM
Thanks, but I’m aware of the work around. I’m asking for a real solution that doesn’t keep us bound to a single display mode or require CNC programmers to start dealing with materials. I suppose I could script something to make adding materials as easy as changing colours. But then there’s still the issue of being visible only in the rendered display. I wonder if there is a setting in the shaded display mode that will let us see the material colours?
This didn’t work out so well. It works, but then all our other tools for changing colours don’t, as would be expected changing that setting. The guys I showed this to (using materials for colour change) thought that was absurd and have no interest in pursuing that.
So I guess I’m back to my original enhancement request.
@clement
Come on McNeel tech at least put this on the wish list, Dan has many people to deal with. In a situation like a one man shop its not a problem but upon thinking about this it won’t work in large scale shops with many people. Imagine it’s already a tough to just standardize colors to get this to work.
RM
Yes, you are correct. In total we have close to 100 licenses with about 190 users across 3 countries (and some engineerings support in India with their own licenses). Something like what I’m requesting needs to be available for everyone, not some haphazard work-around.
Here’s something else. I need something in Rhino 7 that I can take to corporate to justify the cost when it’s time to upgrade. Gone are the days when I can request updates just because it’s new and I want the latest. So far, I don’t have much to go on as we will never use the sub-d tools. I check the list posted at the top of the forum hoping there will be something big added that will benefit our business but so far there are only a couple of minor things that would be nice to have. NamedSelections is going to be useful, but is that worth the $40K it’s going to cost to get us all up to date? Honestly, if Rhino 7 was released tomorrow, I would purchase 1 update just so I can look at Rhino 8 and everyone else would continue with Rhino 6. But, if I could go to corporate and say that Rhino 7 will allow us to program 30,000 + unique details over the next year with essentially 2 or 3 mouse clicks, I could sell that.
How would you expect the UI to work for assigning different colors? Is this something in the advanced display options. I’m trying to get my head around a way to do this without going nuts.
It seems that if we can figure out a nice system for assigning colors to different faces, then the actual display for those different colors wouldn’t be so hard.
You already have a system to select sub-objects.
When you select a sub-object most of the dynamic attributes in the Properties window are grayed out. Isn’t it possible that they are like the asignment of colors drop-down saying “ByLayer” to have also “ByParent” or “ByBrep”? Same could be applied to edges, curve segments and vertices
I would assume sub-object selection to pick the faces, and then assign the colours the same way we currently do. In the properties window maybe it could list the colours like it lists different named objects, just say “varies”.
This get really complicated really fast. We need to figure out a plan to even see what could be done. I’m not at a spot to really think about this too hard beyond getting it into our feature tracking system.
i think the logic is that every item, every geometry comes structured in some sub-sub-sub hierarchy tree… groups contain objects, objects can be polysurface etc… polysurface contains faces, edges, vertices. i think the best solution is the availability to assign attributes with options “by parent” (parent for polysurface edge would be polysurface itself, parent for polysurface would be group if in group, parent for group would be upper-group if nested…), by “layer” (it would be stupid to assign different layer to subobjects in general), “or unique” to every item available for selection.
