T-Splines for Rhino end of life

[MisterB]

@Jarek

I was always wondering how working on Rhino add-ons could be a primary business and the time/effort spent on developing the tools could pay off. Surely there is at least some plugins that become successful in that area.

It has been suggested on this forum, perhaps flippantly, that Rhino is used as a development tool and users as beta testers. The primary aim for plug in developers is to be bought up by the likes of Autodesk.

[AlW]

Kind of like the Detroit Tigers in US Major League Baseball. Both the American League and National League Cy Young Award winners (the Best Actor Academy Award for pitchers) were developed by the Tigers, then traded to their present teams just before their best year. A friend described the Tigers as “the most expensive farm club in baseball”.

I guess McNeel is Autodesk’s farm club. Too bad. I guess if you want the good stuff when it’s been developed, you need to pay Autodesk the big bucks.

[2DCube]

I use 360 at the minute for some filleting jobs and mostly for import export on meshing. The set back corners fillet option is quite nice as is the low poly count on meshing with very few errors.

It does depend on your modelling skills though, it doesn’t make up for errors and poor models.

Andy

[VisualConduct]

@MisterB

Autodesk were to repeat that 70% off sale in the coming weeks I would be sorely tempted, knowing that Rhino v5 will still be available

Yes, same here. It will give mesome time to find another solution. But for the current price it doesn’t make sense.

Regards, Robert

[Hughes_Tooling]

@DanBayn Working with Fusion I find the best exchange file type is DWG, with DWG you can import\export surfaces, meshes and curves. Don’t know if you want to work with more than one part but transferring assemblies to and from solid modelers seems to work as blocks. An assembly from Fusion comes in as nested blocks and blocks in Rhino become components, layer info is ignored.

Here’s a link with the settings I found work best, some 3d splines do have problems though.
http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/post-your-tips-and-tutorials/dwg-dxf-export-from-rhino-settings/td-p/6002189
You can upload DWGs through the Data panel in Fusion, export as DWG needs to be done from the Dashboard in your internet browser.

Mark

[ec2638]

@DanBayn

Does anyone know how Rhino and Fusion work together? Is it feasible to start a model in Rhino, send it to Fusion for t-spline

Very feasible…I do it all the time.

.3dm or STEP out of Rhino, and DFX for 2d.

STEP or IGES out of Fusion.

Made a feature request to add .3dm out of Fusion a while back. It is taggged ‘under consideration’ at the Ideasation. Go there and add your voice if you think such will add value, please.

Rhino .3dm Export

[rhinorudi]

@ec2638

Go there and add your voice if you think such will add value, please.

Thanks, i will do.

[jeff_hammond]

@ec2638

Made a feature request to add .3dm out of Fusion a while back. It is taggged ‘under consideration’ at the Ideasation. Go there and add your voice if you think such will add value, please.

i rarely post over there (just an occasional CAM question and one request for more apple like (more rhino like ) usability of trackpads on MBPs )

…but someone could request for faster imports of .3DM… i’m glad i can just upload them directly but the process/conversion(?) does seem sort of slower than it should/could be.

---

for what i use fusion for, i don’t need the round-trip ability… once the model is in fusion, the end product comes out of fusion in the form of gCode or a rendered image… but if i were using it for t-splines or fillets then yeah, it’d be nice if it could export as .3dm.

[ec2638]

@jeff_hammond

…but someone could request for faster imports of .3DM… i’m glad i can just upload them directly but the process/conversion(?) does seem sort of slower than it should/could be.

That would be nice, but I’d wonder whether doing so might be like - asking to be taller…

Still, for speed reasons you and I observe, I often export as STEP and choose - New Design from File. It seems faster.

I’m typically not moving whole Rhino files, rather individual elements, i.e., surfaces, polysurface ‘solids’, etc.

[DanBayn]

Thanks for the responses to my general inquiry about Rhino to Fusion. It might be worth taking a look, but other features in Fusion (like CAM) would probably get more of my attention. I have T-splines and Autodesk Shape modeling, but rarely use either. If moving on to V6 meant I lost both, I would probably still move on.

Dan

[rhinorudi]

@DanBayn

If moving on to V6 meant I lost both, I would probably still move on.

I also have both plugins for Rhino, I would miss T-Splines but not VSR. I never actually used it at all, the price was just right. I would find other software to model organic shapes, like Fusion or zBrush.

[2DCube]

Hi @tomfinnigan,

A couple of questions… Sorry for singling you out but I can’t seem to login to the T-Splines forum. My user name 2DCube is still there but I can’t recover the password for the account as it says it doesn’t exist. I tried to re-register and I can’t - the email never arrives. I’m guessing it’s the EOL of T-Splines which is the reason for this as it’s not serviced any more?

Please could you answer @Bathsheba’s question here? http://www.tsplines.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=95025 I think it deserves an official answer.

I know a couple of people who either want to upgrade to V4 before it’s terminated or buy it outright. It would be good if Autodesk could put them out of their misery and either state: “Yes, you can have an upgrade to the final version” or “Yes, there will be a Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal” for a license before it’s culled. The likelihood of a veteran Rhino user ditching it for Fusion 360 is slim, but it seems a little unfair to not honour loyal subscribers*

I don’t know Bathsheba personally but I know her work, i’d say she’s pretty famous in the 3D printing community and T-Splines in general - a great advocate for the cause and one of the main reasons why I chose T-Splines. Apologies if you’ve answered privately but you do state on your post in the T-Splines forum that you’ll answer there, you haven’t…

If you check my Autodesk account purchase history*, you’ll also see why I’m asking the question for existing loyal T-Spline users.

Please can you ask the powers that be and come back to them in this thread?

Thanks in advance.

Andy

[tomfinnigan]

Yes, I’m looking into this and will reply in both places as soon as I figure out what the options are.

[2DCube]

Thanks Tom,

Hopefully there will be some Black Friday/Cyber Monday love for the group.

Andy

[gustojunk (Gustavo Fontana)]

@DanBayn

Does anyone know how Rhino and Fusion work together? Is it feasible to start a model in Rhino, send it to Fusion for t-splines or VSR, then send it back to Rhino? I’m think about how Rhino and SpaceClaim work well together. I wonder if it’s possible with Fusion?

just my experience here…

I’ve been doing a bit of that back-and-forth out of curiosity and it’s painful. Currently .step is the only way to go.Also F360 is such a limited package in anything that is not solid/parapemtric modeling (even there is limited, but that’s a different topic). Keep in mind that for surfacing:

• there is no VSR or VSR-line tools there. I think those went to Alias
• there is not advance surfacing at all actually (except for Tspines) .

Actual example: You cannot even define per-edge continuity in new patches (all G0, or all G1 or all G2). example:

saddest part is that this is using the good ol’ hacky/shitty patch tool: Looks shiny here…

decent here in their pretty shaders:

This is what their "High Quality’ Zebra analysis will show you:

but Rhino will show you what this thing actually built:

…and no other surfacing tools to make this simple network srf patch:

…if you try Sweep it picked the entire loop (4 edges) as one input:

In summary: IMO Fusion 360 it’s a fine tools to make basic widgets with fillets, or maybe completely organic things with T-splines. But not at all an advanced modeling/surfacing tools by any means if you want high-craft, control and precision.

[ec2638]

Yup…Rhino remains a superior surface modeler (non-T-splines) over Fusion in all my tests too. Not even close. Tools lacking, etc.

Got to wonder how AD intends to parse out and rectify this weakness with respect to Alias revenue. You know they can if/when they ‘want’ to…

Moving elements back-and-forth: STEP and/or IGES. Sometimes IGES better when moving individual surfaces.

[gustojunk (Gustavo Fontana)]

@ec2638

Got to wonder how AD intends to parse out and rectify this weakness with respect to Alias revenue. You know they can if/when they ‘want’ to…

I think it’s obvious this is all part of the plan: cheap/virtually free commodity CAD, which works for a 90% of users in all fronts: solid/surfacing/t-splines/rendering/analysis/RP/CNC. Then upswell them to things like inventor/Alias/Vred…

What’s not clear is this picture-perfect marketing plan will work at all. I know investors and crooked analysis eat this shit up, but my instinct tells me users will not. Not at least in the numbers they need for this plan to work.

G

[MattE]

So in a nutshell, come January the capabilities and level of surfacing toolset offered by VSR Shape will be denied to all but those with the deepest pockets (i.e. Alias)? Are there any cheaper alternatives with the same functions in any other software?

[gustojunk (Gustavo Fontana)]

No one’s denying anything to anyone. It’s a free market is the purest sense.

I can tell you what i did: purchased a license of VSR Shape Modeling and I’ll be able to run in for years in V5. I much rather copy-paste between V6/7/8 and V5 than go to any other more complicated place/suite.

I also bought it mostly as a hobby, so I have a center tool to show McNell what Rhino should do “…otherwise they will go out of business!!!”

[ec2638]

@gustojunk

I also bought it mostly as a hobby, so I have a center tool to show McNell what Rhino should do “…otherwise they will go out of business!!!”

A focus on depth and quality of surfacing tools, at lower cost, has been the center piece of the recipe for success to date, IMO.

Continuing the formula in future should sustain, i.e., VSR type functionality, or any surfacing improvements/optimization, added surfacing features, or new techniques. GH uniqueness (for now, AD says they are coming with algorithmic) and catch up with sub-d. (Fillet robustness…not going there…)